History of Bangladeshis in The United Kingdom - Early History of Bengalis in Britain

Early History of Bengalis in Britain

Throughout the 17th to early 20th centuries, the British East India Company brought over thousands of South Asian scholars, lascars and workers, who were mostly Bengali and Muslim, to Britain. Due to the majority of early Bengali immigrants being lascar seamen, the earliest Muslim communities were found in port towns. Naval cooks also came, many of them from the Sylhet Division of what is now Bangladesh. One of the most famous early Bengali Muslim immigrants to Britain was Sake Dean Mahomet, a captain of the British East India Company. In 1810, he founded London's first Indian restaurant, the Hindoostane Coffee House. He is also reputed for introducing shampoo and therapeutic massage to the United Kingdom. There are other records of Sylhetis working in London restaurants since at least 1873. By the time World War I began, there were 51,616 South Asian lascars living in Britain, the majority of whom were of Bengali descent.

Due to the lack of Bengali women in Britain at the time, most early Bengali immigrants settled down and took local white British wives. As a result, most early British-born Bengalis were usually 'mixed-race' ('Anglo-Indian' or 'Eurasian'), famous examples including Albert Mahomet and Frederick Akbar Mahomed. Most of these 'mixed-race' offspring also assimilated into British society through marriage with the local white population, thus there was never a permanent British Bengali community until Bangladeshi women began arriving in large numbers from the 1970s, after which a majority of Bangladeshis chose to marry among one another, leading to the establishment of a permanent British Bangladeshi community.