Imperial Narcotic
Neal Ascherson, 18 November 2021
We’re Here Because You Were There: Immigration and the End of Empire
by Ian Sanjay Patel.
Verso, 344 pp., £20, April 2021,978 1 78873 767 8 Show More
by Ian Sanjay Patel.
Verso, 344 pp., £20, April 2021,
“... great shift of populations within the empire, a process paralleled in the tropical possessions of France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Germany. As the African slave trade ended, ‘free’ or indentured labour was imported to exploit colonial resources and build infrastructure. Chinese workers and their families poured into Malaya to operate its tin mines ... ”