ABSTRACT
By utilising the private/public dichotomy found in feminist theory, this chapter demonstrates that while the working lives of Indian seamen in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain were subject to imperial imperatives, their private lives offered a sphere in which they were able to exercise greater agency. It examines the size of the lascar population in Britain during the period, recruitment practices and how the stereotype of the docile and controllable lascar developed. The chapter explores patterns of resistance in relation to missionary activity focusing on the language of conversion; overt and covert opposition to conversion; responses to ill treatment by the host society and lascar politicisation. It demonstrates the divergence between the public image of the docile and pliant lascar, stripped of agency in Britain, and the private reality of resistance to missionaries, who attempted to penetrate lascar belief systems.
