Goans have long been a mobile community, and helped to shape the contours of empires and the modern world. But the story of their migrations has not been told until now. Using rarely-consulted archives and interviews with nearly 300 people of Goan origin, this book tells the fascinating story of how and why Goans went to East Africa and then on to Canada, the UK or India. In this study of globalization from below, Frenz illuminates how Goans established communities in East Africa, and explores their experience of migration as well as their memories, and how these influenced their individual and collective identities. This connected history juxtaposes and bridges the tensions between a structural, external account from a global perspective, and a personal, experiential, approach that reveals the perceptions and memories of the migrants themselves. Its analyses of migration processes and of economic, social, cultural, and political developments are relevant beyond the specific case of the Goans. Providing novel insights into multi-stage migration movements in a long-term historical perspective, this book is a major contribution to scholarship.
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