Either an erroneous European use of Urdu lashkar army, camp [...], or a shortened form of its derivative lashkarī [...] In Portuguese c1600 laschar occurs in the same sense as lasquarim , i.e. Indian soldier; this use, from which the current applications are derived, is not recorded in English.[1]
The Portuguese adapted the term to "lascarins", meaning Asian militiamen or seamen, from any area east of the Cape of Good Hope, including Indian, Malay, Chinese, and Japanese crewmen. The English word "lascarins", now obsolete, referred to Sri Lankans who fought in the colonial army of the Portuguese until the 1930s.
The British of the East India Company initially described Indian lascars as 'Topass', but later adopted the Portuguese name, calling them 'lascar'.[2]
The word lascar was also used to refer to Indian servants, typically engaged by British military officers.[3]
History
Sixteenth century
Indian seamen had been employed on European ships since the first European made the sea voyage to India. Vasco da Gama, the first European to reach India by sea (in 1498), hired an Indian pilot at Malindi (a coastal settlement in what is now Kenya) to steer the Portuguese ship across the Indian Ocean to the Malabar Coast in southwestern India. Portuguese ships continued to employ lascars from the Indian subcontinent in large numbers throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, mainly from Goa and other Portuguese colonies in India. The Portuguese applied the term "lascar" to all sailors on their ships who were originally from the Indies, which they defined as the areas east of the Cape of Good Hope.
Through the Portuguese and Spanish maritime world empires, some Indian lascars found their way onto English merchant ships, and were among the sailors on the first English East India Company (EIC) ships to sail to India. Lascar crewmen from India are depicted on Japanese Namban screens of the sixteenth century.[4] The Luso-Asians appear to have evolved their own pidgin Portuguese which was used throughout South and Southeast Asia.[5]
Seventeenth century
When the English adopted the term "lascar", they initially used it for all Asian sailors on English-flagged ships, but after 1661 and the Portuguese ceded Bombay to England, the term was used mainly to describe Indian sailors specifically. The term "topaze" was used to describe Indo-Portuguese personnel, especially those from Bombay, Thana, Diu, Dammam and Cochin. The term "sepoy" was used to describe Indian soldiers in European service.[citation needed]
The number of lascars employed on EIC East Indiamen was so great that the Parliament of England restricted their employment via the Navigation Acts (in force from 1660 onwards) which required that 75% of the crew onboard English-flagged ships importing goods from Asia be English subjects. The restriction arose due to the high rates of illnesses and death among European sailors on East Indiamen, and their frequent desertions in Asia, which left such ships short of crew for the return voyage. Another reason was the frequent impressment of European sailors from EIC East Indiamen by the Royal Navy in times of war.[6]
Eighteenth century
In 1756, a British fleet under admirals George Pocock and Charles Watson, with an expeditionary force under Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Clive set off from Bombay with 1,300 men, including 700 Europeans, 300 sepoys and 300 "topaze Indo-Portuguese". Their successful expedition against Kanhoji Angre is one of the first references to the British use of Indo-Portuguese servicemen and one of the first major actions involving the EIC's Bombay Marine. Lascars also served with Arthur Wellesley on his campaigns in India during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.[7] In 1786, the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor was originally set up to assist lascars in London. However, in a report made after one month of the committee's existence, it was found that only 35 of the 250 recipients of aid were lascars. On Captain James Cook's ill-fated second voyage to the Pacific, HMSResolution, had lost so many men (including Cook) that she had to take on new crew in Asia to get back to England. In 1797 one group of lascars was shipwrecked off the coast off Tasmania on Preservation Island on a ship built in Calcutta. The Sydney Cove wreck was the first merchant wreck after the establishment of the British colony of New South Wales.[citation needed]
Lascars were often paid only half of their fellow white sailors' wages and were frequently expected to work longer hours as well as being given smaller and inferior rations.[8] The remuneration for lascar crews "was much lower than European or Negro seamen"[9] and "the cost of victualling a lascar crew was 50 percent less than that of a British crew, being six pence per head per day as opposed to twelve pence a day."[9] Many lascars lived under poor conditions, as shipowners could keep their services for up to three years at a time, moving them from one ship to the next on a whim. The ill-treatment of lascars continued into the 19th and 20th centuries.[10]
Nineteenth century
The British East India Company recruited seamen from areas around its factories in Bengal, Assam and Gujarat, as well as from Yemen, British Somaliland and Goa. Between 1803 and 1813, more than 10,000 lascars from India entered British port cities and towns onboard their ships.[11]:140,154–6,160–8,172 By 1842, 3,000 lascars entered British ports, and by 1855, this had climbed to 12,000 lascars annually. In 1873, 3,271 lascars arrived in British ports.[12]:35 Throughout the early 19th century lascars entered Britain at a rate of 1,000 men annually,[11]:140,54–6,60–8,72 which increased to a rate of 10,000 to 12,000 every year throughout the late 19th century.[13][14] Lascars would normally lodge in British ports in between voyages.[15] Some settled in port towns and cities in Britain, often because of restrictions such as the Navigation Act or due to being stranded as well as suffering ill treatment. Many were abandoned and fell into poverty due to quotas on how many lascars could serve on a single ship. Lascars sometimes lived in Christian charity homes, boarding houses and barracks.[16][17]
At the beginning of World War I, there were 51,616 Indian lascars working on British ships, the majority of whom were of Bengali descent.[18] Among them, it is estimated 8,000 Indians (some of whom would have been former lascars) lived in Britain permanently prior to the 1950s.[14][19]
Language barriers between officers and lascars made the use of translators very important. Very few worked on deck because of the language barrier. Some Europeans managed to become proficient in the languages of their crew. Skilled captains such as John Adolphus Pope became adept linguists and were able to give complicated orders to their lascar crew. Often native bosses known as "serangs", as well as "tindals" who often assisted serangs, were the only men able to communicate directly with the captain and were the men who often spoke for the lascars.[20][21] Many lascars made attempts to learn English but few were able to talk at length to their European captains.[22]
Lascars served on ships for assisted passage to Australia, and on troopships during Britain's colonial wars including the Boer Wars and the Boxer Rebellion. In 1891 there were 24,037 lascars employed on British merchant ships. For example, the ship "Massilia" sailing from London to Sydney, Australia in 1891 lists more than half of its crew as Indian lascars.
By 1815, the Committee Report on Lascars and other Asiatic Seamen introduced requirements for equipping lascar workers, that they be provided with "a bed, a pillow, two jackets and trousers, shoes and two woollen caps."[9]
Lascars served all over the world in the period leading up to the First World War. Lascars were barred from landing at some ports, such as in British Columbia. At the beginning of World War I, there were 51,616 lascars working on British merchant ships in and around the British Empire.[23]
Lascars at the Royal Albert Dock in London
In World War II thousands of lascars served in the war and died on vessels throughout the world, especially those of the British India Steam Navigation Company, P&O and other British shipping companies. The lack of manpower led to the employment of a total of 121 Catholic Goans and 530 Muslim British Indians on the Empress vessels of the Canadian Pacific Railway, such as the Empress of Asia and Empress of Japan. These ships served in the Indian Ocean both as ANZACconvoy ships and in actions at Aden. The ships were placed under the British Admiralty all of the Indian men were awarded medals by the Admiralty, though none of them were delivered.[24][bettersourceneeded]
In the 1950s the use of the term "lascar" declined with the ending of the British Empire. The Indian “Lascar Act” of 1832 was finally repealed in 1963.[20] However, "traditional" Indian deck and Pakistani engine crews continued to be used in Australia until 1986 when the last crew was discharged from the P&O and replaced by a general-purpose crew of Pakistanis.[20]
Presumably because Muslim lascars manned the "coolie ships" that carried Indian and Chinese indentured labour to the sugar plantations of the Mascarene Islands, the term lascar is also used in Mauritius, Réunion and the Seychelles to refer to Muslims, by both Muslims and non-Muslims.
Lascars in Britain
Lascars began living in England in small numbers from the mid-17th century as servants as well as sailors on English ships. Baptism records show that a number of young men from the Malabar Coast were brought to England as servants.[25] Lascars arrived in larger numbers in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the British East India Company began recruiting thousands of lascars (mostly BengaliMuslims, but also Konkani-speaking Christians from the northern part of Portuguese Goa and Muslims from Ratnagiri District in the adjacent Maharashtra) to work on British ships and occasionally in ports around the world.[26] Despite prejudice and a language barrier, some lascars settled in British port cities, often escaping ill-treatment on their ships as well or being unable to leave due to restrictions such as the Navigation Acts and abandonment by shipping masters.[25][27][28] Shipowners would face penalties for leaving lascars behind.[29] This measure was intended to discourage settlement of Asian sailors in Britain.[29]
Lascars in Britain often lived in Christian charity homes, boarding houses and barracks and sometimes cohabited with local women. The first and most frequent Indian travelers to Britain were Christian Indians and those of European-Asian mixed race. For Muslim Indians considerations about how their dietary and religious practices would alienate them from British society were brought into question but these considerations were often outweighed by economic opportunities. Those that stayed often took British names, dress and habits.[11]:12 Although the Indian presence in London during the 19th century mainly constituted male lascars and sailors, some women were included.[11]:186 In the Limehouse and Shadwell areas of London, many lascars formed communities in the Oriental Quarter, areas where they could form connections and retain degrees of fellowship. Conditions in the quarter, however, were no better than that of the streets. Joseph Salter, a Christian missionary known for his work with lascars, once stated that “We are now fairly in the Oriental Quarter; there are several houses here devoted to Asiatics, presided over by Chinese, Malays, and Indians according to the country of the Asiatic seeking companionship, how shamelessness has its premium and admirers, and honestly truth and self-respect are trampled in the dust. Here disease and death decked in gaudy tinseled robes allure the victim to the grave.” Overcrowding in dilapidated accommodation was all too often a sight; slime, dirt and excrement a common experience of life in the Oriental Quarter.[10]
A small number of lascars settled down and married local white women, at least partly due to a lack of Asian women in Britain at the time, leading to small multiracial communities in port towns.[11]:111–119,129–30,140,154–6,160–8,181[30] Some of them converted to Christianity (at least nominally) as it was legally required to be Christian in order to marry in Britain at this time.[31]
British women cohabiting with lascars was looked upon negatively in some quarters, with a London Borough of Tower Hamlets magistrate expressed "disgust" at local women marrying and cohabiting with lascars in 1817. Nevertheless, there were no legal restrictions against interracial marriages in Britain.[11]:106,111–116,119–20,129–35,140–2,154–8,160–8,172,181[12]:58[32] Indian lascar sailors established some of England's first settled Asian-British inter-racial families in the dock areas of major port cities.[33] This led to a small number of "mixed race" children being born in the country. Ethnic minority women in Britain were often outnumbered by "half-caste Indian" daughters born from white mothers and Indian fathers.[34] The most famous of these mixed-race children was Albert Mahomet, born with a lascar father and English mother. He went on to write a book about his life called From Street Arab to Pastor.
Lascars commonly suffered from poverty in Britain.[10] In 1782, East India Company records describe lascars coming to their Leadenhall Street offices ‘reduced to great distress and applying to us for relief’.[35] In 1785 a letter writer in The Public Advertiser wrote of "miserable objects, lascars, that I see shivering and starving in the streets". During the 1780s it was not uncommon to see lascars starving on the streets of London. The East India Company responded to criticism of the lascars' treatment by making available lodgings for them, but no checks were kept on the boarding houses and barracks they provided. The lascars were made to live in cramped, dreadful conditions which resulted in the deaths of many each year, with reports of lascars being locked in cupboards and whipped for misbehaviour by landlords. Their poor treatment was reported on by the Society for the Protection of Asiatic Sailors (which was founded in 1814).[28][36]
A letter in The Times[when?] stated that "The lascars have been landed from the ship ... One of them has since died...the coffin being filled with food and money, under the idea that the food would maintain him till his arrival in the new other world... Some of the poor fellows have hitherto been shivering about the streets, wet and half-naked, exhibiting a picture of misery but little creditable to the English nation".[37]
In 1842, the Church Missionary Society reported on the dire ″state of the lascars in London″.[38] In 1850 40 lascars, also known as ″Sons of India,″ were reported to have starved to death in the streets of London.[39] Shortly after these reports, evangelical Christians proposed the construction of a charity house and gathered £15,000 in assistance of the lascars. In 1856 "The Strangers' Home for Asiatics, Africans and South Sea Islanders" was opened in Commercial Road, Limehouse under the manager, Lieutenant-Colonel R. Marsh Hughes. The home helped and supported lascars and sailors from as far as China. The home helped with employment and with leaving Britain. Additionally, it served as a repatriation centre where various sailors were recruited for ships returning East. It was also used as a missionary centre with Joseph Salter of the London City Mission as its missionary. Among the things provided by the home were a library of Christian books in Asian and African languages, a store room for valuables, and a place where lascars could send their earnings back to India.[40] Lascars were allowed entrance as long as they had the prospect of local employment, or were on a ship returning East.[25] The collective naming of these groups as "strangers" reflected contemporary British attitudes.[38]
Lascar immigrants were often the first Asians to be seen in British cities and were initially perceived as indolent due to their reliance on Christian charities.[41]
In 1925 the Coloured Alien Seamen Order 1925 Act was brought into law by the Secretary of State for the Home Department. It stated that "any coloured alien seaman who is not already registered should take steps to obtain a Certificate of Registration without delay." Any foreign seaman, regardless of whether they had been in Britain for several months, had to register with the police. In 1931, 383 Indians and Ceylonese were registered.[42]
A letter dated 7 September 1925, from the wife of a Peshawar-born Indian domiciled in Britain and working as a sailor, describes the treatment of some Indians who were British subjects under the Home Office Coloured Aliens Seamen's Order, 1925: "My husband landed at Cardiff, after a voyage at sea on the SS Derville as a fireman, and produced his Mercantile Marine Book, R.S 2 No. 436431, which bears his Certificate of Nationality, declaring him to be British, and is signed by a Mercantile Marine Superintendent, dated 18 August 1919. This book and its certificate were ignored, and my husband was registered as an Alien. Would you kindly inform me if it is correct that the Mercantile Marine Book should have been ignored as documentary proof?"[43] Police eager to deport ''coloured'' seamen would often (and illegally) register seamen as aliens regardless of correct documentation.[44]
The transitory presence of lascars continued into the 1930s, with the Port of London Authority mentioning lascars in a February 1931 article, writing that: "Although appearing so out of place in the East End, they are well able to look after themselves, being regular seamen who came to the Docks time after time and have learnt a little English and know how to buy what they want."[45]
In 1932, the Indian National Congress survey of "all Indians outside India" estimated that there were 7,128 Indians in the United Kingdom, which included students, former lascars, and professionals such as doctors. The resident Indian population of Birmingham was recorded at 100. By 1945 it was 1,000.[46]
Surat Alley is a notable activist who fought for the rights of lascars within the Britain within the 1930s and 1940s.[47]
Lascars in Canada
Lascars were on board late 18th-century and early 19th-century ships arriving on the Pacific coast of north-west North America. In most cases the ships sailed from Macau, though some came from India. When Gustavus III arrived at Clayoquot Sound on the coast of Vancouver Island, the ship's crew included three Chinese, one Goan and one Filipino.[48] Lascars were barred from entry to British Columbia and other Canadian ports from June 1914 until the late 1940s. Therefore, they seldom occur on landing and embarkation records, though they were frequenting the ports but remaining on board the ships.[49]
Lascars in Macau and Hong Kong
After the death of James Cook in Hawaii, HMS Resolution sailed to Macau with her cargo of furs from the north-west coast of North America. The ship was very undermanned and took on fresh crew at Macau in December 1779 including a lascar from Calcutta by the name of Ibraham Mohammed.[50]
Lascars were arriving in Hong Kong before the 1842 Treaty of Nanking. Since the island of Hong Kong was initially a naval base there were Indian lascars of the East Indies Fleet arriving at Hong Kong in those early colonial days. Lascars were housed at several streets in the Sheung Wan area where there are two roads called Upper Lascar Row and Lower Lascar Row.[51] These are not far from the barracks established in 1847 at Sai Ying Pun for Indian soldiers or sepoys.[52]
Lascars in the United States
Lascars were on board early British voyages to the north-west coast of North America. These sailors were among the multinational crew arriving from Asia in search of furs. Among these was the Nootka in 1786 that arrived at the Russian port of Unalaska and sailed on to Prince William Sound in Alaska. There were ten Indian and one Chinese lascar on this vessel. Three lascars died in Prince William Sound, Alaska. The Nootka sailed back to Asia via Hawaii, and the lascars became the first recorded Indians to sail to Alaska and Hawaii.[53]
Lascar ranks and positions
These sailors served on British ships under "lascar agreements", which allowed shipowners more control than was the case in ordinary articles of agreement. The sailors could be transferred from one ship to another and retained in service for up to three years at one time.
In both deck and engine room departments, the lascars were headed by a serang (equivalent to the boatswain in the deck department), assisted by one or more tindals (equivalent to boatswain's mates in the deck department). Other senior deck positions included seacunny (quartermaster), mistree (carpenter, although a European carpenter was often carried), and kussab or cassab (lamp trimmer). An apprentice in either department was known as a topas or topaz. The senior lascar steward was known as the butler (either answering to a European chief steward or in charge of the catering department himself in a small ship). A cook was known as a bhandary.
The influence and imperialism of Western Europe and associated states peaked in Asian territories from the colonial period beginning in the 16th century and substantially reducing with 20th century decolonization. It originated in the 15th-century search for alternative trade routes to the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia as a response to Ottoman control of the Silk Road that led directly to the Age of Discovery, and additionally the introduction of early modern warfare into what Europeans first called the East Indies and later the Far East. By the early 16th century, the Age of Sail greatly expanded Western European influence and development of the spice trade under colonialism. European-style colonial empires and imperialism operated in Asia throughout six centuries of colonialism, formally ending with the independence of the Portuguese Empire's last colony Macau in 1999. The empires introduced Western concepts of nation and the multinational state. This article attempts to outline the consequent development of the Western concept of the nation state.
Impressment, colloquially "the press" or the "press gang", nowadays referred as the busification, is a type of conscription of men into a military force, especially a naval force, via intimidation and physical coercion, conducted by an organized group. European navies of several nations used impressment by various means. The large size of the British Royal Navy in the Age of Sail meant impressment was most commonly associated with Great Britain and Ireland. It was used by the Royal Navy in wartime, beginning in 1664 and during the 18th and early 19th centuries as a means of crewing warships, although legal sanction for the practice can be traced back to the time of Edward I of England. The Royal Navy impressed many merchant sailors, as well as some sailors from other, mostly European, nations. People liable to impressment were "eligible men of seafaring habits between the ages of 18 and 55 years". Non-seamen were sometimes impressed as well, though rarely. In addition to the Royal Navy's use of impressment, the British Army also experimented with impressment from 1778 to 1780.
Kanhoji Angre, also known as Conajee Angria or Sarkhel Angré was a Maratha Navy officer. Kanhoji became known for attacking and capturing European East Indiamen and collecting jakat, seen by Europeans traders and colonists as ransoming of their crews. British, Dutch and Portuguese ships often fell victims to these raids.Despite attempts by the Portuguese and British to put an end to his privateering activities, Angre continued to capture and collect jakat from European merchant ships until his death in 1729. Kanhoji's naval prowess in capturing dozens of European trading ships and avoiding capture has led to many historians to appraise Kanhoji as the most skilled Indian navy chief in the maritime history of India.
British Asians are British people of Asian descent. They constitute a significant and growing minority of the people living in the United Kingdom, with a population of 5.76 million people or 8.6% of the population identifying as Asian or Asian British in the 2021 United Kingdom census. This represented an increase from a 6.9% share of the UK population in 2011, and a 4.4% share in 2001.
East Indiaman was a general name for any merchant ship operating under charter or licence to any of the East India companies of the major European trading powers of the 17th through the 19th centuries. The term is used to refer to vessels belonging to the Austrian, Danish, Dutch, British, French, Portuguese or Swedish East India companies.
The Golden Age of Piracy is a common designation for the period between the 1650s and the 1730s, when maritime piracy was a significant factor in the histories of the North Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
Islam in England is the second largest religion after Christianity. Most Muslims are immigrants from South Asia or descendants of immigrants from that region. Many others are from Muslim-dominated regions such as the Middle East, Afghanistan, Malaysia and Somalia, and other parts of African countries such as Nigeria, Uganda and Sierra Leone. There are also many White Muslims in the country, of which most have Slavic and Balkan backgrounds, as well as some ethnic English converts.
British Indians are citizens of the United Kingdom (UK) whose ancestral roots are from India. Currently, the British Indian population exceeds 1.9 million people in the UK, making them the single largest visible ethnic minority population in the country. They make up the largest subgroup of British Asians and are one of the largest Indian communities in the Indian diaspora, mainly due to the Indian–British relations. The British Indian community is the sixth largest in the Indian diaspora, behind the Indian communities in the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia and Nepal. The majority of British Indians are of Punjabi and Gujarati origin with various other smaller communities from different parts of India including Kerala, West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
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Bangladeshis are one of the largest immigrant communities in the United Kingdom. Significant numbers of ethnic Bengali peoples, particularly from Sylhet, arrived as early as the seventeenth century, mostly as lascar seamen working on ships. Following the founding of Bangladesh in 1971, a large immigration to Britain took place during the 1970s, leading to the establishment of a British Bangladeshi community. Bangladeshis were encouraged to move to Britain during that decade because of changes in immigration laws, natural disasters such as the Bhola cyclone, the Bangladesh Liberation War against Pakistan, and the desire to escape poverty, and the perception of a better living led Sylheti men bringing their families. During the 1970s and 1980s, they experienced institutionalised racism and racial attacks by organised far-right groups such as the National Front and the British National Party.
The Portuguese Indian Armadas were the fleets of ships funded by the Crown of Portugal, and dispatched on an annual basis from Portugal to India. The principal destination was Goa, and previously Cochin. These armadas undertook the Carreira da Índia from Portugal, following the maritime discovery of the Cape route, to the Indian subcontinent by Vasco da Gama in 1497–99.
South Asians in the United Kingdom have been present in the country since the 17th century, with significant migration occurring in the mid-20th century. They originate primarily from eight sovereign states in South Asia which are, in alphabetical order, the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. There is also a history of migration of diasporic South Asians from Africa and Southeast Asia moving to, and settling in, the United Kingdom.
The Lascar War Memorial, located on Napier Road in the Hastings area of Kolkata, is a memorial dedicated to the memory of the 896 lascars who died serving on ships of the Royal Navy and British Merchant Service during World War I.
Luso-Asians are Eurasian people whose ethnicity is partially or wholly Portuguese and ancestrally are based in or hail primarily from Portugal, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. They historically came under the cultural and multi-ethnic sway of the Portuguese Empire in the East and retain certain aspects of the Portuguese language, Roman Catholic faith, and Latin cultural practices, including internal and external architecture, art, and cuisine that reflect this contact. The term Luso comes from the Roman empire's province of Lusitania, which roughly corresponds to modern Portugal.
Lascar (novel) is a 2012 historical novel written by Shahida Rahman about an East Indian orphan who leaves poverty-stricken Bengal in 19th-century India by becoming a lascar and his extended stay in Victorian London.
The gallivat was a small, armed boat, with sails and oars, used on the Malabar Coast in the 18th and 19th centuries. The word may derive from Portuguese "galeota" or alternatively, from the Maratha "gal hat" ship. Hobson-Jobson has an extensive discussion of the origins of the term and its usage.
Ayub Ali Master, was an early British Bangladeshi social reformer, politician and entrepreneur. He is notable for pioneering social welfare work for many early British Asians. He established a boardinghouse known as "Number 13" in his home which provided many facilities for British Asians. He is one of the earliest of Sylhetis to arrive in the United Kingdom, now hosting one of the largest Bangladeshi diaspora communities outside of Bangladesh and due to this, he was amongst the famous household names in the Sylhet region during his time referred to as the brave jahazis (sailors). His family is also notable as entrepreneurs and businessmen.
Shah Abdul Majid Qureshi, also known by his daak naam Moina Miah, was an early British Bangladeshi restaurateur and social reformer. He is notable for being involved in the early politics of British Asians and pioneering social welfare work for the working-class diaspora in the United Kingdom. He claimed to be the first Sylheti to own a restaurant in the United Kingdom. One of his later restaurants, India Centre, often provided facilities and was a location where important meetings were held by the India League attracting the likes of Subhas Chandra Bose and V. K. Krishna Menon.
Aftab Ali was an early 20th-century Pakistani Bengali social reformer, politician and entrepreneur. His work is recognised to have helped thousands of British Asian lascars to migrate, settle and find employment in Britain. He was a member of the Bengal Legislative Assembly and National Assembly of Pakistan, and served as the first Minister of Labour for East Pakistan.
Topass was a term used by the British Merchant Navy for the man who acted as an interpreter for a group or gang of Lascars or South Asian seamen on British vessels since at least the mid nineteenth century. Usually the topass came from the Luso-Asian communities, such as those from Goa and Bombay, and could speak English to pass on instructions to a group of sailors and to report back or mediate between Lascars and the European crew. Topaze Indo-Portuguese was a term applied in India by the British East India Company in the eighteenth century to describe Luso-Asians—usually from the Portuguese territories in the Indian subcontinent, or formerly Portuguese territories such as Bombay. One of the first references to them is in the British Anti-piracy campaign of 1756 when 300 Topaze Indo-Portuguese on the British ships Kent, Kingfisher, and Tiger captured the fortress of Geriah on 14 February 1756.
↑ Butalia, Romesh C (1999), The evolution of the Artillery in India, Allied Publishers, p.239, ISBN978-81-7023-872-0
↑ Lisboa, Luiz Carlos; Arakaki, Mara Rúbia (1993). Namban: o dia em que o Ocidente descobriu o Japão. São Paulo: Aliança Cultural Brasil-Japão. OCLC30602150.
1 2 Ansari, Humayun (2004). The Infidel Within: The History of Muslims in Britain, 1800 to the Present. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. ISBN978-1-85065-685-2..
↑ Ansari, Humayun (2004). The Infidel Within: The History of Muslims in Britain, 1800 to the Present. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. p.37. ISBN978-1-85065-685-2.
↑ Research by Clifford J. Pereira, 2015, Vancouver BC, Canada.
↑ Marshall, James Stirrat; Marshall, Carrie (1960). Pacific voyages: selections from Scots magazine, 1771-1808. Portland,OR: Binfords & Mort. p.21. OCLC759092744.
↑ Research by Pereira, Clifford J. 2016. Hong Kong, SAR. China.
↑ Chi Man, Kwong & Yiu Lun, Tsoi. "Eastern Fortress - A Military History of Hong Kong, 1840-1970". Hong Kong, SAR, China 2014, p.10
↑ Portlock, W. H.; Cook, James; Anderson, G. W.; Bligh, William; de Warville, P. Brissot (1794). A new, complete and universal collection of authentic and entertaining voyages and travels to all the various parts of the world... London: Alex. Hogg. p.122. OCLC123570120.
↑ Michie, E (Winter 1992). "From Simianized Irish to Oriental Despots: Heathcliff, Rochester and Racial Difference". Novel: A Forum on Fiction. 25 (2): 125–140. doi:10.2307/1346001. JSTOR1346001.
↑ Tytler, Graeme (1994). "Physiognomy in Wuthering Heights". Brontë Society Transactions. 21 (4): 137–148. doi:10.1179/030977694796439250.(subscription required)
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