English Siege and Prison Writings: From the 'Black Hole' to the 'Mutiny'

379 Pages·2016·1.325 MB·English

by  Pramod K. Nayar (editor)

English Siege and Prison
Writings
This volume brings together an unusual collection of British captivity
writings – composed during and after imprisonment and in conditions of
siege. Writings from the ‘Mutiny’ of 1857 are well known, but there exists a
vast body of texts, from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Burma, and the Indian
subcontinent, that have rarely been compiled or examined.
Written in anxiety and distress, or recalled with poignancy and anger,
these siege narratives depict a very different Briton. A far cry from the
triumphant conqueror, explorer or ruler, these texts give us the vulner-
able, injured and frightened Englishman and woman who seek, in the
most adverse of conditions, to retain a measure of stoicism and identity.
From Robert Knox’s 17th-century account of imprisonment in Sri Lanka,
through J. Z. Holwell’s famous account of the ‘Black Hole’ of Calcutta,
through Florentia Sale’s Afghan memoir, and Lady Inglis’s ‘Mutiny’ diary
from Lucknow, the book opens up a dark and revealing corner of the colo-
nial archive.
L ucid and intriguing, this book will be of great interest to scholars and
researchers of modern South Asia, colonial history, literary and culture
studies.
Pramod K. Nayar teaches in the Department of English at the University of
Hyderabad, India. His most recent books include T he Indian Graphic Novel:
Nation, History and Critique (Routledge, 2016), T he Transnational in English
Literature: Shakespeare to the Modern (Routledge, 2015), the edited P ostco-
lonial Studies: An Anthology (2015) and the Postcolonial Studies Dictionary
(2015). A book on human rights and literature and an edited fi ve-volume
collection I ndian Travel Writing, 1830–1947 are forthcoming, besides essays
on celebrity studies, graphic biographies and colonial etiquette books.

English Siege and Prison
Writings
From the ‘Black Hole’ to the ‘Mutiny’
Edited by Pramod K. Nayar
First published 2017
by Routledge
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© 2017 selection and editorial matter, Pramod K. Nayar
The right of Pramod K. Nayar to be identified as the author of the
editorial material, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this work
but points out that some imperfections in the archival original copies may
be apparent.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders, if any, of the texts
contained and the publisher welcomes correspondence from those they
have been unable to contact.
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ISBN: 978-1-138-23268-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-30079-5 (ebk)
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Contents
Preface vii
Introduction 1
1 An historical relation of the Island Ceylon in the
East Indies (1681) 11
ROBERT KNOX
2 A genuine narrative of the deaths of English
gentlemen (1764) 36
J.Z. HOLWELL
3 Personal narrative of two years’ imprisonment in
Burmah (1860) 56
HENRY GOUGER
4 A journal of the disasters in Afghanistan (1843) 147
LADY [FLORENTIA] SALE
5 The military operations at Cabul (1843) 218
VINCENT EYRE
6 From the Calcutta Gazette (1791) 275
WILLIAM DRAKE
7 A narrative of the sufferings of James Bristow (1793) 281
JAMES BRISTOW
vi Contents
8 A narrative of the military operations on the Coromandel
Coast (1789) 312
INNES MUNRO
9 The captivity, sufferings and escape of
James Scurry (1824) 318
JAMES SCURRY
10 An authentic account of the treatment of
English prisoners (1785) 343
HENRY OAKES
11 Siege of Lucknow: a diary (1892) 351
LADY [JULIA] INGLIS
Preface
This collection of siege and prison narratives offers a different view of
the Raj.
We routinely find in British writings a self-fashioning: as the superior,
brave and invincible ruling class. Less well-known, except for the ‘Mutiny’
writings, is the colonial archive of suffering and trauma as well.
T he captivity narratives compiled here depict an entirely different ruling
class: each text is a self-representation of the vulnerable and hapless Eng-
lishman and woman. The texts document deprivations, humiliations, pain
and suffering when imprisoned and in conditions of siege. They speak not
only of starvation, beatings and living in a state of fear and of separation
from their families and friends, but also of the necessity of retaining faith,
hope and courage.
C aptivity narratives temper the triumphalist discourses of the Empire
when the colony is itself transformed in particular pockets into a geography
of suffering.
Pramod K. Nayar
Hyderabad, June 2016

Introduction
I n her book, C aptives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600–1850 (2004),
historian Linda Colley speaks of Englishmen and women as ‘individu-
als caught up bodily in zones of imperial contest, forced into protracted
encounters where they were at the bottom, and other people who were gen-
erally not European, and not Christian, or white, had power of life or death
over them’ (16). These were individuals, Colley writes, ‘who got caught and
caught out because of this [Britain’s imperial] power’s amalgam of incessant
extroversion and aggression, and frequent and intrinsic vulnerability’ (17).
I n what follows, I outline a generic scheme and characteristic features of
the English captivity narratives from the subcontinent.1
The vulnerable white body
C aptivity narratives, expectedly, are self-representations written after the
events that invariably document corporeal vulnerability. Descriptions of
physical distress, injuries and pain are commonplace in all texts. Thus, cap-
tivity narratives may be read as a contrasting set to British imperial discourse
which highlighted supremacy, sovereignty, control and white dignity.
T he captured officers ‘who were ill, and much fatigued by the intense
heat of the sun and the want of water, attempting to rest themselves under
a tree, were beat, in a most unmerciful manner, by the enemy, with swords
and sticks’, writes Henry Oakes. Julia Inglis’s narrative of the siege of Luc-
know during the ‘Mutiny’ is essentially an inventory of injuries suffered by
the various besieged Englishmen, women and children. She describes legs
blown off, a soldier who has a ‘ball lodged at the back of his head’, people
shot ‘through’ their bodies (this is Polehampton, the chaplain in the Resi-
dency), lingering deaths from severe wounds and cholera.
Now, in the case of the English ‘incarcerated’ within the Lucknow Resi-
dency during the ‘Mutiny’, the form of captivity is of a wholly different
order. The British-imposed segregation of the space of the colony along