A lascar was a sailor or militiaman from the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, the Arab world, British Somaliland, or other land east of the Cape of Good Hope, who was employed on European ships from the 16th century until the middle of the 20th century. Etymology The Oxford English Dictionary states that the word has two possible derivations: Either an erroneous European use of Urdu lashkar army, camp [...], or a shortened form of its derivative lashkarī [...] In Portuguese c1600 laschar occurs in the same sense as lasquarim , i.e. Indian soldier; this use, from which the current applications are derived, is not recorded in English. The Portuguese adapted this term to "lascarins", meaning Asian militiamen or seamen, from any area east of the Cape of Good Hope, including Indian, Malay, Chinese and Japanese crewmen. The English word "lascarins", now obsolete, referred to Sri Lankans who fought in the colonial army of the Portuguese until the 1930s. The British of the East India Company initially described Indian lascars as 'Topass', but later adopted the Portuguese name, calling them 'lascar'. The word lascar was also used to refer to Indian servants, typically engaged by British military officers. History Sixteenth century Indian seamen had been employed on European ships since the first European made the sea voyage to India. Vasco da Gama, the first European to reach India by sea (in 1498), hired an Indian pilot at Malindi (a coastal settlement in what is now Kenya) to steer the Portuguese ship across the Indian Ocean to the Malabar Coast in southwestern India. Portuguese ships continued to employ lascars from the Indian subcontinent in large numbers throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, mainly from Goa and other Portuguese colonies in India. The Portuguese applied the term "lascar" to all sailors on their ships who were originally from the Indies, which they defined as the areas east of the Cape of Good Hope. Through the Portuguese and Spanish maritime world empires, some Indian lascars found their way on to British ships, and were among the sailors on the first British East India Company ships to sail to India. Lascar crewmen from India are depicted on Japanese Namban screens of the sixteenth century. The Luso-Asians appear to have evolved their own pidgin Portuguese which was used throughout South and Southeast Asia. Seventeenth century When the British adopted the term "lascar", they initially used it