Themes

It is tempting to see the modern age of globalization as the age of migration. In recent decades we have witnessed, for example, the emergence of corporations which transcend and operate across national boundaries, and growing numbers of refugees seeking a better life, or at the very least a sanctuary from persecution and danger. But this is to ignore an important historical record of trading networks operating across oceans, mass migrations of peoples to lands offering new opportunities and communities fleeing conflict, all of which were evidence of demographic shifts in medieval times if not earlier. We refer to these shifts as diasporas. Many have been identified, most notably, the Irish, African, Indian, Jewish and Chinese, all of which possessed great historical resonance in the collective memories and lived realities of their members, and all of which effected momentous change.

In creating or accelerating such diasporic movements, the emergence of European empires had a dramatic impact, and here I wish to mention briefly the African and Indian. It is difficult to overestimate the scale, horror and contemporary legacy of, say, the African diaspora. Initially begun by Portuguese traders of the fifteenth century who exploited the human cargo of peoples they discovered along the west coast of Africa, modern slavery soon took on a very different complexion as the numbers seized by British, American, Spanish and Portuguese traders and their accomplices grew exponentially. We are never likely to get even close to the numbers of Africans transported across the Atlantic to provide cheap labour on the plantations of the Americas, but they almost certainly exceeded twelve million. The nineteenth century may have witnessed the end of enslavement, but the legacy of racial strife remains all too powerful.

It cannot have been coincidental that migration from South Asia gained momentum at the time slavery was abolished. It has been estimated that thirty two million Indians left as indentured labourers to meet the demand for cheap labour in the British colonies of the Caribbean, Mauritius, Burma, East Africa where they worked as menial labourers. The indentures were normally for six years, after which the labourers were allowed to return. Approximately eighty per cent did, so sustaining demand for further recruits. The most evident legacy of this diaspora is in the demographic composition of the former colonies to which so many Indians were sent.

Less in number, and in the past attracting less attention from historians was what might be thought of as the reverse migration of the British to the colonies where they served the need for administrators. Such migrants formed elite settler communities, united by a shared culture and value system which drew heavily upon indigenous traditions, and which they assiduously cultivated. In India, Africa and Australasia, these communities sought successfully to usurp democratic sentiments of indigenous peoples, stole their land and presented themselves as the authentic, civilized and future rulers of the colony on the grounds that they better understood the problems to be confronted and solutions to be found. No wonder so many clamoured to stay in power in the face of a rising tide of nationalist independence movements in the twentieth century.

It may be worth starting with Abbe Raynal’s, A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of Europeans in the East and West Indies, one of the first commentaries on European colonization but now a classic, complemented with more recent collections of primary materials such as William van Vugt’s British Immigration to the United States, 1776 – 1914, and Pramod Nayar’s Women in Colonial India. Among the monographs are Anjali Roy’s Imperialism and Sikh Migration, and Kay Saunders’ Indentured Labour in the British Empire, 1834 – 1920.