A lascar was a sailor or militiaman from the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, the Arab world, British Somaliland or other lands east of the Cape of Good Hope, who was employed on European ships from the 16th century until the mid-20th century.
Etymology 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 English word "lascarins", now obsolete, referred to Sri Lankans who fought in the colonial army of the Portuguese until the 1930s.
The British of the East India Company initially described Indian lascars as 'Topass', but later adopted the Portuguese name, calling them 'lascar'.
The word lascar was also used to refer to Indian servants, typically engaged by British military officers.
History 16th century Indian seamen had been employed on European ships since the first European made the sea voyage to India. Vasco da Gama, the first European to reach India by sea (in 1498), hired an Indian pilot at Malindi (a coastal settlement in what is now Kenya) to steer the Portuguese ship across the Indian Ocean to the Malabar Coast in southwestern India. Portuguese ships continued to employ lascars from the Indian subcontinent in large numbers throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, mainly from Goa and other Portuguese colonies in India. 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.
Through the Portuguese and Spanish maritime world empires, some Indian lascars found their way onto English merchant ships, and were among the sailors on the first English East India Company (EIC) ships to sail to India. Lascar crewmen from India are depicted on Japanese Namban screens of the sixteenth century. The Luso-Asians appear to have evolved their own pidgin Portuguese, which was used throughout South and Southeast Asia.
17th century
When the English adopted the term "lascar", they initially used it for all Asian sailors on English-flagged ships, but after 1661 and the Portuguese ceded Bombay to England, the term was used mainly to describe Indian sailors specifically. The term "topaze" was used to describe Indo-Portuguese personnel, especially those from Bombay, Thana, Diu, Daman and Cochin. The term "sepoy" was used to describe Indian soldiers in European service.
The number of lascars employed on EIC East Indiamen was so great that the Parliament of England restricted their employment via the Navigation Acts (in force from 1660 onwards) which required that 75% of the crew onboard English-flagged ships importing goods from Asia be English subjects. 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.
18th century
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. Lascars also served with Arthur Wellesley on his campaigns in India during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In 1786, the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor was originally set up to assist lascars in London. However, in a report made after one month of the committee's existence, it was found that only 35 of the 250 recipients of aid were lascars. On Captain James Cook's ill-fated second voyage to the Pacific, , had lost so many men (including Cook) that she had to take on new crew in Asia to get back to England. In 1797 one group of lascars on the Sydney Cove, a ship built in Calcutta, was shipwrecked on Preservation Island off the coast off Tasmania. That wreck was the first merchant wreck after the establishment of the British colony of New South Wales. Lascars were found as far afield as the United States; in 1784, a dozen were stranded at New Haven, Pennsylvania, leading Benjamin Franklin to organize a fundraising drive for their repatriation.
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. The remuneration for lascar crews "was much lower than European or Negro seamen" and "the cost of victualling a lascar crew was 50 percent less than that of a British crew, being six pence per head per day as opposed to twelve pence a day." Many lascars lived under poor conditions, as shipowners could keep their services for up to three years at a time, moving them from one ship to the next on a whim. The ill-treatment of lascars continued into the 19th and 20th centuries.
19th century
The British East India Company recruited seamen from areas around its factories in Bengal, Assam and Gujarat, as well as from Yemen, British Somaliland and Goa. People from India have been travelling to Great Britain since the East India Company (EIC) recruited lascars to replace vacancies in their crews on East Indiamen whilst on voyages in India. Initially, these were men from the Indo-Portuguese or Luso-Asian communities of the subcontinent, including men from Bombay, Goa, Cochin, Madras and the Hugli River in Bengal.
Between 1600 and 1857, some 20–40,000 Indians had travelled to Britain, the majority of them being seamen working on ships. Most Indians during this period would visit or reside in Britain temporarily, returning to India after a short time, bringing back knowledge about Britain in the process. Until the beginning of the 20th century, the population of South Asians in Britain remained exceedingly small, and did not exceed 1,000 at any given time. The lascar population was restricted to a few hundred. Lascars would normally lodge in British ports in between voyages. 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. Some were abandoned and fell into poverty due to quotas on how many lascars could serve on a single ship. Lascars sometimes lived in Christian charity homes, boarding houses and barracks.
Language barriers between officers and lascars made the use of translators very important. Very few worked on deck because of the language barrier. Some Europeans managed to become proficient in the languages of their crew. Skilled captains such as John Adolphus Pope became adept linguists and were able to give complicated orders to their lascar crew. Often native bosses known as "serangs", as well as "tindals" who often assisted serangs, were the only men able to communicate directly with the captain and were the men who often spoke for the lascars. Many lascars made attempts to learn English but few were able to talk at length to their European captains.
Lascars served on ships for assisted passage to Australia, and on troopships during Britain's colonial wars including the Boer Wars and the Boxer Rebellion. In 1891 there were 24,037 lascars employed on British merchant ships. For example, the ship "Massilia" sailing from London to Sydney, Australia in 1891 lists more than half of its crew as Indian lascars.
By 1815, the Committee Report on Lascars and other Asiatic Seamen introduced requirements for equipping lascar workers, that they be provided with "a bed, a pillow, two jackets and trousers, shoes and two woollen caps."
20th century
Lascars served all over the world in the period leading up to the First World War. Lascars were barred from landing at some ports, such as in British Columbia. At the beginning of World War I, there were 51,616 lascars working on British merchant ships in and around the British Empire.
In World War II thousands of lascars served in the war and died on vessels throughout the world, especially those of the British India Steam Navigation Company, P&O and other British shipping companies. The lack of manpower led to the employment of a total of 121 Catholic Goans and 530 Muslim British Indians on the Empress vessels of the Canadian Pacific Railway, such as the and . These ships served in the Indian Ocean both as ANZAC convoy ships and in actions at Aden.
In the 1950s the use of the term "lascar" declined with the ending of the British Empire. The Indian "Lascar Act" of 1832 was finally repealed in 1963. However, "traditional" Indian deck and Pakistani engine crews continued to be used in Australia until 1986 when the last crew was discharged from the P&O and replaced by a general-purpose crew of Pakistanis.
By location Mascarene Islands
Presumably because Muslim lascars manned the "coolie ships" that carried Indian and Chinese indentured labour to the sugar plantations of the Mascarene Islands, the term lascar is also used in Mauritius, Réunion and the Seychelles to refer to Muslims, by both Muslims and non-Muslims.
Britain Lascars began living in England in small numbers from the mid-17th century as servants as well as sailors on English ships. Baptism records show that a number of young men from the Malabar Coast were brought to England as servants. 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. Lascars made up the largest group of South Asian workers in Britain. The majority of lascars were Muslim but there significant numbers of Catholics and Hindus.
Legislation in the United Kingdom systematically excluded lascars, who were British subjects, from employment rights afforded to white seafarers and barred them from settling in the UK. This exclusion was enforced through collaborative arrangements between the British government, the East India Company, and various shipping firms, alongside British trade unions. When British vessels called at ports in Britain, lascars were not allowed to disembark. When permitted to land, they were confined to designated warehouses or boarding houses. The East India Company, in particular, housed lascars in ship hulks. These overcrowded and unsanitary conditions contributed to elevated rates of illness and mortality among the confined sailors. Despite prejudice and a language barrier, some lascars settled in British port cities, often escaping ill-treatment on their ships as well or being unable to leave due to restrictions such as the Navigation Acts and abandonment by shipping masters. Shipowners would face penalties for leaving lascars behind. This measure was intended to discourage settlement of Asian sailors in Britain.