The Andaman Islands, a remote archipelago in the Bay of Bengal and now a territory of India, is home to four dwindling tribes: the Great Andamanese, the Onge, the Jarawa and the Sentinelese. Mukerjee, a former editor at Scientific American
and a native of India, explores firsthand the devastating effects colonization and modernization have had on the island chain. Written alternately as travelogue and historical and anthropological reportage, the book moves loosely from the Great Andamanese (the most assimilated tribe) to the Sentinelese (the least), illustrating how the encroachments (first British, later Indian) made by timber harvesting; extrinsic diseases, such as measles and influenza; and global pollution have left the 500 remaining islanders destitute, dispossessed of land and, in some cases, miserably assimilated. While the author's arguments on imperialism are stale, her timing—as a witness to "a dominant culture subsum[ing] a marginal one"—provides an important case study. Mukerjee's heavy reliance on third-party historical and anthropological accounts is at times cumbersome, and she willingly admits that even her encounters with tribal members create "a synthetic situation in which [the islanders cannot] be observed living their day-to-day lives." Red tape and safety concerns prevent her from performing meticulous anthropology, and she devotes only a few pages to recent studies of Andaman language and DNA, which may make significant contributions to global genetic research. In her defense, Mukerjee is neither a biologist nor an anthropologist (she has a Ph.D. in physics), and her personal chronicle of the Andamanese is an impassioned portrait at an ancient culture on the brink of vanishing. Photos not seen by PW; 1 map. (Aug. 1)
