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What are the origins of the hostile environment against immigrants in the UK? Patel retells Britain's recent history in an often shocking account of state racism that still resonates today.
In a series of post-war immigration laws from 1948 to 1971, arrivals from the Caribbean, Asia and Africa to Britain went from being citizens to being renamed immigrants. In the late 1960s, British officials drew upon an imperial vision of the world to contain what it saw as a vast immigration 'crisis' involving British citizens, passing legislation to block their entry. As a result, British citizenship itself was redefined along racial lines, fatally compromising the Commonwealth and exposing the limits of Britain's influence in world politics. Combining voices of so-called immigrants trying to make a home in Britain and the politicians, diplomats and commentators who were rethinking the nation, Ian Sanjay Patel excavates the reasons why Britain failed to create a post-imperial national identity.
Chosen as a BBC History Magazine Book of the Year 2021 and shortlisted for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2022
About the author
Ian Sanjay Patel is currently LSE Fellow in Human Rights at the London School of Economics. His non-fiction writing has appeared in the New Statesman, the London Review of Books, and elsewhere. Born in London, he completed his PhD at Queens' College, University of Cambridge.
Report
The contemporary politics of belonging and immigration - Ian Sanjay Patel shows in this stunning history - make no sense except against the backdrop of centuries of empire, and the decades at its messy end when British identity was refashioned. We're Here Because You Were There expertly revisits how the claim and incentive to move beyond empire followed only upon the erection of colonial hierarchy and racialized exclusion, factors which were strengthened in forgotten eras of imperial citizenship and Commonwealth unity. This book boldly and convincingly lays down a new starting point for debate today. Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World
