New Histories of the Andaman Islands: Landscape, Place and Identity in the Bay of Bengal, 1790-2012

 After the British reoccupied the Andamans following the Japanese surrender on 7 October 1945, British commissioner N. K. Paterson returned to the Bay of Bengal. He abolished the penal colony and gave the 7,000 or so convicts then in the Islands the choice of either returning to India, or of settling permanently in the Andamans, as free men and women. Just under half chose to stay.Footnote1 They joined the convict-descended population – known as ‘local born’ – which totalled about 3,000 to 4,000 men, women and children, and who mainly lived in and around Port Blair.Footnote2 A few years after the abolition of the penal colony, which was followed by Indian Independence, in 1950 the Andamans became a Union Territory of the new nation state of India. Since then, the number of local-born Islanders has continued to grow.