An interesting topic, but it would be questionable to portray early 20th century London as highly diverse compared to the London of today. There certainly were pockets, linked to the empire and trade routes, mostly focused around the East End and its docks.
Go back several centuries and you do encounter periods where the foreign-born population share spiked, typically linked to events on the continent, e.g. persecution of the French Huguenots, when England offered stability. One building which does a good job of demonstrating the fluctuating waves of migration to London is the Brick Lane Jamme Masjid. It was built originally as La Neuve Eglise by French Huguenots refugees. It subsequently became a Wesleyan chapel, and then a Methodist chapel, before becoming a synagogue for central and eastern European Jewish migrants. Around half a century ago the place then became a mosque focused around the Bangladeshi community.
Image taken by stevecadman on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevec...66683/sizes/l/
Quote:
Originally Posted by pico44
A decade ago it became popular among the British media, and then forumers here and on SSC to tout England as the original nation of immigrants. It was a fabrication with the intended purpose of usurping the unique and optimistic history of the new world, and more specifically The US, and even more specifically New York. They did this by conflating local migration and conquerors from nearby lands, which I'm sure they had plenty of; with immigrants, which they didn't. Of course, many countries have seen local migration and conquering neighbors, so if we consider England a nation of immigrants, then that makes just about every other country one too.
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