Book contents
- Imperial Heartland
- Modern British Histories
- Imperial Heartland
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Sheffield, ‘Steel City’
- 2 The Sheffield Area’s South Asian Migration Networks
- 3 Working Lives
- 4 Marriage, Belonging and Tolerance in the Era of Moral Condemnation
- 5 Empire, Racism and Everyday Tolerance
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Empire, Racism and Everyday Tolerance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 August 2023
- Imperial Heartland
- Modern British Histories
- Imperial Heartland
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Sheffield, ‘Steel City’
- 2 The Sheffield Area’s South Asian Migration Networks
- 3 Working Lives
- 4 Marriage, Belonging and Tolerance in the Era of Moral Condemnation
- 5 Empire, Racism and Everyday Tolerance
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Chapter 5 explores the reasons why the Sheffield area settlement (as well as those located by marriage records for other British towns) has remained largely unnoticed by historians and questions the prior assumption that the presence of non-white immigrants in an area can always be located by remarkable instances of resistance by state institutions or by the working-class population. It also closely examines evidence and personal testimony of the everyday lived experiences of natives and newcomers who inhabited the same neighbourhoods. These individuals frequently describe integrated lives and point to a non-ideologically aligned phenomenon, here described as ‘everyday tolerance’, which existed within many working-class communities. Fostered by values of ‘getting by’ and ‘mucking in together’ and of bonds of family, work and neighbourhood, many neighbourhoods were able to accept the inward migration and intermarriage of non-white newcomers without the hostility and violence displayed during the port riots of 1919–1920. To view the period through a historical lens focused on hostility is to overlook much of the nuance and fine grain of quotidian relations between natives and newcomers.
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- Imperial HeartlandImmigration, Working-class Culture and Everyday Tolerance, 1917–1947, pp. 249 - 298Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023