The Genesis of International Mass Migration: The British Case, 1750-1900

297 Pages·2018·4.039 MB·English

by  Eric Richards

The genesis of international mass migration

The genesis of international mass
migration
The British case, 1750–1900
ERIC RICHARDS
Manchester University Press
Copyright © Eric Richards 2018
The right of Eric Richards to be identified 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
First published 2018
The 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
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a man is of all sorts of luggage the most difficult to be transported.
(Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1776)
Alice was asked to give an account of herself in Wonderland. The Mock Turtle
demanded that she ‘Explain all that’. But the Gryphon interrupted
impatiently, ‘No, no! The adventures first … explanations take such a dreadful
time’ … Then 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
in Wonderland, 1865)
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, The Travel Books, 1955)

Contents
Preface page viii
Map: locations associated with selected sources of emigrants from
the British Isles, 1750–1900 x
1 The migration mystery 1
2 Islands of exit 20
3 Before the discontinuity and the start of modern times 38
4 West Sussex and the rural south 55
5 The discontinuity 73
6 The North American theatre 87
7 Migration in Shropshire and the English Midlands 105
8 Agrarian turmoil and the activation of mass mobility 120
9 West Cork and North Tipperary 136
10 The Australasian case 150
11 Upland adjustments: west Wales and Swaledale and the
sequences of migration 165
12 Cornwall, Kent and London 180
13 Remote departures: the Scottish Highlands 192
14 The Irish case 207
15 The 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
Why did very large numbers of people begin to depart the British Isles for the
New Worlds after about 1770? They were the vanguard of mass economic
migration, the carriers of new global labour forces, agents of dispossession and
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
international migration. These first mass inter-continental stirrings began, most
of all, in the British Isles.
What activated these great exchanges of humanity, the precursors of so much
modern population transfer and turmoil around the globe?
The leaving of the British Isles, in particular, had momentous consequences
for the rest of the world. These emigrants and their progeny in effect re-peopled
entire continents, spreading their genes, their culture, their economic systems,
and their ways of life across the globe. The exodus was achieved with relatively
little political reverberation, little intellectual consideration, and little historical
notice. Yet, of course, it was an epic project and, it is argued, a prototype for so
much modern migration in countries which have followed a pattern similar to
that begun in Britain and Ireland.
What generated this outward thrust from the off-shore islands of Europe?
Was it so perfectly natural, simple and straightforward that no explanation is
required? This improbable proposition is the problem at the centre of the present
account, which is essentially an argument constructed from the dispersed find-
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.
The following chapters are deliberately unalike in scope and density, and deal
in quite different degrees of generalisation. Thus 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