ABSTRACT
This chapter briefly explores the migratory and settlement experiences of South Asians in Britain, with an emphasis on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Though space requires that it be inevitably impressionistic, the experiences of settlers, travellers, and workers are featured before the article turns to the increased migration activity during the empire’s decline. The rise of South Asian diasporic communities was central to the making of Britain during this period, and their political and anti-colonial endeavours demonstrate the fragility of imperial relations. South Asians in Britain were targeted by Britons who sought to protect a less diverse social landscape and denied their economic and cultural contributions. South Asians faced racism and discrimination in their daily lives, and their resistance to ethnocentric systems of exclusion often put diasporic Asians at the centre of controversy about migration, employment competition, and ideas of British belonging. In the end, as imperial ambition and the global labour system mobilised the migration of South Asians to Britain it also created opportunities for individual and collective agency, community and cultural expression, and resistance to racism created by imperial power.
