Lascar
The Oxford English Dictionary states that the word has two possible derivations: The Portuguese adapted the term to "lascarins", meaning Asian militiamen or seamen, from any area east of the Cape of Good Hope, including Indian, Malay, Chinese, and Japanese crewmen.
The British of the East India Company initially described Indian lascars as 'Topass', but later adopted the Portuguese name, calling them 'lascar'.
The Portuguese applied the term "lascar" to all sailors on their ships who were originally from the Indies, which they defined as the areas east of the Cape of Good Hope.
The restriction arose due to the high rates of illnesses and death among European sailors on East Indiamen, and their frequent desertions in Asia, which left such ships short of crew for the return voyage.
Another reason was the frequent impressment of European sailors from EIC East Indiamen by the Royal Navy in times of war.
[6] In 1756, a British fleet under admirals George Pocock and Charles Watson, with an expeditionary force under Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Clive set off from Bombay with 1,300 men, including 700 Europeans, 300 sepoys and 300 "topaze Indo-Portuguese".
Their successful expedition against Kanhoji Angre is one of the first references to the British use of Indo-Portuguese servicemen and one of the first major actions involving the EIC's Bombay Marine.
[citation needed] Lascars were often paid only half of their fellow white sailors' wages and were frequently expected to work longer hours as well as being given smaller and inferior rations.
[13] Some settled in port towns and cities in Britain, often because of restrictions such as the Navigation Act or due to being stranded as well as suffering ill treatment.
Skilled captains such as John Adolphus Pope became adept linguists and were able to give complicated orders to their lascar crew.
[24] Lascars arrived in larger numbers in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the British East India Company began recruiting thousands of lascars (mostly Bengali Muslims, but also Konkani-speaking Christians from the northern part of Portuguese Goa and Muslims from Ratnagiri District in the adjacent Maharashtra) to work on British ships and occasionally in ports around the world.
[29] Lascars in Britain often lived in Christian charity homes, boarding houses and barracks and there were a few instances of cohabitation with local women.
Joseph Salter, a Christian missionary known for his work with lascars, once stated that “We are now fairly in the Oriental Quarter; there are several houses here devoted to Asiatics, presided over by Chinese, Malays, and Indians according to the country of the Asiatic seeking companionship, how shamelessness has its premium and admirers, and honestly truth and self-respect are trampled in the dust.
Here disease and death decked in gaudy tinseled robes allure the victim to the grave.” Overcrowding in dilapidated accommodation was all too often a sight; slime, dirt and excrement a common experience of life in the Oriental Quarter.
[10] In 1782, East India Company records describe lascars coming to their Leadenhall Street offices ‘reduced to great distress and applying to us for relief’.
The East India Company responded to criticism of the lascars' treatment by making available lodgings for them, but no checks were kept on the boarding houses and barracks they provided.
Some of the poor fellows have hitherto been shivering about the streets, wet and half-naked, exhibiting a picture of misery but little creditable to the English nation".
In 1856 "The Strangers' Home for Asiatics, Africans and South Sea Islanders" was opened in Commercial Road, Limehouse under the manager, Lieutenant-Colonel R. Marsh Hughes.
Among the things provided by the home were a library of Christian books in Asian and African languages, a store room for valuables, and a place where lascars could send their earnings back to India.
[36] Lascar immigrants were often the first Asians to be seen in British cities and were initially perceived as indolent due to their reliance on Christian charities.
[40] A letter dated 7 September 1925, from the wife of a Peshawar-born Indian domiciled in Britain and working as a sailor, describes the treatment of some Indians who were British subjects under the Home Office Coloured Aliens Seamen's Order, 1925: "My husband landed at Cardiff, after a voyage at sea on the SS Derville as a fireman, and produced his Mercantile Marine Book, R.S 2 No.
When Gustavus III arrived at Clayoquot Sound on the coast of Vancouver Island, the ship's crew included three Chinese, one Goan and one Filipino.
[47] After the death of James Cook in Hawaii, HMS Resolution sailed to Macau with her cargo of furs from the north-west coast of North America.
The ship was very undermanned and took on fresh crew at Macau in December 1779 including a lascar from Calcutta by the name of Ibraham Mohammed.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created a lascar foil to Sherlock Holmes in "The Man with the Twisted Lip".
Lascars aboard the ship Patna figure prominently in the early chapters of Joseph Conrad's novel Lord Jim.
In other works of Joseph Conrad, native seamen are frequently referred to by the Urdu term "serang" which appears to share the definition of lascar.
[52][53] Amitav Ghosh's book Sea of Poppies portrays the British East India Company and their use of lascar crews.
In D. W. Griffith's 1919 silent film Broken Blossoms, the opium house in London that the protagonist goes to is described on the intertitle as "Chinese, Malays, lascars, where the Orient squats at the portals of the West".
In the original version of Richard Connell's short story The Most Dangerous Game, the main antagonist General Zaroff mentions hunting lascars for sport.
