(Dis)Connecting the Andamans: Cyclones,colonial telecommunication and the making of meteorological networks in the Bay of Bengal

Abstract

This article examines the Andaman Islands not merely as a remote penal colony but as a key node in the Bay of Bengal’s evolving meteorological and communication networks. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, British meteorologists, the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, colonial officials and rival wireless companies—each with different motives—sought to incorporate the islands into a cyclone-warning system aimed at safeguarding maritime traffic. Tracing proposals for submarine cables and the later adoption of wireless telegraphy, the article situates these efforts within a three-dimensional oceanic environmental history linking seabed, sea surface and atmosphere. It argues that commercial anxiety, environmental uncertainty, and imperial rivalry turned the Andamans into one of the first experimental sites for wireless technology in the British Empire, even as cyclones, financial limits and geopolitical shifts repeatedly discouraged these ambitions. Extending the narrative into the postcolonial period, the article shows how Indian meteorologists rebuilt storm-warning infrastructures after Independence, drawing on earlier imperial visions. Conceptually, it suggests that relations between the Andamans and the Indian mainland are best understood as an oscillating condition of partial connection and partial separation shaped by infrastructure, environmental risk, commercial interests and changing regimes of governance.