Meticulously researched, A South-Asian History of Britain is an absorbing addition to the growing literature on the multifaceted experiences of people who have traveled to these islands from the Indian subcontinent over the last 400 years. In chapters stretching from the “Earliest South-Asian Visitors and Settlers during the Pre-colonial Period” to “The 1980s and After,” it builds on Rozina Visram's pioneering writings, and “develops a more chronological analysis, studying how class, race, and gender affected the lives of diverse Indian peoples from the earliest times to the present” (xv). Digging into an extensive range of scattered archives, and deploying a very full range of research modalities, it weaves a rich narrative that throws much fresh light on the diverse and historically complex evolution of South Asian life in Britain as it engaged with the full spectrum of British people and British institutions. Piecing together a coherent and incisive narrative such as this is no mean task given the breadth of the period for which rare primary sources needed to be mined. But the authors do so effectively—here looking at East India Company's records, there delving into contemporary travelogues and memoirs, they illuminate the richness of British South Asian experience vividly. Structurally, too, the book works well with the chronological account giving us a clear sense of the linkages between the past and the present as well as of changes over time. It does the study much credit that it offers expression to a wide cross-section of South Asian perceptions and reactions—male as well as female; these undoubtedly contribute much to its vitality and scholarly substance.

The main strength of this book lies in its extension and deepening of our understanding of several important dimensions of South Asian existence in Britain. First, it tells us the story about “their status, struggles and scope for advancement in the dramatically changing relationships between their lands of origin and their new homeland”; how, “over the advent, expansion and the end of colonialism, South Asians living here moved from being rare and exotic outsiders to integral components of British society.” We come to understand how the relationship between a people from “the most powerful empire of its day” and “a relatively poor and divided island” gradually reversed over the centuries; how attitudes in Britain toward Indians gradually changed as Britain gained military, political and economic ascendancy over them (xi). We see a fascinating exploration of the processes that resulted in the transformation of British perceptions from those characterized by curiosity, open-mindedness, lack of condescension and respect for South Asian peoples and their cultures during the eighteenth and the earlier part of the nineteenth century, to those marked by increasing ambiguity, racial arrogance, and indeed contempt, born of imperial rule; how the scope for self-representation, much in evidence in the eighteenth century, became increasingly limited as negative British stereotypes about South Asians developed.

Second, by looking at representation of South Asians in British popular culture and the effect of this on British treatment of the South Asians, by considering the intersection of race and class in shaping Anglo-Indian relations, and by examining the construction of “English” and “Indian” identities in reaction to their experience, the book's findings offer subtle understandings of the dynamics of “British culture” and the extent to which it has evolved as a result of the changing racial and cultural mix of British society. Indeed, it would seem that the thoughts that the “British” population had regarding the damaging effects of becoming a multicultural society had already become deeply embedded in its psyche by the end of the nineteenth century. By effectively establishing the roots of our present-day concerns in the past, this work helps us to obtain interesting insights into why, despite much effort, negative perceptions of South Asians have been so hard to erase.

But the book is mindful not to paint too simplistic a picture of what has been a checkered history; a history that requires a nuanced approach in order to establish a contextualized understanding of the interaction between South Asians and British society. Reading A South-Asian History of Britain, we quickly realize that throughout the four centuries of South Asian/British interaction attitudes here were neither uniform nor entirely negative. While, with the vast majority of South Asians arriving as employees and dependents, relations between these two peoples quickly became asymmetrical, critical assessment of each other's social system and value continues. For instance, Abu Talib, an aristocratic traveler at the beginning of the nineteenth century, found Britain (relative to India) wanting in the treatment of women. I’tisammudin, another visitor, thought Britain morally weak even as he was impressed by British technology. And even after the crushing of the Indian uprisings in 1857–58, accounts by South Asians expressed not just admiration for but also stinging criticism of British society and politics. Indeed, we achieve a profound sense of South Asians gaining different degrees of acceptance and social empowerment by different Britons as many of them mingled intimately (in their own class) and on equal terms. They married indigenous women, merchants among them hired British servants, and those from elite as well as working-class backgrounds were able to make choices about how Anglicized they wished to be. Status and wealth brought them freedom and pleasure. However, that said, the book also demonstrates wonderful balance in its judgment that, overall, the stock of South Asians in Britain steadily declined. From the mid-nineteenth century we see evidence of the sharp rise of “nativist hostility” against South Asians; notions of racial supremacy became not only popular but also deeply embedded in British society. And these processes had enormous implications for future South Asian/British relations.

Finally, a key feature of the study is its engagement with the theme of identity formation. It illuminates the dynamic nature of identity construction and connects the multidimensional strategies that South Asians have pursued as they (re)negotiate their identities in an environment that is far more culturally plural than that which South Asians encountered before the Second World War. By taking a long historical perspective, this book shows what role South Asians have played in compelling a shift from a largely exclusivist notion of “Britishness” to a more inclusive, hybridizing one that offers a measure of equal dignity and respect for all British citizens.