The ten contributions to this volume provide a new perspective on the history of convicts and penal colonies. They demonstrate that the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were a critical period in the reconfiguration of empires, imperial governmentality and punishment, including through extensive punitive relocation and associated extractive labour. Ranging across the global contexts of Africa, Asia, Australasia, Japan, the Americas, the Pacific, Russia, and Europe, and exploring issues of criminalisation, political repression, and convict management alongside those of race, gender, space and circulation, this collection offers a perspective from the colonies that radically transforms accepted narratives of the history of empire and the history of punishment.