A brief historical outline (1600-1947)
Muslims in Britain...
Beginning in the 17th century, Indian domestics, servants and ayahs
(nannies), began to be brought to Britain in the service of the East India
Company agents and British families returning from India. Some were returned to
India when no longer required, but an unknown number remained in British homes.
Indian sailors, the lascars, first recruited in small numbers to fill the
manpower gap arising through death or desertion in India of white sailors,
crewed the Company's East Indiamen, and later, as an all-lascar labour force,
the steam-powered liners like P&O and Clan Line. Although they were transients,
lascars sometimes jumped ship in British ports to escape maltreatment and their
inferior employment conditions (Asiatic Articles). Servants and sailors were the
earliest Indian
working-class settlers in Britain
...
