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Price: $77.95

Format:
Hardback 416 pp.
156 mm x 234 mm

ISBN-10:
0199250936

ISBN-13:
9780199250936

Publication date:
October 2010

Imprint: OUP UK

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Migration and Empire

Marjory Harper and Dr. Stephen Constantine

Series : Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series

Migration and Empire provides a unique comparison of the motives, means, and experiences of three main flows of empire migrants. During the nineteenth century, the proportion of UK migrants heading to empire destinations, especially to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, increased substantially and remained high. These migrants included so-called 'surplus women' and 'children in need', shipped overseas to ease perceived social problems at home. Empire migrants also included entrepreneurs and indentured labourers from south Asia, Africa, and the Pacific (together with others from the Far East, outside the empire), who relocated in huge numbers with equally transformative effects in, for example, central and southern Africa, the Caribbean, Ceylon, Mauritius, and Fiji. The UK at the core of empire was also the recipient of empire migrants, especially from the 'New Commonwealth' after 1945.

These several migration flows are analysed with a strong appreciation of the commonality and the complex variety of migrant histories. The volume includes discussion of the work of philanthropists (especially with respect to single women and 'children in care') as well as governments and entrepreneurs in organising much empire migration, and the business of recruiting, assisting, and transporting selected empire migrants. Attention is given to immigration controls that restricted the settlement of some non-white migrants, and to the mixture of motives explaining return-migration. The book concludes by indicating why the special relationship between empire and migration came to an end. Legacies remain, but by the 1970s political change and shifts in the global labour market had eroded the earlier patterns.

Readership : Scholars and Students of the British Empire; of migration studies; of post-colonialism; of historical geography.

1. Introduction: The British Empire and Empire Migration, 1815 to the 1960s
2. Crossing the Atlantic: Migrants and Settlers in Canada
3. A Land of Perpetual Summer: Australian Experiences
4. Sheep and Sunshine: New Zealand
5. Africa South of the Sahara
6. Exile into Bondage? Non-White Migrants and Settlers
7. Immigration and the Heart of Empire
8. A Civilizing Influence? The Female Migrant
9. Children of the Poor: Child and Juvenile Migration
10. The Emigration Business
11. The Homecoming Migrant
12. Afterword: The Politics of Migration and the End of Empire

There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.

Dr. Marjory Harper is Reader in History at the University of Aberdeen. Dr. Stephen Constantine is Professor of Modern British History at Lancaster University.

Missions and Empire - Edited by Norman Etherington
Environment and Empire - William Beinart and Lotte Hughes
Canada and the British Empire - Edited by Phillip Buckner
Writing History - William Kelleher Storey and Towser Jones

Special Features

Provides a unique overview of the complex relationship between migration and empire and identifies clear trends over time and region.
Focuses on UK emigration to white settler communities in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Southern Africa.
Analyses the varied motives, means, and experiences of non-white migrants and settlers into and between imperial territories, including the movement of migrants from India to the Caribbean, and to East and Southern Africa.
Considers the specific experience of female and child and juvenile migrants.
Analyses the role of entreprenuers, investors, public authorities, and governments in enabling and profiting from the migration 'business'.