The social networks of South Asian migrants in the Sheffield area during the early twentieth century

This study presents evidence of the migration of Indians, mostly Muslim former ‘lascar’ seafarers, and their non-maritime employment and settlement in the Sheffield area. This process began during the First World War and the study analyses data up until the beginning of the era identified as that of mass-migration and marked by the British Nationality Act,1948. The evidence for Sheffield-area settlement challenges current understanding of interwar Britain’s non-elite Indian population as comprised almost entirely of seafaring sojourners rather than of settlers. The settlement, previously unnoticed by historians, also invites us to reconsider our understanding of ‘race relations’ during the period. Our current observations of British attitudes toward race during the interwar period tends be through a lens distorted by the 1919-20 race riots in a number of British home-ports. In contrast, this new evidence suggests that levels of everyday inter-racial tolerance within working-class districts may have been higher, more widespread and of a different nature than has been previously assumed. This possibility is raised due to investigation using a new methodology for migration history using General Register Office data for births, marriages and deaths, particularly the many marriage records of white natives and non-white newcomers. Moreover, it appears that the Sheffield-area settlement remained unnoticed because it did not generate the hostility that produced the records migration historians have tended to rely upon as primary sources, such as Home Office documents and press reports of the ‘problems’ of ‘miscegenation’ and ‘half-caste’ children.? The data examined by this study form part of my nationwide study into marriages between natives of Britain and Muslim newcomers, supporting an argument that permanent non-white settlement in Britain began in earnest well before 1948.