By the early 19th century, British imperialism had expanded across the world. Australia, Canada, and New Zealand had become new colonies, while control was being strengthened in India and Africa. In the case of India, large swathes were ruled by the East India Company, which continued to consolidate its power through military action and one-sided alliances. This control was solidified by the suppression of the Indian Rebellion, and in 1876 Queen Victoria assumed the title of Empress of India. Meanwhile in Africa, European powers, including Britain, were dividing the continent between them in what’s been called the ‘Scramble for Africa’, and Britain put on the first of many imperial exhibitions with the intent of displaying the wealth and ‘natives’ of its empire.
It was towards the end of this century that Britain saw a dramatic influx of Indian students to English universities. The students came from elite families and while some came with the intention of acquiring the necessary British qualification for an Indian civil service position, many of them got swept up in Indian nationalist politics and would become key figures in India and Pakistan’s journey to independence. Before entering political life, some students embarked on literary adventures and published volumes of poetry that were quickly praised by British intellectuals and artists. Orientalism and coloniality are undoubtedly present in the publication of these writers - praise is framed within an exotifying lens of Eastern mysticism, there is usually an introduction by a British poet or critic (at the behest of the Indian writer) for Western audiences, some of the poets are self-deprecating about their use of English (see Hamid Ali Khan’s Farewell to London), and, in the case of Sarojini Naidu, are told to create work that is more recognisably ‘Indian’. But while these poets wrestled with the quandaries that came with being an Indian writer writing in English, they took the forms that inspired them - the ode, the sonnet, the ballad - and remodelled them as they saw fit, reflecting their own blended traditions and ideologies.
As well as students from India, Britain also received students from West Africa. This migration journey dates back to the eighteenth century, when the children of West African rulers and merchants were educated in England, with the financial support of British business partners, to enhance trading relationships during the transatlantic slave trade. The flow of African students continued in the nineteenth and early twentieth century - these students often came from wealthy families, and some of them would become influential political leaders and thinkers in the development of West African nationalism. In 1900, the first Pan-African Conference is held in London, organised primarily by Trinidadian barrister Henry Sylvester Williams, and pan-African organisations spring up across the country: the Ethiopian Progressive Association (Liverpool, 1904), the African Progress Union (London, 1918), the West African Student Christian Union (later to become the Union of Students of African Descent; London, 1916). In the period following the First World War, pan-Africanism, anticolonialism and independence dramatically shape the political life of Africans in Britain.