ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief survey of the historiography of immigrant settlement in London's East End, and considers what is meant by 'historiography', 'immigrant' and 'East End'. It includes nineteenth-century Irish migrants, who crossed the water and became known as 'troublesome strangers' in London's East End. The historiography of immigration into the East End can be reviewed either chronologically or thematically. Within the East End is the 250-acre space of Spitalfields which has been a first place of immigrant arrival and settlement over the centuries. In each case, as the newcomers put down their roots, the landscape gradually takes on the character of the latest immigrant group, becoming in turn Petty France, Little Jerusalem and Banglatown. Geographically, the area that is the East End evolved from the cluster of hamlets which had, centuries earlier, grown up on the outer edge of the eastern boundary of the City of London.
