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1
Q

Early views on migration

From James Bellich, Replenishing the Earth, The Settler Transition:

A

From James Bellich, Replenishing the Earth, The Settler Transition:

ARGUMENT
18th Century emigration was “social excretion” ie convicts being exiled
EVIDENCE
George Washington: “savages…our own white Indians”

2
Q

Changing attitudes to emigration

From James Bellich, Replenishing the Earth, The Settler Transition:

A

From James Bellich, Replenishing the Earth, The Settler Transition:

ARGUMENT
Wakefield’s precursors, and later Wakefield himself, changed the negative image of emigrants. Yet they had limited impact
EVIDENCE
Robert Wilmot Horton, repeal of emigration restrictions in 1824. –> 11000 transferred to Canada/Cape Colony
“Wakefield was riding the wave of public opinion, not creating it.”
800 000 move 1815-20, but Wakefield writing in 1829?

ARGUMENT
It is difficult, but not impossible, to map changing attitudes to emigration
Evidence
EVIDENCE
- Wakefieldian ‘colonist’ was organised and genteel, not labouring-class and disorganised
- Also Immigrant
- New language, ie relocate approx 1815
- Settler had common usage in Britain, good connotations in Aus. Was above a low, labouring emigrant and carried connotations of permanence

ARGUMENT
The ideology of settlerism is discernible in the growth of booster literature, and in notions of ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ settlerism
EVIDENCE
- “paradise complex” of booster literature
- Class divides, but fewer conflicts
- horses and home ownership…
- Affluence and abundance ie in meat
- Formal stresses fruits of labours, Informal stresses “abundance without work”

3
Q

Explosive colonisation

From James Bellich, Replenishing the Earth, The Settler Transition:

A

From James Bellich, Replenishing the Earth, The Settler Transition:

ARGUMENT
There followed “explosive colonisation”
EVIDENCE
170,000 in the period 1815–20
1819 Scheme for African colony oversubscribed by 80 000
1810-1814. no publications for emigrants. But 1815-19, 20.
1815-1820, 800 000 moved “on both sides of the Atlantic”

4
Q

Utopian dreams

From James Bellich, Replenishing the Earth, The Settler Transition:

A

Very few, except the Germans, emigrate simply to find better and cheaper lands.’ Others were influenced by poetry, dreams, and hopes. ‘This influence of the imagination has no inconsiderable agency in producing emigration.’ - J. Bellich on Timothy Flint

5
Q

Religion

A
  • Methodism in 1740s, transition from Calvinist pre-determinism to arminian salvation
6
Q

Demographics of migration
% of migrants from UK in Aus and travelling to empire
% leaving from ports for empire, and in what years?

from Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

A

But British and Irish passengers going to British North America, Australia, and New Zealand made up a substantial 38 per cent of the gross total between 1853 and 1860

71 per cent left UK ports for empire destinations between 1920 and 1929

Great Britain and Ireland were the birthplaces of over 52 per cent of the non‐aboriginal population of Australia in 1861

7
Q

Migration to Canada, Demographic change

Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

A

Demographic change:
90,000 in 1775, rising to around 457,000 by about 1806
Canada (confederated in 1867) plus Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island to 3,816,134 by 1871

8
Q

Assisted migration

Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

A

WHY

  • Prompted by economic problems in the UK. An ipetus to “relieve social and economic distress at home” -Migration and Empire Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine
  • Can use example of Australian convicts easing pressure on uk

HOW
- Popular after WW1: 1922 “Empire Act” to lessen British unemployment and grow dominion economies

  • 186,524 selected migrants were granted assisted passages to emigrate to Canada between 1922 and 1936, about 46 per cent of those aided under the Act,

BUT

  • Dependent on desirability of the place:
  • Alfred Miner’s schemes failed: 400 000 British but only 2000 accept placements. - Empire and Globalisation - Gary B. Magee And Andrew S. Thompson.
  • Dependent on health of economy to fund schemes
9
Q

Give a list of motivations…

A

SOCIAL
- Family
- Social networks - Empire and Globalisation - Gary B. Magee And Andrew S. Thompson.
- Overpopulation
- “Social” as well as “Material” betterment. Ie Unions in Aus rejected assisted migration to establish themselves as the superior workforce (Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine)

INDIVIDUAL

  • Utopian dreams of abundance
  • Adventurous people
  • “…the new world spelt liberty.” - Nial Ferguson
  • John Locke, if you’ve laboured on land, you can own it

RELIGIOUS

  • Escaping persecution
  • Escaping popery

ECONOMIC

  • Land (people wanted to move abroad due to enclosure acts) - A. Jackson.
  • Seasonal work for indentured labourers
  • Urban prospects: In Canada, urban towns and cities>land Empire and Globalisation - Gary B. Magee And Andrew S. Thompson.
  • Cheap plots of 50 acres –> Tobacco grown, export up, price down, migrants attracted - Nial Ferguson
  • Going was “last resort” for those who couldn’t find work at home (c.f. account of John Harrower)
10
Q

Why was ‘identity’ more of an issue for some migrants than for others?

Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

A
  • Only 15 per cent of UK immigrants in Canada by the early 1960s had joined ethnic associations, compared with 40 per cent of those from the Benelux countries and 25 per cent of Eastern European refugees.
  • Canada was British-majority country, so no need to define selves against other ethnicities
11
Q

Migrants as a workforce

Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

A
  • Both in Aus and Can, Harper and Constantine note that indigenous peoples were an inadequate workforce
12
Q

Migration to Australia: Demographics

Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

A

POPULATION BEFORE BRITISH SETTLERS:
- Aboriginal population, 40 000+ yrs old, approx. 315 000

DEMOGRAPHICS

  • January 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip, first migrants at Botany Bay
  • 1861: NSW, Victoria, Queensland, South/Western Australia and Tasmania= 1,349,000, 52% born overseas
  • Economic depression/world wars = >10% of population in 1947. But 23% in 1991
  • But by 1991, only 31% of the population
13
Q

What problems did migrants face?

A
  • The ‘tyranny of distance’. Canada took 6 months and was a hard journey
  • Jamestown, Virginia 38/100+ left afterr 1 year from diseases like Malaria and Yellow fever
  • “Odds of surviving a year in Jamestown were roughly 50/50”
  • Nial Ferguson
  • Geoffrey Blainey
14
Q

Migration to Australia: The deportation of convicts and why it ended?

Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

A

CONVICTS

  • 163,021 men and women in 825 shiploads were sent as prisoners to penal colonies in Australia between 1788 and 1868
  • from 1717, minor crimes = 7 yrs in AUS
  • Not professional criminals, but guilty of petty theft and first time offences. Large blue collar presence
  • 81 per cent of the New South Wales sample from 1817–40 were in the age range 16–35. c.f to demographic for free movers
  • 75 per cent of the English convicts among the New South Wales sample could write and/or read, and that was a significantly higher rate than the 58 per cent average for all English counties in 1839–42
  • Approx 80% male/female transported for theft
  • Hard start, then building infrastructure
  • Convicts initially ruled by army, then free settlers, then also emancipated convicts

CONFLICTING AGENDAS?

  • A fresh start, or punishment?
  • Some wished to go!
  • Free settlers complained that their lands were being used as ‘dumping grounds’

FREEDOM
- Slaves until tickets to leave, could then get land.

Samuel Terry, 19 000 acres after being freed

END OF DEPORTATION

  • 1830s-60s: Anti- transportation lobbies
  • -> New South Wales (1840), Victoria (1850), and Tasmania (1852)
15
Q

Migration to Australia after the anti-transportation laws of the mid-19th century. Initial reluctance followed by change

Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

A

RELUCTANCE, AND WHAT CHANGED

  • Only 1500 civilian migrants in 1820
  • Convicts still 46% of pop in 1840
  • “Distance…unsavoury reputation… [and] frontier violence” made many reluctant
  • Allan Cunningham discovers the “Australian Felix” and the potential economy of wool –> Civilians attracted
  • Cheap land and higher-class reputation for the buisiness
16
Q

20th Century migration in Australia

A
  • 1922 of the Empire Settlement Act
  • ex-serviceman offered passage post war -
  • All effected by depression and World Wars
  • Group Settlement, instead of creating 22,000 farms at a cost of £14 million, generated only 478 farms at a cost of about £15 (p.66) million
17
Q

Demographics of migration to Africa

Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

A
  • Only 300 in 1871, and 12,000 by 1939
    • Approx 13% percent of English there were colonial officials, so must be some settlers?
  • Union of South Africa, 6 million in 1911 to nearly 16 million by 1960
  • The first census of the Union, taken in 1911, showed that by then there were 1,276,242 ‘European Whites’ in South Afric
18
Q

Why were people more reluctant to migrate to Africa?

Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

A
  • High death rates. Annually, 94 per 1,000
  • Climate difference
  • Lack of work. Cocoa business predominantly due to African workers, some who migrated to be part of it
  • Governments insistence post 1920 to state that African interests were the most important in the development of regions
  • Difficult farming conditions due to dry climate: Kenya, 400 of the new farms had been taken up by 1921, and 215 had reverted to the government by 1925
  • Political unrest when white settlers still v. much a minority (0.6% of population in Kenya)
19
Q

Why did some people come to Africa?

Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

Empire and Globalisation - Gary B. Magee And Andrew S. Thompson.

(Use not as evidence of migration, by evidence of why, in some places, migration was less successful)

A

” Their involvement encompassed farming, planting, mining, industrial employment, missionary activities, and such professions as medicine and teaching as well as administration”

  • Some assisted migration of ex servicemen after WW1 but stopped by depression
  • More in Union of South Africa:
  • £50 000 investment, promoted by socioeconomic fears at home?
  • Benjamin Moodie’s scheme in 1817 to bring several hundred indentured migrants from Scotland to the Cape
  • Between 4,000 and 5,000 migrants were selected from 90,000 applicants and transported free of charge to the western border of the Great Fish River.
  • Later schemes more hit and miss
  • DIAMONDS: is estimated that the white population of the Orange Free State increased from 28,000 to 61,000 between 1867 and 1880
  • Some privately assisted migration: 1820 Memorial Settlers’ Association, gentlemanly farmers with min. capital of £1500
  • Alfred Miner’s schemes failed: 400 000 British but only 2000 accept placements. - Empire and Globalisation - Gary B. Magee And Andrew S. Thompson.
20
Q

Demographics of non-white migrants (indentured labour)

Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

A
  • In total, 1,474,740 indentured workers were recruited and sent overseas to other British Empire destinations between 1834 and 1920
  • Indians account for 85% of that total
  • Majority of Indians stayed in some places ie Ceylon
  • Emancipated slaves transferred: 1,500 a year were
    transferred from Sierra Leone and even more from St Helena in the late 1840s
  • Also tea and coffee demand. Ceylon, which by 1917 employed 358,000 Indian immigrants

In 17th/18th centuries, many travelled by means of indenture. “In effect they became slaves…”

1/2-2/3 1650-1780 travelled for indenture

21
Q

Indentured labour

Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

A
  • 1849-1862, 1 yr to 5 yr standard contract on sugar plantations
  • welfare care to some degree, and pay
  • Demand increased because as slavery was abolished, the sugar demand went up
22
Q

Free labour migration demographics

Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

A

Literally millions also voluntarily looked for work overseas: 1,164,000 in Burma (from 1852 to1924), 1,624,000 in Malaya (1844–1910), and 2,321,000 in Ceylon (1843–1924)

23
Q

Indentured labour in the plantation colonies

Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

A
  • Prayed on poor with advanced promises of payment and welfare
  • Poor conditions due to legacy of slavery
  • Hard to ensure labourers knew what they were getting into
  • Many slaves pulled back into the old way of life
  • “Racist” literacy test in Immigration Restriction Act of 1897 to exclude those who couldn’t speak English
    G.K. Gokhale in 1912, ‘a monstrous system, iniquitous in itself, based on fraud and maintained by force’
24
Q

What made migration easier?

Empire and Globalisation - Gary B. Magee And Andrew S. Thompson.

A

Railways

Sailboats to steamboats

Assisted Passage

Environmental change ie Suez Canal

25
Q

Gold Rushes

Empire and Globalisation - Gary B. Magee And Andrew S. Thompson.

A

Australia and NZ saw extensive migration in mid 19th century

26
Q

Social networks as an aid to migration

Empire and Globalisation - Gary B. Magee And Andrew S. Thompson.

A
  • Influenced “direction and timing” of migration
  • Migrants sought solidarity with those doing the same
  • Family central to network
  • After that, in “concentric circles” came the emigration agents, the community and the press
  • Prarie Farming in America (1859) as example of outer circle material. America only 14 days away…
  • Correspondence volume (of letters?) grew 7% in 1860s
27
Q

American Identity

Empire and Globalisation - Gary B. Magee And Andrew S. Thompson.

A

James Bryce, The American Commonwealth (1888)

-British identity immediately lost

28
Q

Alan Lester, ‘British Settler Discourse and the Circuits of Empire’, History Workshop Journal, no. 54 (Autumn 2002), 24-48

More on networks …

A
  • As Benedict Anderson has argued in a slightly different context, nineteenth-century
    newspapers did not simply give expression to the united ‘we’
    of their readership; they actively helped to forge such a collective identity

Sydney Morning Herald, 1830s and 40s. They are critical of settlers, but not of natives. 1838, shipwrecked British killed in Aus. argued that British prejudiced against white settlers as a result of humanitarianism of 1830s and 40s.

Helped to forge “On the one hand, the representation of Britishness, and on the other, the collective representation of colonized peoples. “

29
Q

Wakefield and Wakefieldian colonies

A
  • 1796-1862
  • Wakefieldian theory outlined in A Letter from Sydney:
  • Sell land to Capitalists, use profit to subsidise importing of settlers
  • -> Explosive colonisation
  • Designed to a) boost settler dominion economies and b) ease overcrowding and social problems at home
30
Q

Migration to Canada, Points of interest

Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

A

Points of interest:

  • Scottish highlanders ended up in Nova Scotia
  • People didn’t arrive as equals: 14% 175,000 in BC were affluent, some ex-imperialist backgrounds
  • 1820-1, state assisted emigration of approx. 3100 Scottish loomers to combat social disorder
  • State-assisted Irish migration in 1821, too
  • -> Economic prosperity = abandonment of assisted migration
  • Indigenous people weren’t willing or able to provide labour
31
Q

Migration to Canada, Motives

Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

A

MOTIVES:

  • UTOPIAN, FAMILY, LAND, WORK
  • Peter Robinson’s migrants claimed they had been taken ‘from misery and want and put into independence and happiness’
  • Generally, funded by private or personal means, not public charity
  • “Other motives noted in a survey of pioneers who had settled in Saskatchewan included a thirst for adventure, the restoration of health, and (for some female migrants) the hope of matrimony. “
  • A survey, 1945, approx 1/4 1961 rated family or personal reasons as the key factor in their decision, 1/5 adventurous
  • In 1833 a farmer urged his brother to get land ‘which is every year rising in value’.
  • By 1961, half of Canada’s post‐war immigrants from the UK had formerly been in non‐manual occupations
32
Q

Migration to Canada, Settler identity
Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

A

SETTLER IDENTITY

  • ‘Those who cross the seas change their clime, not their mind.’90 That observation, inscribed in Latin above the door of a British family’s home in Victoria, British Columbia
  • monolingualism
  • Communal living…“ethnic enclaves”
  • Religion: continuation of religious practices ie COE
33
Q

Migration to Australia after the anti-transportation laws of the mid-19th century. wool
Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

A

WOOL

  • Export increases *15 in 1820s
  • 1836, gvt. sells licenses to land for £10 a year
34
Q

Migration to Australia after the anti-transportation laws of the mid-19th century. Assisted migration
Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

“Australia was the 18th Century equivalent to Mars”

Aboriginal “indifference” to attempts to make them farmers

Anthony Trollope, would say nothing if he killed native, compares it to a snake

A

ASSISTED MIGRATION

DEMOGRAPHICS

  • 1831 and 1900, 1,473,568 arrive who aren’t convicts
  • To boost Australian economy
  • 79% assisted in 1841-5
  • % of assisted correlates to economic health at home

WAKEFIELDIAN

  • Scheme due to work of Edward Gibbon Wakefield (see separate card: “Edward Gibbon Wakefield and Wakefieldian Colonies”)
  • Land sales –> Profits –> Detracted from passage costs = subsidized crossing. Price nearly halved by mid- 19th century

SCHEMES

  • Colonial Land and Emigration Commission in mid 19th c
  • 3 schemes: nomination, occupation, land ownership

PRIVATE ASSISTANCE
- Philanthropic: 258 individuals aided by Lord Bruce’s Wiltshire Emigration Society in 1851

35
Q

Migration to Australia after the anti-transportation laws of the mid-19th century. Who arrived?
Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

A

WHO WAS ARRIVING?

  • Artisans and women
  • More and more, colonists selected migrants. Agricultural workers highly valued, as were those without children (paraphrased)
  • “remittance man”: an upper-middle-class throwout
36
Q

Migration to Australia after the anti-transportation laws of the mid-19th century. Identities
Migration and Empire
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine

A

IDENTITIES

  • Continuation of religious identities
  • Imported gentlemans’ clubs for upper class, and trade unions for lower class miners
  • Scottish presbyterianism, Irish Catholicism
  • “…predominantly British”, made greater by sense of isolation. Same monarchy, language and ‘cloned’ (Belich) legal system
  • Also many Eastern European migrants ie Yugoslavia
  • Aboriginal pop decreased, only 75 000 by 1922 (Disease, violence, displacement)
37
Q

James Bellich, the politics of the settler revolution

James Bellich: Replenishing the earth

A

ARGUMENT
“…the Settler Revolution…did not operate in a political or institutional vacuum”
EVIDENCE ?

38
Q

White Plague

A

1650-1700*4 (procreation) in new england

British settlers in America encouraged to bring family

39
Q

Migration and the civilising mission?

A

1629, Massachusetts Bay Company banner “Come and Help Us”