Emigration 19th Century
Emigration 19th Century
Emigration 19th Century
the 19th century world? Why did the numbers of migrants from Europe
exceed those from other continents? What determined the success of
migrant populations in creating durable communities?
As well as asking why people moved in such numbers within and between
continents it is worth asking how. In terms of the financing migrants passage
there were five principle supporters: (in order of most to fewest financed) the
migrants themselves or self-sponsors, governmental organisations or
departments, charity, destination countries and trade unions.1 This list suggests
that to examine the movements of migrants, one must look not only at their own
personal reasons and ability for moving, but also at the capacity of states (both
‘home’ and ‘destination’) to influence the flow of their people abroad and the
ideological justification for the exertion of such interference in the labour market.
As well as considering how and why migrants made the decision to move it is
worth putting their choices in a global context of increasing ‘connectedness’ in
terms of increasingly freer and heavier flows of goods, information, ideas and,
vitally, people. Finally, the success of migrant communities depended to a large
extent on the answers to the previous questions – the terms on which they
immigrated were the key determining factor in their prosperity.
1
R. Cohen, Global Diasporas. An introduction, p71
2
D.Baines, Emigration from Europe 1815-1930 (1991), p21
3
R. Cohen (ed.), The Cambridge Survey of World Migration, p127
4
D.Baines, Emigration from Europe 1815-1930 (1991), p22
5
R. Cohen (ed.), The Cambridge Survey of World Migration, p127
6
Ibid, p128
Provinces and Hungary7) or the exploitation of low grain prices to feed larger
herds of livestock for meat and dairy industries (Britain, Netherland, Denmark
and Switzerland).8 Whatever approach was taken, population growth and the
commercialisation of agriculture, namely the shift to wage-paid temporary
workers and larger holdings, led to a more mobile workforce forced to gravitate
to the new centres of employment, both in larger towns in their home country or
even further afield. China had had hit the pre-industrial ‘wall’ at this time and
was in a ‘high level equilibrium trap’ – while population growth occurred, its rate
was determined only by the rate of improvements in domestic agricultural
efficiency. There was little pressure to mechanize as labour was so abundant, no
significant breakthrough in labour-saving technology, and so no corresponding
agricultural dispossession.
But this economic context alone does not explain inter-continental migration,
only the domestic growth of towns. For emigration to occur, people need a viable
‘way out’ including the means to travel, the transport to do so safely and quickly
and, most importantly, the incentive of better economic conditions in their
destination countries. Before one could thing where to emigrant, the means to
pay for a safe passage had to be found. In 1850 the cheapest passage from
London to New York was the equivalent of a month’s wages for a skilled, or two
for an unskilled worker and lasted roughly two months – a considerable period to
support oneself for a wage-earner not in work.9 In the 1860s North Atlantic
shipping was made considerably cheaper, more reliable and faster with the
introduction of steam-powered ships and companies such as Cunard to operate
them. The growth of railways and the introduction of ‘through’ tickets in Britain
also made transport simpler and more rapid. But it is worth noting that the
expense was still great – working class families in Britain would commonly
require support from their friends and local community to finance their trips. If
British wages, some of the highest in the world, were barely enough to cover the
passage it illustrates why far fewer Indian or Chinese emigrants were ‘self-
sponsored’ – without some form of external support they could simply not afford
to travel.
Here we come to a crucial difference between Europeans and other parts of the
world – as wage labour was already high in Europe, the conditions in the
destination country necessary to entice European labour also had to be that
much higher. Typically, this meant a great resource to labour and capital ratio,10
a situation best found in the United States. Between 1814 and 1914 the appeal
of America was borne out by the fact that 80 percent on the 17 million British
emigrants made a home there. In most of the ‘colonies of settlement’ (New
Zealand, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and also Brazil and Argentina) such
conditions were present – the various ‘gold rushes’ in California, Transvaal and
Australia helped boost the public conception of the potential economic rewards
from emigration. In general, it was only Europeans who actually determined the
direction of their travel as they were the only group who could, en masse, afford
their passage – naturally they chose those places that would be most profitable
and least physically demanding. On independence, Ghana toasted the mosquito
for keeping white settlers out, revealing the common European reluctance to live
in tropical climates.11 For those who did tackle other climates there were serious
7
D.Baines, Emigration from Europe 1815-1930 (1991), p23
8
Ibid, p25
9
Ibid, p44
10
Ibid, p24
11
R. Cohen, Global Diasporas. An introduction, p66
risks – half a million Dutch settlers and their allies died in the Dutch East Indies
over the course of the century, largely due to tropical diseases.12 Most Europeans
could and did avoid such climes and headed to the more temperate areas such
as America.
The direction of the ‘trade diaspora’ of the Chinese was largely determined by
European powers – they can be referred to as ‘auxiliary’ diasporas since they
required an imperial presence to foster commercial stability. For example, Sir
Stamford Raffles directly invited Chinese traders to Singapore.13 British military
strength was therefore great enough to determine the location of the entrepot of
East Asian trade and all migration to the area occurred on their terms. This
ability of Europeans to choose one’s destination was fundamental for the success
of migrant communities and will be discussed in more detail below. As well as
the financial power to chose where to go, Europeans had the economic incentive
to leave – they had the resource-rich ‘colonies of settlement’ to exploit that
offered them better wages and living conditions than their rapidly expanding
homeland.
Perhaps the biggest impact of European imperial policy and private organisations
may have been not their direct sponsorship of emigrants; rather they started
‘chain migration’.19 One interesting feature of most emigration is that is tends to
be region-specific both from the ‘homeland’ and to the new country – half of all
emigrants from Austro-Hungary between 1881 and 1910 were from Galacia, the
same area where agricultural subdivision occurred rather than specialization and
12
R. Cohen (ed.), The Cambridge Survey of World Migration, p11
13
R. Cohen, Global Diasporas. An introduction,p86
14
D.Baines, Emigration from Europe 1815-1930 (1991), p50
15
R. Cohen, Global Diasporas. An introduction, p71
16
Ibid, p69
17
Ibid, p71
18
D.Baines, Emigration from Europe 1815-1930 (1991), p50
19
Ibid, p34
Bukovia.20 The theory behind this tendency is that, through a combination of
letters and return migrants, areas for potential emigration become demystified
and more appealing – information about jobs and wages can be sent back
(perhaps one of the single most important aspects of increased connectedness
was this free exchange of information) encouraging more people to leave their
‘homeland’. Moreover, the second wave of emigrants would know that they had
a community of people who shared their language, customs and beliefs waiting
for them when they arrived. Therefore while the direct sponsorship by states and
private bodies was fairly limited in the 19th century, their earlier intervention
may have encouraged more ‘self-sponsored’ migrants to leave by offering them
the security of an existing community.
The terms under which the Indians arrives in Natal, Mauritius, Reunion, Burma
and Fiji were, needless to say, very different from those Europeans encountered
as they were dictated by the companies for which they were employed making
forming sustainable communities harder. There was a serious lack of women
20
Ibid, p31
21
David Northrup, Indentured Labor in the Age of Imperialism, 1834-1922, p19
22
Ibid, p22
23
R. Cohen, Global Diasporas. An introduction, p60
24
Ibid, p30
since the physical nature of the work and being forced to reside in barracks
previously occupied by slaves were not appealing. The ratios varied between
around one in four and one in ten and frequently led to sexual jealousy, abuse,
beating and even murder – in Trinidad between 1859 and 1863 enraged
husbands murdered 27 wives.25 Even so, the old patriarchal family system did
reassert itself and, despite the offer from missionaries of free education to
children whose families converted to Christianity, the religious text of Ramayana
was keenly adopted for its themes of suffering, exile and a triumphant return.26
To a large extent the Indians’ future economic success depended on the locals –
in Mauritius the former African slaves scattered to small fishing villages allowing
the Indians to extend their ownership of land (one of their key ambitions) and
eventually form an elite capable of seizing political power after independence.27
However, on Fiji in 1916 83 percent of all the land was indigenously owned and
viewed as sacred – it was very difficult for the Indians to be seen as anything
other than outsiders. In Burma the Indians were always regarded as kala or
foreigners and were more hated than the British because of their larger
numbers28 while in Malaysia Indians were the ‘small people’ and could trade
successfully without suspicion.29 The Chinese auxiliary migrants faced similar
problems – while they were often commercially successful and fostered a sense
of Chinese cultural inheritance through a rigorous study of genealogy but their
presence was ultimately irreconcilable with emerging ethnic nationalisms.30 They
relied for defence on the imperial powers and so the Chineses’ fate would be
bound with theirs.
25
R. Cohen, Global Diasporas. An introduction, p62
26
Ibid, p63
27
Ibid, p65
28
Colin Clarke, Ceri Peach & Steven Vertovec (eds), South Asians Overseas, p39
29
Ibid, p45
30
R. Cohen, Global Diasporas. An introduction, p89
31
D.Baines, Emigration from Europe 1815-1930 (1991), p48
32
Ibid, p68
The 19th century was a period in which the labour market began to become
integrated or ‘global’. The construction force started travelling between London
and New York as early as the 1860s and Europeans could, for the first time,
move en masse to locations that offered them opportunities of work. They were
encouraged to do this by the population pressures felt in most European
countries and the agricultural commercialisation and industrialisation that
compelled labour to become freer and divided from the land. The market
provided the information necessary to consider emigration competitive and
reasonably safe transport necessary for their transport and the trade links to
export the resources from the new colonies. The market also priced out all but
the wealthiest non-Europeans and Chinese traders. But to see the movement of
people in purely free market terms is to ignore the influence of empires – they
channelled European emigrants to areas they deemed strategically important,
their planters exported million of indentured labourers, a process only possible
through territorial conquest and the Chinese traders could only operate with
imperial stability. Success of migrants was largely dependent on ones ethnicity
and destination – for a European in America settling would be relatively easy. For
an Indian in Burma, one would have been vilified as a foreigner and made to feel
an alien. Thus, the effect of the ‘great divergence’ was felt in terms of migration
too – superior economic and military might enabled Europe’s people far greater
freedom of movement than the people of the Asian Empires.
Bibliography