Asians In Britain 400 Years of History

by Visram, Rozina

• ISBN13: 9780745313788
• ISBN10: 0745313787
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-04-20
• Publisher: Pluto Press

Summary

In this new, groundbreaking book, Rozina Visram offers an extensively researched, comprehensive study of Asians from the Indian subcontinent in Britain. Spanning four centuries, it tells the history of the Indian community in Britain from the servants, ayahs and sailors of the seventeenth century, to the students, princes, soldiers, professionals and entrepreneurs of the 19th and 20th centuries. Drawing on primary resources and recently declassified government documents, Visram examines the nature and pattern of Asian migration; official attitudes to Asian settlement; the reactions and perceptions of the British people; the responses of the Asians themselves and their social, cultural and political lives in Britain. This imaginative and detailed investigation asks what it would have been like for Asians to live in Britain, in the heart of an imperial metropolis, and documents the anti-colonial struggle by Asians and their allies in the UK. It is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the origins of the many different communities that make up contemporary Britain.

Author Biography

Rozina Visram is an independent scholar working on multiculturalism and education. She is the author of Ayahs, Lascars and Princes (Pluto Press, 1986).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	viii
Preface	ix
Acknowledgements	xi
A Long Presence	1	(2)
Early Arrivals, 1600-1830s	3	(41)
A Community in the Making, 1830s-1914	44	(61)
Through Indian Eyes	105	(18)
Parliamentarians, Revolutionaries and Suffragettes	123	(46)
Indians in the First World War	169	(27)
Citizens or Aliens?	196	(29)
Lascar Activism in Britain, 1920-45	225	(29)
Asians in Britain, 1919-47	254	(46)
Radical Voices	300	(41)
Contributions in the Second World War	341	(13)
Conclusions	354	(7)
Notes	361	(73)
Select Bibliography	434	(21)
Index	455