The Genesis of International Mass Migration
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document this Th e genesisofinternationalmassmigration protected. distribute or Copyright © copy to copy illegal is It Review document this protected. distribute or Copyright © copy to copy illegal is It Review document this Th protected. e genesisofinternationalmass Th case, 1750–1900 e British distribute or Manchester Manchester University Press Copyright ERIC ERIC RICHARDS migration © copy to copy illegal is It Review Copyright © Eric Richards 2018 Th e right of Eric Richards to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 5261 3148 5 hardback document First published 2018 this Th e publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. protected. distribute or Copyright © copy to copy illegal is It Review Typeset by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited Printed in Great Britain by Lightning Source a man is of all sorts of luggage the most diffi cult to be transported. (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations , 1776) Alice was asked to give an account of herself in Wonderland. Th e Mock Turtle demanded that she ‘Explain all that’. But the Gryphon interrupted impatiently, ‘No, no! Th e adventures fi rst … explanations take such a dreadful time’ … Th en the Mock Turtle retorted, ‘What is the use of repeating all that stuff ? … if you don ’ t explain it as you go on?’ (Lewis Carroll, Alice ’ s Adventures document in Wonderland , 1865) this For the most part, people sort themselves into a small variety of types, and you have the amusement of recognising the traits and idiosyncrasies that you anticipate. (W. Somerset Maugham, Th e Travel Books , 1955) protected. distribute or Copyright © copy to copy illegal is It Review document this protected. distribute or Copyright © copy to copy illegal is It Review Contents document Preface page viii Map: locations associated with selected sources of emigrants from this the British Isles, 1750–1900 x protected. 1 Th e migration mystery 1 2 Islands of exit 20 3 Before the discontinuity and the start of modern times 38 distribute 4 West Sussex and the rural south 55 or 5 Th e discontinuity 73 6 Th e North American theatre 87 Copyright 7 Migration in Shropshire and the English Midlands 105 © copy 8 Agrarian turmoil and the activation of mass mobility 120 9 West Cork and North Tipperary 136 to 1 0 Th e Australasian case 150 copy 11 Upland adjustments: west Wales and Swaledale and the sequences of migration 165 illegal 12 Cornwall, Kent and London 180 is 13 Remote departures: the Scottish Highlands 192 It Review 1 4 Th e Irish case 207 1 5 Th e European extension 225 16 British emigration and the Malthus model 248 17 A general view of the origins of modern emigration and the British case 259 Index 279 Preface document Why did very large numbers of people begin to depart the British Isles for the New Worlds after about 1770? Th ey were the vanguard of mass economic migration, the carriers of new global labour forces, agents of dispossession and this settlement, of family dreams, of individual aspirations, of imperial strategies. But it was new in scale, and it was a pioneering movement, a rehearsal for modern protected. international migration. Th ese fi rst mass inter-continental stirrings began, most of all, in the British Isles. What activated these great exchanges of humanity, the precursors of so much distribute modern population transfer and turmoil around the globe? or Th e leaving of the British Isles, in particular, had momentous consequences for the rest of the world. Th ese emigrants and their progeny in eff ect re-peopled Copyright entire continents, spreading their genes, their culture, their economic systems, © copy and their ways of life across the globe. Th e exodus was achieved with relatively little political reverberation, little intellectual consideration, and little historical to notice. Yet, of course, it was an epic project and, it is argued, a prototype for so copy much modern migration in countries which have followed a pattern similar to that begun in Britain and Ireland. illegal What generated this outward thrust from the off -shore islands of Europe? is Was it so perfectly natural, simple and straightforward that no explanation is It Review required? Th is improbable proposition is the problem at the centre of the present account, which is essentially an argument constructed from the dispersed fi nd- ings of modern historiography and historical demography. It is a synthesis aimed at an awkward and unwieldy question, most often hidden within the complicated story of modernising societies. Th e following chapters are deliberately unalike in scope and density, and deal in quite diff erent degrees of generalisation. Th us thematic chapters (1, 3, 5, 8, 16 and 17) are interspersed between chapters devoted to particular regions and countries, campsites on the longer road to general explanation (2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15) and some broad-gauge considerations of the wider Preface ix questions regarding humanity ’ s modern mobilisation. 1 Rather than a conven- tional chronological narrative the plan is to juxtapose actual migrant behaviour with the problematic quest for underlying causes. Th e primary purpose is to explore modern historical knowledge to seek an understanding of the ultimate causes of international migration. I have received vital support from the Australian Research Council and have benefi tted from visits to the Institute of Historical Research in the University of London, the Australian National University, Case Western University in Ohio, the University of Toronto, Wuji University, the University of the Highlands and Islands, and the generosity of the Carnegie Trust Centenary Professorship in Scotland in 2014. I have also benefi tted from discussion with Andy Bielenberg, Jeanette Neeson, David Soskice, Robert Fitzsimons, Ngaire Naffi ne, Heidi Ing, Michael Ekin Smyth, Ralph Shlomowitz and particularly with fellow enthusiasts document who have participated in the series of seminars published under the rubric ‘Visible Immigrants’. I alone am guilty of any remaining errors. this Eric Richards Brighton, South Australia, September 2017 protected. N o t e distribute 1 On the interplay of ‘structural analysis’ and ‘micro narratives’, see the suggestive or commentary of Bernard Bailyn, Voyagers to the West (New York: Knopf, 1986), Preface. Copyright © copy to copy illegal is It Review SHETLAND ISLANDS ORKNEY ISLANDS Stromness Loch Isle of Laxford Lewis Handa SUTHERLAND OUTER ASSYNT HEBRIDES St. Kilda Fort North Uist George South Uist ScottishS c o t t i s h Skye HighlandsH i g h l a n d s Barra Fort BADENOCH William Ardnamurchan SCOTLAND INNER Kippen HEBRIDES Jura document this DONEGAL NORTHERN IRELAND Wensleydale Doolough Jurby Reeth Kirk Michael protected. SLIGO Kirk Andress Swaledale Foxdale & Newry Douglas & Laxey Ramsey Isle of Hull Man GALWAY Liverpool ENGLAND distribute Dublin IRELAND Galway DUBLIN Wrexham STAFFORD- SHIRE or Pen Llyn Bala Clonlisk Balinlass Ironbridge Oswestry SHROP- Sutton Maddock MONTGOMERY- SHIRE TIPPERARY Llanbrynmair SHIRE Madeley Copyright Whitchurch Coalbrookdale Bridgnorth Highley © Cardigan copy WEST WALES Worcester Clavering CORK GLOUCESTER- SHIRE Schull Skibbereen Carmarthen Isle of to Merthy London Thanet Mizen Baltimore Hodson Tydfil Peninsula Dorking Gravesend WILTSHIRE KENT copy Benenden Petworth SUSSEX Sullington Lindfield Chichester Storrington Tarring illegal Aldingbourne CORNWALL Redruth is It Review CHANNEL 0 km 200 ISLANDS Guernsey Jersey Locations associated with selected sources of emigrants from the British Isles, 1750–1900 1 Th e migration mystery document Caesar ’ s crossing that petty stream, the Rubicon, is a fact of history, whereas the crossing of the Rubicon by millions of other people before or since interests nobody at all. 1 this Horizons protected. Laurie Lee ’ s memoir Cider with Rosie contains a marvellous evocation of life in a Gloucestershire village of the 1920s, in which he mourned the loss of the world distribute of his childhood. With a certain poetic license he charted the end of an era of or British rural life: ‘soon the village would break, dissolve and scatter’. Laurie Lee had ‘belonged to a generation which saw, by chance, the end of a thousand years’ Copyright life’. It was a time when the old estate was sold off and soon the farm and © copy domestic servants were ‘dispersed and went to the factories’. Th ey were off to the towns, to the factory lathes, to the war eventually: ‘We began to shrug off to the valley and look more to the world’. One village boy had left early in this copy local dispersal and emigrated to New Zealand where he succeeded as a prosperous farmer. On his bumptious and triumphant visit back to the village he was 2 illegal mysteriously murdered by local lads. He thus personifi ed the rewards and is hazards of emigration in melodrama. Cider with Rosie was a relatively late version It Review of a universal, even generic, story of English rural dispersion and emigration (though less commonly marked by murder). Virtually every family in modern society is conscious of the widening radius of its kinsfolk and its contemporaries. Sisters and brothers, children, cousins and friends, are likely to be dispersed in diff erent suburbs, towns, counties, countries, and even in diff erent continents. Th is scattering of kith and kin was already a common refrain in the letters of ordinary British families in the mid-nineteenth century and even more in those of the Irish.