Race, nationality and employment among Lascar seamen, 1660 to 1945

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3638233
AutoresMarika Sherwood (0000-0003-3671-3304)
Año1991
Volumen17
Número2
Páginas229-244
Fecha de publicación1991-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaNew Community (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0047-9586 • E-ISSN: 1469-9451
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1369183x.1991.9976238
OpenAlexW2026992206
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas15
Referencias citadas3

Lascars were Indian seamen employed on British registered ships from at least the seventeenth century. Though technically British subjects, special legislation deprived them of this status and restricted their ‘Britishness’ regarding employment to particular parts of the world and to a fixed proportion of the crew, except in time of war. Moreover, this legislation, much of it in force until quite recently, fixed wages and conditions at a much lower level than that for Caucasian British crew doing the same work, and made ‘desertion’ a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment and deportation. During two hundred years of public discussion and legislation about Lascars, British fears of black settlement and of miscegenation were to the forefront. As the numbers of Lascars who managed to settle in Britain were minuscule, it is clear that British racism is not due to what the present Prime Minister has described as fears of ‘swamping’

Criminology · Deportation · Economics · Immigration · Imprisonment · Legislation · Nationality · Political science · Racism · Settlement (finance · Sociology · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law