Not only does Gujarat's harbour-studded coastline face straight on to the Indian Ocean, Gujeratis have been engaged in overseas trade with Mesopotamia for the best part of 4,000 years. Excavations of the harbour at Lothal have shown that it was constructed in around 1600 BC. Since then Gujarati sailors kept in regular contact with markets in the Middle East, Egypt (via the Red sea) and Africa, as well as more eastern markets in southeast Asia, Indonesia and China.

Indeed, in the period immediately before the British gained control of India, Gujarat was the world's principal source of high-quality cotton textiles. Production was on an industrial scale, and goods were shipped to the prosperous markets scattered right round the Indian Ocean region.

From the 17th century onwards, Europeans intervened heavily in these trading networks. This was not because they had any goods to sell, but because they used armed force to get their way at sea (Arab, Indian and Chinese merchantmen were unarmed), and they had access to cheaply mined silver from the Andes to purchase goods on shore.

India's previously invincible Mughal Empire finally fell apart during the course of the 18th century, with the result that Britain - having pushed its Portuguese and French competitors to one side - was gradually able to use military force to impose its control on the entire sub-continent.

In the early days, the Gujaratis benefited from the arrival of Europeans in the Indian Ocean: they provided an additional market for its textiles. However, towards the end of the 17th century English manufacturers not only began to copy Gujarati skills in spinning, weaving and printing cotton textiles, but also to mechanise the production process. Lancashire mill-made textiles were never of such a high quality, but they were very much cheaper. Lancashire mills soon began to flood the world with their products, and experienced an economic boom, whilst Gujarat fell into a severe recession.

But other opportunities soon became available. By the end of the 19th century the European powers, led by Britain, began to colonise Africa. Gujarati traders were already well established in most of East Africa's coastal cities and, as the European pushed their roads, their railways and their trading networks into the interior, the Gujaratis went with them. With new commercial opportunities opening up, an ever increasing number of young men from Gujarat, with relatives who had already established themselves in East Africa, promptly began to move there. A long-distance migratory process had been born.

The settlers soon found that they occupied what was the filling in East Africa's colonial sandwich. Whilst members of the European elite regarded them as their social inferiors, Asian settlers nevertheless occupied a position of considerable privilege compared to members of the indigenous African population.

They had to work hard for the prosperity they achieved, but prosper they did. Some started chains of small shops in the bush, many developing into business empires, and others moved up through the technical and then the professional ranks of the East African Railways and Harbours Board. Either way, most of the Gujarati and Punjabi settlers who had made their way to Africa, together with their African-born offspring, soon began to enjoy a comfortable middle-class existence. But although the 'East African Asians' grew steadily more prosperous, they did not abandon their cultural heritage. Communities built their own schools and colleges (they were for the most part excluded from white institutions), as well as a host of temples and mosques.

By the 1960s however, and all this began to crumble beneath them. Just as Independence had come to India in 1947, Britain's African colonies now wanted to gain their freedom.

Moreover, as the prospect of independence came closer, the Asians found that jealous eyes were directed at their prosperity. One can see why. Although firmly the junior partners of the British, in this context the Asians too were colonisers, and ultimately they owed their prosperity to the exploitation of African resources. Hostility mounted, and it became clear that most of the Asians, like most of the British, would have to leave Africa. But where would they go?

The Gujaratis may have been of Indian origin, but they had settled in East Africa under British auspices and, as subjects of the British Crown, they had a legal right to settle in the United Kingdom if they so chose. So, despite a great deal of protest in Britain that this 'flood' of immigrants would somehow compromise the established social order, the great majority of East African Asians eventually made their way to the UK.

Despite having had to leave the greater part of their financial assets behind them, their entrepreneurial skills were as resilient as ever. Most now enjoy an even greater degree of prosperity here than they did in Africa.

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