Devil's Island Fugitives

Penal Colonies

Photograph

By: Anonymous

Date: 1938

Source: AP Images

About the Photographer: The photograph was taken by an anonymous Associated Press photographer.

INTRODUCTION

Both Great Britain and France sought to rid themselves of criminals by banishing them to the New World. Great Britain used Australia while France operated a penal colony known as Devil's Island in French Guiana from 1852 to 1945.

Prison sentences for criminals were rare in England before the late eighteenth century. Punishment more typically took the form of hanging or whipping. Faced with a growing and unruly population of petty criminals and political rebels, however, the British government began shipping them to colonies in North America and the Caribbean. The scale of the operation was modest, about 700 felons per year. Beginning in 1787, however, after the American Revolution, Britain began sending prisoners to Australia. In all, about 160,000 British convicts went to Australia before transportation stopped in 1868.

France developed penal colonies relatively late. The French empire did not cover as much territory as the British, making it difficult to find the right isolated spot. Additionally, the French had a functioning police force and an effective penal system at home. Yet the Australian model prompted the French to consider the option. The French sought a place with a healthy climate, fertile ground, and that was far enough away to create an obstacle to escape yet close enough that transporting criminals there would not be too expensive.

French Guiana had the right location and good soil but possessed a deadly climate. Between 1852 and 1938, over 56,000 mostly male prisoners went to Ile du Diable or Devil's Island; 90 percent of them died there of disease and abuse. The underfed naked convicts often were forced to work in water up to their waists. Prisoners sentenced to a term of less than eight years had to spend an equal period of time living in the colony after their release. Prisoners with sentences of more than eight years had to remain in the colony permanently. Although escape was difficult and the punishments severe, prisoners frequently tried to escape.

PRIMARY SOURCE

DEVIL'S ISLAND FUGITIVES

See primary source image.

SIGNIFICANCE

The French government believed that sending prisoners to French Guiana would help stabilize the colony's population and make it into the same sort of success as Australia. But the prisoners' high death rate did little to help the colony's numbers.

After waves of bad publicity and the election of the Popular Front government in France, the French stopped exporting prisoners to Devil's Island in 1938. World War II and the German occupation of France delayed closure of the base until 1946. By that time, however, it had gained everlasting notoriety for the prisoners who passed through it, including the wrongly convicted French army officer Alfred Dreyfus.

French Guiana is still part of France. Unlike the peoples of other European colonies in the Caribbean who demanded independence after 1945, the people of French Guiana wanted to remain part of the French nation. As a result, they enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the Caribbean.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Miles, Anthony. Devil's Island: Colony of the Damned. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1988.

Redfield, Peter. Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.-//Gale Research//DTD Document V2.0//EN"〉