The forgotten sailors who built the British Empire's maritime reach across the globe
In short: For centuries, lascars—sailors from the Indian subcontinent and beyond—powered European merchant fleets. Despite their essential role in global trade, these men faced systemic exploitation, wage theft, and harsh confinement in British ports. Their story is a stark reminder of the human cost behind the expansion of colonial maritime empires.
The term lascar, likely derived from the Urdu word for army or camp, was applied by Europeans to seamen and militiamen from regions east of the Cape of Good Hope. From the 16th century, these sailors were integral to Portuguese and later British maritime operations. By the 18th and 19th centuries, the British East India Company relied heavily on these crews, recruiting thousands from Bengal, Gujarat, and Goa to staff their East Indiamen. Despite their vital contribution, lascars were treated as second-class subjects, often receiving half the wages of their white counterparts and suffering from inferior rations and cramped, unsanitary living conditions.
The legal framework of the British Empire frequently worked against them. The Navigation Acts, in force from 1660, restricted the number of non-English subjects on ships, forcing many lascars into poverty or abandonment in foreign ports. When they reached Britain, they were often barred from disembarking or confined to overcrowded warehouses and ship hulks. Even when charity homes like the 1856 Strangers' Home for Asiatics, Africans and South Sea Islanders were established, they served as tools for control and repatriation rather than integration. By the 1920s, the Coloured Alien Seamen Order of 1925 further institutionalized discrimination, with police frequently ignoring valid documentation to register British-subject lascars as aliens for deportation.
Despite these barriers, lascars were truly global travelers. They were present on early British voyages to the Pacific Northwest of North America, with records showing Indian crewmen reaching Alaska and Hawaii by 1786. In Hong Kong, their presence remains etched in the city's geography through Upper and Lower Lascar Row. While their numbers in Britain remained small—never exceeding 1,000 at any time before the 20th century—their presence sparked early multi-racial communities in port towns. The use of the term declined with the end of the British Empire in the 1950s, though traditional crews continued to serve in Australia until 1986.
The history of the lascar is one of resilience amidst systematic exclusion. Activists like Surat Alley fought for their rights during the 1930s, yet the structural prejudice they faced remained a defining feature of their experience. From the 1780s, when Benjamin Franklin organized aid for stranded sailors in Pennsylvania, to the thousands who served and died during World War II, lascars were the backbone of a global network that rarely acknowledged their humanity.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Lascar
- Also: Wikidata — Lascar · CC0
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