Imperial Heartland: Immigration, Working-class Culture and Everyday Tolerance, 1917–1947

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David Holland (University of Sheffield)

Imperial Heartland

Immigration, Working-class Culture and Everyday Tolerance, 1917–1947

David Holland (University of Sheffield)

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English

Cambridge University Press
31 July 2025

Colonialism & imperialism; Social discrimination; Migration, immigration & emigration; Social classes; Working patterns & practices

Series: Modern British Histories

Working-class Britons played a crucial role in the pioneering settlement and integration of South Asians in imperial Britain. Using a host of new and neglected sources, Imperial Heartland revises the history of early South Asian immigration to Britain, focusing on the northern English city of Sheffield. Rather than viewing immigration through the lens of inevitable conflict, this study takes an alternative approach, situating mixed marriages and inter-racial social networks centrally within the South Asian settlement of modern Britain. Whilst acknowledging the episodic racial conflict of the early inter-war period, David Holland challenges assumptions that insurmountable barriers of race, religion and culture existed between the British working classes and non-white newcomers. Imperial Heartland closely examines the reactions of working-class natives to these young South Asian men and overturns our pre-conceptions that hostility to perceived racial or national difference was an overriding pre-occupation of working-class people during this period. Imperial Heartland therefore offers a fresh and inspiring new perspective on the social and cultural history of modern Britain.

By: David Holland (University of Sheffield)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 535g
ISBN: 9781009216203
ISBN 10: 1009216201
Series: Modern British Histories
Pages: 369
Publication Date: 31 July 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Introduction; 1. Sheffield: The Steel City; 2. The migration networks of South Asian immigrants in the Sheffield area; 3. Working lives; 4. Marriage, belonging and tolerance in 'the era of moral condemnation'; 5. Empire, racism and everyday tolerance; Conclusion.

Born into a working-class family in the mid-1960s, David Holland is the child of a white English mother and an Asian Muslim father but was raised primarily by his maternal grandparents. After finishing formal education without much in the way of qualifications, David studied for a diploma at a local college and, at the age of 46, attended the University of Sheffield to read History. He won a Wolfson Foundation scholarship for his doctorate, receiving his PhD in 2019 from the University of Sheffield. He is currently an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield, and a member of the Royal Historical Society. His publications include articles in Past and Present and Twentieth Century British History.

Reviews for Imperial Heartland: Immigration, Working-class Culture and Everyday Tolerance, 1917–1947

'Holland has impressively conducted deep and valuable research, bringing up a whole host of material that reveals the underexplored networks of South Asian migrants in Sheffield and crucially attempted to integrate that history into a broader history of working-class Sheffield and the broader kinship and social networks and interactions of a diverse, multicultural working-class population.' Sumita Mukherjee, American Historical Review