Lascar - Wikipedia
[UWSL]Placed on the lowest rung of the imperial hierarchy of sailors, lascars were discriminated against, paid less, treated poorly on board ships and worked in difficult roles on steam-powered liners.[/UWSL]
A small number of lascars settled down and married local British and Irish women, at least partly due to a lack of Asian women in Britain at the time, leading to small multiracial communities in port towns.[11][UWSL]: 111–119, 129–30, 140, 154–6, 160–8, 181 [/UWSL][31] Some of them converted to Christianity (at least nominally) as it was legally required to be Christian in order to marry in Britain at this time,[32] the most famous case being Sake Dean Mahomed, who converted from Islam to Christianity in order to marry his Irish wife Jane Daly.
British women cohabiting with lascars became an issue, and a magistrate of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets area in 1817 expressed "disgust" at how the local English women in the area were marrying ad cohabiting with foreign Indian lascar seamen. Nevertheless, there were no legal restrictions against "mixed" marriages in Britain. Indian lascar sailors established some of England's first settled Asian-British inter-racial families in the dock areas of major port cities. [35] This led to a small number of "mixed race" children being born in the country. Ethnic minority women in Britain were often outnumbered by "half-caste Indian" daughters born from white mothers and Indian fathers.[36] The most famous of these mixed-race children was Albert Mahomet, born with a lascar father and English mother. He went on to write a book about his life called From Street Arab to Pastor.
Last edited:
