Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History

Rating:
Summary: A Long Presence
Review: This fine book tells the story of the Asian (that is, Indian) presence in Britain prior to 1950, before Britain's post-war labour shortage attracted immigration from the Subcontinent in significant numbers. Therefore the book provides a wider historical context for that immigration, and as Rozina Visram points out in her conclusion, helps explode the myth of a homogeneous monocultural Britain (quite how some can view that myth as being tenable given Britain's imperial and trading history is a mystery on its own).

The source material is patchy, but Rozina Visram does a good job at piecing the evidence together. The Asian presence in Britain was varied both in scale and type - from the seventeenth century there was a mixture of what might be termed "prominent visitors" and "transient workers", the latter group composed primarily of lascars working on trading ships and ayahs working for British families either returning from or going to India.

The experiences of these people and the British reaction to them are complex: it seems that it was not a case of universal bad treatment and racism. Yet their stories, when taken as a whole, are not a great advertisement for the British Empire. Official policy seemed to be that the Indians should stay in India - and that those coming to Britain should be "encouraged" to make their stay here as short as possible. Not a policy that was applied to subjects of the "white colonies".

There's no doubt that the Empire was exploitative, both at the national and individual level - Indians were employed, but on worse pay and conditions than their white counterparts. It occurred to me though, that this is not primarily a characteristic of imperialism, but one of capitalism (the British Empire was a capitalist enterprise). For example, the criticism that transferring work from the West to the East due to lower labour costs in the East worked to the detriment of both sets of workers (one group losing their jobs, the other being paid poverty-level wages) can be applied to multinational companies now - in the past, it just happened against an imperial background.

Overall, it seems that Britain owes immense debts to the Indian presence in many spheres - not least in the sacrifices made during both world wars. At least by accident, the Empire was a source for some good in that it helped defeat fascism, but that does not mean that its exploitative and repressive nature can be overlooked.

G Rodgers