Anand Yang Speaks of Indian Convict Tales from Nineteenth Century Singapore

The South Asian Studies Council is pleased to welcome Anand Yang, the Job and Gertrud Tamaki Endowed Professor of International Studies and History at the University of Washington, for its first colloquium meeting of the 2012-2013 year.  Professor Yang will deliver a talk titled: “‘Near China Beyond the Seas’: Nineteenth-Century Indian Convict Tales From Singapore.

September 12, 4:30pm • Room 203, Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Avenue

In his talk, Professor Yang will discuss the exile experience of the Sikh rebel Nihal Singh (aka Bhai Maharaj Singh) and of his disciple Kharak Singh, in Singapore in the mid-nineteenth century.  He tracks their story from Punjab to Calcutta to Singapore to highlight the lived experiences of political prisoners, especially in relation to those of the transmarine convicts who lived alongside of them in very different circumstances in the outposts of the British Empire in Southeast Asia.

Professor Yang is the former Director of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies and is currently the Co-Director, Global Asia Institute at the University of Washington, Seattle.

He is the author of books on The Limited Raj: Agrarian Relations in Colonial India and Bazaar India: Peasants, Traders, Markets and the Colonial State; edited volumes on Crime and Criminality in British India and Interactions: Transregional Perspectives on World History; and numerous articles in journals in Asian Studies, History, and the Social Sciences.  His forthcoming book is entitled Empire of Convicts.

A former editor of The Journal of Asian Studies and Peasant Studies, Professor Yang is on the board of several journals and of several organizations, including the American Council of Learned Societies and the Council for International Exchange of Scholars.  He was the president of the Association for Asian Studies (2006-7) and the president of the World History Association (2008-10).

Born in Shantineketan, India, he grew up in New Delhi and completed high school in Mexico City before moving to the U.S.