Description
In 1914, the SS Komagata Maru arrived in Vancouver Harbour and was detained for two months. Most of its 376 passengers were then forcibly returned to India. Unmooring the Komagata Maru challenges conventional Canadian historical accounts by drawing from multiple disciplines and fields to consider the international and colonial dimensions of the voyage. By situating South Asian Canadian history within a global-imperial context, the contributors offer a critical reading of Canadian multiculturalism through past events and their commemoration. A hundred years later, the voyage of the Komagata Maru has yet to reach its conclusion.
Awards
- Commended, Best Edited Collection, Canadian Studies Network 2020
Reviews
Unmooring is an important transnational text that sheds light on the history of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest as well as their present.
- Dharitri Bhattacharjee, Western Washington University
Overall, this book is a well-written, rich and complex exploration of an event that illuminates Canadian nationalism and racisms and the transnational disciplining of brown bodies across borders, as well as historical anti-imperialist and contemporary anti-racist and anticolonial struggles. As a book that makes a vital contribution to political science and, indeed, the social sciences more broadly, Unmooring the Komagata Maru deserves an important place in university classrooms and research libraries across Canada and beyond.
- Elaine Coburn, Glendon College, York University