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Abstract This article investigates the meaning and significance of a single event in Sydney in 1806 when a group of Asiatic seamen’ (lascars) led a religious procession through the streets of the town. Lascars were an essential pillar of British imperial maritime dominance yet were a repressed and exploited group. The article argues the procession can be understood in two ways; as an assertion by the lascars of religious and cultural identity, and as a case study where the colonists’ dominant response suggested acknowledgement and acceptance, if not approval, of difference.
Ian Simpson (Sat,) studied this question.