A century has passed since the Komagata Maru arrived in Vancouver. Its arrival was a direct challenge to Canada’s immigration laws, which barred immigrants from India – yet the nearly four hundred Punjabi passengers on board the ship had been promised equality with all other British subjects, and they arrived to claim that right. The Voyage of the Komagata Maru is an extensive revision, reappraisal, and expansion of Hugh Johnston’s authoritative history of the Komagata Maru incident, first published in 1979. The updated edition draws in new research – exploring legal issues and the motives of the passengers and their leaders and supporters – and revisits the previous edition’s assessments in light of insight gained over the intervening decades. Now expanded by more than 50 percent, this landmark book is still the only comprehensive historical account of the Komagata Maru incident – a story of immigration, empire, and politics, which Canadians increasingly recognize as a critical moment in this country’s history.

Hugh J.M. Johnston is a professor emeritus in history at Simon Fraser University. Among his publications are two other books on Punjabis in Canada, The Four Quarters of the Night: The Life Journey of an Emigrant Sikh and Jewels of the Qila: The Remarkable Story of an Indo-Canadian Family.

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