ABSTRACT
Sociologists have dominated academic research on immigration into Britain. A dissatisfaction with this state of affairs provides some of the motivation for this discussion of historians and immigration. The general survey of Irish immigrants appeared in 1963, and, to reinforce one of the introductory emphases, it was written by J. A. Jackson, a sociologist. If we retreat into the late nineteenth century, until 1891 the Germans constituted the largest single continental European immigrant minority in Britain. In view of the fact that other social scientists have concentrated their attention on the years since 1945, an important role can be envisaged for those historians interested in Blacks and Asians. Much more needs to be known about these groups before this period and the same observation applies to those minorities who came to Britain from beyond Europe. Many existing discussions of immigrant and refugee groups celebrate the virtues of the newcomers and stress their influence in shaping the contours of British society.
