The multi-layered history of the people who lived in Valivade reveals a connected feature of British imperial and postcolonial policy: ‘dispersal’. Following the precedent of holding their prisoners of war at locations across their vast empire, as they had during the Boer War and World War One, the British transported World War Two internees and evacuees all over the empire, including to India. This policy was underpinned by the desire to block refugees and internees from entering the UK. India became a central prong of the strategy, as the British government decided to disperse and ‘hold’ diverse groups of refugees and prisoners of war in British India and in the Indian princely states—semi-autonomous regions subject to a form of indirect rule under their own sovereigns. The princely states became important sites of dispersal when the British leaned on them to accept World War Two evacuees. Very soon afterwards the new Indian government did the same, for partition refugees.