Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad (1870-1950)

Project start date: 2007-04

Project end date: 2010-10

The Making Britain Database launched in September 2010. It houses an annotated bibliography of selected materials relating to South Asian artists, writers, activists and organizations in Britain during the period 1870 to 1950. Britain has had a migrant South Asian population for over 350 years, since its early trading encounters with India. But the perception that a homogeneous British culture only began to diversify after the Second World War persists, and research into the South Asian diaspora in Britain has focused predominantly on this later, post-independence period. While this diasporic population has become increasingly numerous and influential since the end of empire, Asians in Britain were in fact engaging with and challenging canonical culture well before this time. This collaborative, interdisciplinary project seeks to uncover and examine South Asian participation in intellectual and literary networks, art movements, and activist groupings during this under-explored period of Britain’s multicultural history. There are a number of ways of navigating the database. For example, the user will be able to access entries on individuals, organizations or events through a particular year, through a ‘spider-web diagram’ of interrelationships, or through a map of a particular location.