SUGARBAKERS, FARMERS, GOLDMINERS: from HANOVER VIA LONDON to NEW ZEALAND Horst Rössler London

SUGARBAKERS, FARMERS, GOLDMINERS: FROM HANOVER VIA LONDON TO NEW ZEALAND

Horst Rössler

London: The Magnet

In the second half of the eighteenth century, Great Britain and London began to supersede the Netherlands and Amsterdam as the centre of the capitalist world economy.1 As a result, the ascending commercial and industrial power offfered more interesting perspectives to European migrants than ever. For more than a hundred years Germans were the most important group among those arriving from the Continent. When the census was taken in 1891 it showed about 50,000 German-born people living in England (but only about 2000 in Scotland). London had always been the outstanding magnet, with about fĳifty percent of the German migrants registered as living in the English capital. On the one hand the move from Germany to London was a migration of elites, which consisted above all of members of the merchant class. On the other hand the great majority of the migrants belonged to the lower classes. The thought of avoiding military service at home by leaving for England was of minor importance for these migrants. Their primary motive was the search for a job and higher wages, which was often cou- pled with the hope of easier opportunities to marry and found a family. Most of the German lower class migrants concentrated in the commercial and service sectors (as clerks, governesses and servant girls) as well as in traditional craft occupations (as shoemakers, tailors, bakers, clock mak- ers, etc.).2 While there were no Germans in England’s modern industries (textile, machine building) they played a considerable role in cane sugar refĳining.

1 Fernand Braudel, Sozialgeschichte des 15.-18. Jahrhunderts. Aufbruch zur Weltwirtschaft (München: Kindler, 1990), 284–289, 298f., 390. 2 Panikos Panayi, German Immigrants in Britain during the Nineteenth Century, 1814–1914 (Oxford: Berg, 1995); Margrit Schulte Beerbühl, Deutsche Kaufleute in London. Welthandel und Einbürgerung 1660–1818 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007); Christiane Swinbank, ‘Love ye the stranger’. Public and Private Assistance to the German Poor in Nineteenth-Century London (PhD Dissertation, University of Reading, 2007). 102 horst rössler

This trade had already been established in the English capital in the sev- enteenth century, and from 1780 to 1850 London took a leading position in the European sugar industry, leaving Continental centres of the industry like Amsterdam and Hamburg behind.3 A number of the refĳineries were owned by German immigrants (often in partnership with British busi- nessmen). Moreover, most of the workers, sugarbakers as they called themselves, and the small group of foremen and managers, the sugar boil- ers who supervised the refĳining process and who were responsible for the hiring of employees, were Germans too.4 German migration into the London sugar industry, which concentrated in the capital’s East End (in Whitechapel and St. George’s-in-the-East), peaked around the mid-nineteenth century. According to the 1861 census returns 1230 males, that is more than 85% of those employed in the London sugar refĳining trade, were Germans.5 Contemporaries pointed out that the majority of them were Hanoverians originating from rural areas in the old duchies of Bremen-Verden, that is the Hanoverian territory between Bremen and Hamburg known as Elbe-Weser-Triangle (the region between the Lower Weser and Lower Elbe rivers).6 At the end of the eighteenth century, this region emerged as the main sending area for German migrants into the British sugar industry.7

3 Noel Deerr, The History of Sugar, 2 volumes (London: Chapman and Hall, 1949 and 1950), esp. vol. 2, 427–508, 534–595; John M. Hutcheson, Notes on the Sugar Industry of the United Kingdom (Greenock: McKelvie, 1901). 4 Phillip Andreas Nemnich, Neueste Reise durch England, Schottland und Irland, hauptsächlich in Bezug auf Produkte, Fabriken und Handlung (Tübingen: Cotta, 1807), 115; Thomas Fock, “Über Londoner Zuckersiedereien und deutsche Arbeitskräfte”, in Zuckerindustrie 3 and 5 (1985): 233fff., 426–432; Bryan Mawer, “Sugarbakers - From Sweat to Sweetness”, in Anglo-German Family History Society Publications 2007. 5 E. G. Ravenstein, “Statistische Mittheilungen über die deutsche Bevölkerung Englands”, in Hermann. Deutsches Wochenblatt aus London, 21. 5. 1864. In 1861 a total of 2,790 persons were employed in the English sugar industry of whom 1,345 were German- born. 1,437 persons worked in the London sugar refĳineries, 1,230 of them were Germans. Those employed in the sugar refĳining trade constituted the largest German immigrant group in the English capital. However, real fĳigures were higher since in many cases Germans who worked in a sugar refĳinery were often described in the census as labourers and not as sugarbakers or sugarhouse labourers. 6 P. M. Martineau, “The St. George’s Sugar Refĳiners”, inEastern Post, 7. 9. 1901: “The sugarbakers in those days were all Germans, chiefly Hanoverians.” See also Johann Gottlieb Burckhardt, Kirchen Geschichte der Deutschen Gemeinden in London (Tübingen: Fues, 1798), 16; Hermann Allmers, Marschenbuch. Land und Volksbilder aus den Marschen der Weser und Elbe (Gotha: Scheube, 1858, repr. Osnabrück 1979), 151; “Erzählung von der Entstehung des deutschen Hospitals in London”, Hermann, 24. 2. 1866. 7 Horst Rössler, “ ‘Die Zuckerbäcker waren vornehmlich Hannoveraner’. Zur Geschichte der Wanderung aus dem Elbe-Weser-Dreieck in die britische Zuckerindustrie 1750–1914”, in Jahrbuch der Männer vom Morgenstern 81 (2002): 137–236.