"We Ask for British Justice": Workers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain

Description

Laura Tabili is the first historian to examine the concrete connections between the legacy of imperialism and the problem of racial antagonism inside Britain. Previous efforts to explain ethnic conflict have often resorted to pessimistic "common-sense" assumptions about the universality of xenophobia and racism; here Tabili recovers the historical conditions under which racial inequality was institutionalized in Britain. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction One. “I Can Get No Justice": Black Men and Colonial Race Relations on the Western Front Two. “A Shame on Britain’s Part”: Problems of Empire in the Postwar Order Three. Black Seamen in British Ships: The Uses of Race for British Shipowners Four. A “Blot on Our Hospitality”: Recolonizing Black Seamen Ashore in Britain Five. “We Shall Soon Be Having ‘Rule Britannia’ Sung in Pidgin English”: The National Union of Seamen and the Uses of Race Six. Contesting the Boundaries of Race and Nationality: The Coloured Alien Seamen Order, Policy and Protest Seven. “The Honour to Belong”: Black Workers and Interracial Settlements in Interwar Britain Eight. “Getting Out of Hand”: Black Service and Black Activism in “The People’s War” Conclusion Appendix One. Lascars Appendix Two. Chronology of the Anti-Chinese Campaign A Note on Archival Documents Notes Index