Andaman Research

Manifestations of History in the Andaman Islands

International Conference, LMU Munich, June 21 - 23, 2013

Venue: Internationales Begegnungszentrum der Wissenschaft München e.V., Amalienstraße 38, 80799 München

The conference “Manifestations of History in the Andaman Islands” enquires into contemporary negotiations of ideas, categories, and objects from the past. Here, history is conceptualized as a process in the making, and a contested field of interpretation. The Andaman Islands are suited to demonstrate such manifestations of material and discoursive legacies from the centre into the margins. Its cosmopolitan island society, called Mini-India, depicts the social complexity and ethnic diversity of the subcontinent with concise clarity. At the same time, the variety of castes, classes, communities, religions, and languages indicates the many entanglements between the British Empire, the Indian nation-state, and destinations of Indian overseas migration.

The agenda of this conference arose from the significant, but yet underestimated, place of the Andaman Islands within the historiography of the Indian Ocean. The conference brings together twenty speakers from five countries, representing the disciplines of anthropology, history, sociology, human ecology, literature, political science, and geography.

This Conference is made possible by the support of:

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität