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6. Emigration and the British State, ca. 1815-1925
- University of Illinois Press
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6 emigration and the british state, ca. 1815–1925 David Feldman and M. Page Baldwin Between the conclusion of one world war in 1815 and the start of another in 1914, approximately sixteen million people emigrated from the United Kingdom. During this extended period more migrants were recorded leaving the British Isles than any other European country.1 The greatest part of this emigrant stream was destined for the United States; in other words, the majority of emigrants not only left the country but also settled outside the British Empire. In the 1880s and 1890s, for instance, fewer than one-third of emigrants left for destinations within the empire. Toward the end of our period, however, this emphasis was first checked and then reversed: in the first half of the twentieth century the proportion of emigrants traveling to the Dominions rose to one-half, and in the 1920s it reached 65 percent.2 It was not only the flow of emigrants but also government policy on emigration that underwent a striking shift in the early twentieth century. For more than a hundred years following the Napoleonic Wars, British governments resisted successive schemes brought forward by politicians and philanthropists, radicals and conservatives that aimed to involve the state in large-scale financial support for schemes of assisted emigration and colonization . In 1919 and, more decisively, in 1922 the British government reversed this policy. In 1922 the Empire Settlement Act authorized expenditure of up to £3 million per year for fifteen years to encourage migration to the Dominions. This chapter sets out to explain and characterize government policy toward emigration in the century following the Napoleonic Wars and to account for the abrupt change of direction after 1918. the fiscal limits to policy At the beginning of the nineteenth century, British governments did not encourage emigration. The manpower needs of the war against France, as well as the view that emigration was a drain on population—the very basis of national wealth—made the idea unattractive. Moreover, the experience of the American War of Independence suggested that no good would come from the creation of large imperial colonies; empire was intended to promote commerce without sizeable settlement. New South Wales, for instance, founded in 1788, was broadly disregarded by British governments except as a repository for convicts.3 Attitudes began to shift with the onset of peace. For more than three decades after 1815, the British governing class believed it lived in the shadow of a Malthusian crisis. Population growth threatened to outstrip the demand for labor and, in doing so, cause widespread immiseration, agitation, and revolt. In the case of Ireland the predicament was chronic. In Britain, in urban and industrial districts, the crisis was intermittent but certain to recur whenever the trade cycle dipped. In the agrarian south and east the crisis was persistent, giving rise to social disruption, violence, and soaring levels of poor relief, which had to be supported by the local property tax. Expenditure on poor relief in England and Wales rose rapidly from £2 million in 1783–85 to a peak of £7.9 million in 1818, remaining around £6–7 million per year for the next sixteen years.4 For many people, emigration appeared to be a palliative or even a solution to these problems.5 This point of view was expounded at length in the 1826 report of the House of Commons Select Committee on Emigration. The chairman and driving force behind this committee was the leading political advocate of state-sponsored emigration at this time, Robert WilmotHorton . The committee reported that there were extensive districts in Ireland and also parts of England in which the supply of labor greatly exceeded employment. This imbalance gave rise to destitution, misery, and a general deterioration of wages below the level necessary to secure a healthy and satisfactory condition for the community. As a result, in England (where there was statutory poor relief), local taxation absorbed ever-greater portions of wealth, and in Ireland (where there was no poor law until 1838), growing numbers depended on charity or petty theft.6 Moreover, the depth of the Malthusian crisis in Ireland also threatened the rest of the United Kingdom . The problems of Ireland, it was widely believed, were bound, literally, to migrate to England, Scotland, and Wales and so reduce those countries to the condition of their neighbor to the west. “Your Committee cannot too strongly impress upon the House, that between countries so intimately connected as Great...