Working across the seas: Indian Maritime Labourers in India, Britain, and in between, 1600-1857

International Review of Social History

Volumn 51, Issue SUPPL. 14, 2006, Pages 21-45

  Fisher, Michael H ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33751357332     PISSN: 00208590     EISSN: 1469512X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0020859006002604     Document Type: Review

References (152)

1. For discussion of these concepts, see Tom Brass and Marcel van der Linden (eds), Free and Unfree Labour: The Debate Continues (New York, 1997). Intermediary labour recruiters were not unique to the Indian Ocean. In Europe, "crimps" specialized in recruiting seamen (including through coercion or deception); some seamen were slaves.
2. See Amitav Ghosh, In an Antique Land (London, 1992),
3. and Amitav Ghosh, idem, "The Slave of MS. H6", Subaltern Studies, 7 (1993), pp. 159-220.
4. See Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System AD 1250-1350 (New York, 1989);
5. K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge, 1985);
6. Ashin Das Gupta and M.N. Pearson (eds), India and the Indian Ocean, 1500-1800 (Calcutta, 1987);
7. Holden Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600-1800 (Minneapolis, MN, 1976);
8. Niels Steensgaard, Carracks, Caravans and Companies: The Structural Crisis in the European-Asian Trade in the Early 17th Century (Lund, 1973);
9. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500-1700: A Political and Economic History (London, 1993).
10. See Isaac Land, "Domesticating the Maritime" (Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1999)
11. and "Customs of the Sea: Flogging, Empire and the 'True British Seaman', 1770-1870", Interventions, 3 (2001), pp. 169-185;
12. Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (Cambridge, 1987).
13. See G. Balachandran, "Conflicts in International Maritime Labour Markets: British and Indian Seamen, Employers and the State, 1890-1939", Indian Economic and Social History Review, 39 (2002), pp. 71-100;
14. G. Balachandran, "idem, "Circulation through Seafaring: Indian Seamen, 1890-1945", in Claude Markovits, Jacques Pouchepadass, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (eds), Society and Circulation: Mobile People and Itinerant Cultures in South Asia, 1750-1950 (New Delhi, 2003), pp. 89-130;
15. N. Benjamin, "The British and Indian Sailors (c.1790-1885)", in P.M. Joshi and M.A. Nayeem (eds), Studies in the Foreign Relations of India from the Earliest Times to 1947 (Hyderabad, 1975), pp. 485-496;
16. Frank Broeze, "Underdevelopment and Dependency: Maritime India during the Raj", Modern Asian Studies, 18 (1984), pp. 429-457;
17. Anne Dunlop, "Lascars and Labourers: Reactions to the Indian Presence in the West of Scotland during the 1920s and 1930s", Scottish Labour History Society Journal, 25 (1990), pp. 40-57;
18. Conrad Dixon, "Lascars: The Forgotten Seamen", in Rosemary Ommer and Gerald Panting (eds), Working Men Who Got Wet: Proceedings of the Fourth Conference of the Atlantic Canada Shipping Project, July 24-July 26, 1980 (Newfoundland, 1980), pp. 265-81;
19. Shompa Lahiri, Indians in Britain: Anglo-Indian Encounters, Race and Identity, 1880-1930 (London, 2000);
20. R.G.W. Prescott, "Lascar Seamen on the Clyde", in T.C. Smout (ed), Scotland and the Sea (Edinburgh, 1992), pp. 199-212;
21. M. Sherwood, "Lascar Struggles Against Discrimination in Britain 1923-45: The Work of N.J. Upadhyaya and Surat Alley", Mariner's Mirror, 90 (2004), pp. 438-455;
22. Laura Tabili, "Construction of Racial Difference in Twentieth-Century Britain: The Special Restriction (Coloured Alien Seamen) Order, 1925", Journal of British Studies, 33 (1994), pp. 54-98
23. and Laura Tabili, "idem, "We Ask for British Justice": Workers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain (Ithaca, NY, 1994).
24. See Norma Myers, "The Black Poor of London: Initiatives of Eastern Seamen in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries", Immigrants & Minorities, 13 (1994), pp. 7-21;
25. M. Sherwood, "Ticket of Leave and Lascar Seamen, Crews for the East India Company", History Today, 40 (1990), pp. 6-8;
26. Rozina Visram, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London, 2002),
27. and Rozina Visram, idem, Ayahs, Lascars and Princes: Indians in Britain, 1700-1947 (London, 1984).
28. See G. Balachandran, "Searching for the Sardar: The State, Pre-Capitalist Institutions, and Human Agency in the Maritime Labour Market, Calcutta, 1880-1935", in Burton Stein and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (eds), Institutions and Economic Change in South Asia (Delhi, 1996), pp. 206-236.
29. Benjamin, "The British and Indian Sailors", p. 487.
30. The Company's Directors refused their request to take their three English wives back with them, considering it unfitting "for such women to go among so many unruly sailors" for such a long voyage; Great Britain, Public Record Office, W. Noel Sainsbury et al. (eds), Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 27 vols, (London, 1860-1926), vol. 2, p. 275.
31. Declaration December 1699, Home Miscellaneous Series 36, fo. 450, British Library [hereinafter BL].
32. The East India Company's records, now in the BL, contain thousands of ship's log and account books.
33. John J. McCusker, "Comparing the Purchasing Power of Money in Great Britain from 1264 to Any Other Year Including the Present", Economic History Services, 2001; URL: http://www.eh.net/hmit/ppowerbp/.
34. William Foster, English Factories in India, 13 vols (Oxford, 1906-1927), vol. 1634-1636, pp. 30, 45, 50.
35. Wages are cited in various currencies of fluctuating values. Thus, these are only estimates. See, for example, Court minutes, 14 April 1757 and L/MAR/B/series, passim, BL,
36. and Foster, English Factories, (1634-1636), pp. 186-187, 280.
37. See also Paul C. van Royen, Jaap Bruijn, and Jan Lucassen (eds), "Those Emblems of Hell"?: European Sailors and the Maritime Labour Market, 1570-1870, Research in Maritime History, 13 (1997);
38. McCusker, "Comparing the Purchasing Power of Money in Great Britain".
39. For example, Bengal Secret and Military Consultation, 25 August 1777;
40. Infantry Establishment and Bengal Military Consultation, 17 March 1779, National Archives of India, New Delhi.
41. K.N. Chaudhuri, English East India Company: The Study of an Early Joint-Stock Company, 1600-1640 (London, 1965), p. 105.
42. K.N. Chaudhuri, English East India Company: The Study of an Early Joint-Stock Company, 1600-1640 (1965), Ibid., p. 91.
43. Court minutes, 19 November 1679 to 13 October 1742;
44. Dispatches to Bengal, 11 November 1757, E/4/616(I), 633, para. 62, BL.
45. The most crucial was Act 12, Car. 2, c. 18 (1660). Parliament periodically modified these acts until largely repealing them in 1849 and 1854.
46. Court minutes, 1-8 November 1749, 6 December 1749; BL.
47. In war, this was relaxed to require only one-quarter of the crew need be British; e.g. Act 13, Geo. 2, c. 3 (1740).
48. For example, Court Resolution, 8 November 1671; BL.
49. Court minutes, 24 November 1714, 23 December 1713, 17 October 1718; BL.
50. For example, Court minutes, 17 November 1749; BL.
51. The Company allotted £10 each for European privates on the same vessel; e.g. Court minutes, 28 September 1688, 17 February 1693, 23 June 1693; BL.
52. Court minutes, 18 November 1685, 9 November 1687, 21 December 1691, 15 March 1694, 4 April 1700; BL.
53. Court minutes, 24 March 1689; BL.
54. Court minutes, 1 February 1693, 29 March 1693; BL.
55. Act 55 Geo. 3, c. 116 (1814-1815). Parliamentary Papers, Returns (Commons), 1814-1815, vol. 3, paper 471, pp. 217-229.
56. Court minutes, 19 April 1706, 11 December 1706, 21 January 1713, 23 October 1713, 4 November 1713, 10-15 February 1721; BL.
57. Court minutes, 2-21 January 1713; BL.
58. Letter Book from Managers, 7 February 1706; E/3/96, BL.
59. The Times, 9 December 1814;
60. Morning Chronicle, 30 November 1785, 1 December 1785.
61. For example, Court minutes, 29 March 1693, but payments varied widely; see L/MAR/B/series, passim, BL.
62. For example, in 1697, some Asian seamen joined the crowds watching the public execution of pirates at Wapping Dock; Harihar Das, "Early Indian Visitors to England", Calcutta Review, 3rd series, 13 (1924), pp. 83-114, 84.
63. See also Douglas A. Lorimer, Colour, Class and the Victorians: English Attitudes to the Negro in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Leicester, 1978);
64. Roxann Wheeler, Complexion of Race: Categories of Difference in Eighteenth-Century British Culture (Philadelphia, PA, 2000).
65. Court minutes, 20 February 1744; BL.
66. Court minutes, 15 March 1780, see also 18 July 1764; BL.
67. Petition to the Governor-General from the Principal Merchants and Ship-owners of Calcutta, 19 February 1783; Home Miscellaneous Series 190, fos 65-103, BL. Such efforts were not unique to India.
68. See M. Quinlan, "Regulating Labour in a Colonial Context: Maritime Labour Legislation in the Australian Colonies, 1788-1850", Australian Historical Studies, 29, 111 (1998), pp. 303-324.
69. Lascars would also receive batta (supplement) of 10 rupees monthly, if not provisioned by the owners. See, for example, Court minutes, 14 April 1757 and Marine Department, L/MAR/B/series; BL.
70. "Rule, Ordinance and Regulation for Ascertaining and fixing the Wages to be Paid to the Native Seafaring Men belonging to the Port of Calcutta", registered with the Supreme Court of Calcutta, 7 July 1783;
71. Home Miscellaneous Series 190, fos 65-103, BL.
72. Home Public Consultation, 6 October 1790, nos. 15-17, National Archives of India.
73. Home Public Consultation, 22 November 1793, no. 3, National Archives of India.
74. Home Public Consultation, 29 February 1795, no. 33, and 15 May 1797, no. 18, National Archives of India.
75. Home Public Consultation, 28 June 1799, no. 7; 16 August 1798, no. 22; and 26 November 1798, no. 7; National Archives of India.
76. Home Public Consultation, 4 February 1800, no. 22, National Archives of India,
77. and numerous cases in Calcutta Monthly Journal for this period.
78. Marine Department, Papers Relating to the Care of Lascars, 1793-1818; L/MAR/C/902, vols 1-2, pp. 1-13, BL.
79. William Hunter, Essay on the Diseases Incident to Indian Seamen, or Lascars (Calcutta, 1804);
80. Lascar Papers, Home Miscellaneous Series 501, vol. 1, fos 1-94, BL.
81. Parliamentary Papers, Returns (Commons), 1814-1815, vol. 3, paper 471, pp. 217-229.
82. Act 55, Geo. 3, c. 116, section 8. For copies of such certificates see Bombay, Political Outward or Order Books for 1818, Maharastra State Archives, Mumbai.
83. For example, British exports to India more than doubled from 108,870 tons (1834-1835) to 252,153 tons (1849-1850) while British imports from India more than tripled from 83,776 to 280,897 tons; Parliament, House of Lords Debate 2 April 1852, Commons debate 19 April 1852, in T.C. Hansard (ed.), Parliamentary Debates (London, 1812-) series 3, vol. 120, pp. 546-580, 806-868.
84. Periodically, the Directors or Parliament ordered compilations of statistics about lascars, but no systematic accounting was maintained. These compilations followed varying principles and categorizations (e.g. occasionally including Chinese and other Asians). Nevertheless, supplemented with informed estimates by British writers of the time, these figures permit an understanding of the scale of lascar presence in Britain. The shipping season covered parts of two calendar years, so some differences between years may not be significant. To 1822, they are based on Lascar Papers, Home Miscellaneous Series 501, vol. 1, fos 1-94, BL;
85. and Parliamentary Papers, Returns (Commons), 1823, vol. 17, paper 491, pp. 149-156. The 1855 estimates come from Colonel Hughes who asserted that 10,000-12,000 lascars served the British merchant fleet, with 5,000-6,000 reaching Britain annually, of whom 3,000-3,600 were Indian.
86. Cited in Visram, Ayahs, Lascars and Princes, p. 52.
87. Shipping Committee minutes, 7 January 1825, 20 April 1825, 22 November 1825, 26 July 1826, BL.
88. Lascar Papers, Home Miscellaneous Series 501, vol. 1, fo. 124, BL.
89. Parliamentary Papers, Returns (Commons), 1823, vol. 17, paper 491, pp. 149-156.
90. Robert Eastwick, Master Mariner: Being the Life and Adventures of Captain Robert William Eastwick, Herbert Compton (ed.) (London, 1891), pp. 262-282;
91. The Times, 1 January 1811.
92. Shipping Committee minutes, 22 February 1804, 18 June 1828;
93. Draft of Charter-Party, L/MAR/1/17, fo. 43, BL;
94. Parliament, House of Commons debate 25 November 1801, William Cobbett, Parliamentary History of England, 36 vols (London, 1806-1820), vol. 36, pp. 288-302.
95. For example, Shipping Committee minutes, 24 September 1813;
96. Court minutes, 13 August 1823, BL.
97. Lascar Papers, Home Miscellaneous Series 501, vol. 1, fo. 120, BL;
98. McCusker, "Comparing the Purchasing Power of Money in Great Britain".
99. Lascar Papers, Home Miscellaneous Series 501, vol. 1, fos 69-75, BL.
100. Lascar Papers, Home Miscellaneous Series 501, vol. 1, fo. 24, BL. In later years, with increasing shortages of British seamen, the Directors allowed up to a quarter of the crew on outgoing vessels to be Indians, which still made them legally British ships.
101. For example Act 42 Geo. 3 (1802), c. 61 which officially prohibited lascars from serving on ships west of the Cape of Good Hope, and Act 55, Geo. 3 (1815), c. 116 which amended the Navigation Acts to exclude Asians from the category "British".
102. Note: one servant gave Cheran Chupah [sic] as his birthplace, which cannot be identified. Further, Mauritius is located further south than indicated. In addition, the six seaconnies (helmsmen) came from Penang, Malinga, and Malacca, and three from Manila, while the captain, two officers, gunner, and carpenter were all Europeans; Home Miscellaneous, volume 253, fos 135-138, National Archives of India.
103. Confirming these patterns, similarly diverse lascar crews are found for other ships in Home Miscellaneous, volume 253, fos 203-206; volume 425, fos 6-8, National Archives of India.
104. See also Balachandran, "Circulation through Seafaring".
105. The autobiography of Joseph Emin (1726-1809) is a rare recounting of the life of a man who worked his way from Calcutta to London as a seaman in 1751, unloading his ship, and then living there periodically for a decade. See his Life and Adventures of Joseph Emin, An Armenian, Written in English by Himself (London, 1792)
106. and Michael H. Fisher, "Asians in Britain: Negotiation of Identity through Self-Representation", in Kathleen Wilson (ed.), A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660-1840 (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 91-112.
107. For example, Irish stevedores fought Asians in two such riots in 1813. Shipping Committee minutes, 14 July 1813, 31 August 1813, BL.
108. For example, Court minutes, 3 January 1798;
109. Shipping Committee minutes, 28-30 June 1815, 12-19 July 1815, 2 August 1815, 1 September 1815, 6-15 December 1815, 19-26 June 1816, 27 May 1818, 8 July 1818, 13-27 January 1819, 2 February 1819, BL.
110. The Times, 4 July 1823.
111. For example, The Times, 23 September 1796.
112. Court minutes, 26 May 1802, 21July 1802, 16 July 1806;
113. Home Miscellaneous Series 501, fos 1-93, BL.
114. The Statesman [Calcutta], 21 July 1813;
115. The Times, 9 December 1814, 3d;
116. Shipping Committee minutes, 22 July 1813, BL.
117. Emin describes initially eating separately from Europeans, and never mentions dining with the lascars onboard; Emin, Life, pp. 44ff.
118. The Times, 6 October 1803.
119. The Times, 15 October 1805.
120. The Times, 26 November 1805.
121. Annual Register (1808), 50, Chronicle, p. 13.
122. Annual Register (1785), 27, Chronicle, pp. 242-243.
123. Annual Register (1806), 48, Chronicle, pp. 450-451;
124. The Times, 7 October 1806, 3a-b.
125. Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1 June 1808, pp. 280-288, case 395.
126. Indian News, 16-17 June 1850,
127. cited in John Whelpton, Jang Bahadur in Europe: The First Nepalese Mission to the West (Kathmandu, 1983), pp. 232-233.
128. Joseph Salter, Asiatic in England: Sketches of Sixteen Years' Work among Orientals (London, 1873), pp. 30-31, 275-278.
129. Foreign Political Consultation, 1 May 1857, National Archives of India;
130. Hughes Letter 24 January 1879, Political Department Home Correspondence, L/P&J/2/59, BL;
131. Illustrated London News, 56 (1870), pp. 253-254;
132. Salter, Asiatic in England, pp. 6-7.
133. Court minutes, 14-28 November 1855, 16 April 1856, 22-30 December 1857, 12-26 January 1858, 3-10 February 1858, 3-10 March 1858;
134. Political and Military Committee Memoranda, 22 December 1857, BL;
135. Salter, Asiatic in England, pp. 66ff;
136. The Times, 20 November 1855.
137. Court minutes, 1856-1858, passim, BL. The Home continued until 1927.
138. See Daniel Thorner, Investment in Empire: British Railway and Steam Shipping Enterprise in India, 1825-1849 (Philadelphia, PA, 1950);
139. R.O. Roberts, "Comparative Shipping and Shipbuilding Costs", Economica, New Series, 14, 56 (1947), pp. 296-309.
140. D.C. Alyin's Evidence in Second Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords Appointed to Inquire into the Policy and Operation of the Navigation Laws, House of Commons paper no. 431 of 1848,
141. cited by N. Benjamin, "The British and Indian Sailors".
142. For example, Annual Register (1851) Chronicle, 4 March 1851, pp. 20-21;
143. The Times, 8 October 1853, 18 October 1853, 20 October 1853.
144. See also Benjamin, "The British and Indian Sailors", p. 492.
145. Benjamin, "The British and Indian Sailors", Ibid., pp. 489-490.
146. Dixon, "Lascars: The Forgotten Seamen";
147. Dunlop, "Lascars and Labourers";
148. Prescott, "Lascar Seamen on the Clyde";
149. Sherwood, "Lascar Struggles";
150. Tabili, "Construction of Racial Difference",
151. Tabili, "idem, "We Ask for British Justice".
152. Balachandran, "Conflicts in International Maritime Labour Markets", pp. 71-100.