78Networks and information flows

A variety of social networks oiled the wheels of long-distance migration, and shaped migrants’ responses to the world around them.60 In theory it was possible for a person to prosper without these networks; in practice, they performed two key functions for many migrants.61 The quality and availability of information, disseminated through a range of networks examined below, influenced both the direction and timing of migration, especially from the 1840s and 1850s as literacy rates in Britain increased.62 This knowledge enabled the would-be migrant to compare the advantages to be gained by moving to one place rather than another. Migrant networks, moreover, had a social value. They provided companionship, mutual support and emotional comfort in an unfamiliar environment, and thereby helped to counter feelings of loneliness and dislocation. They might even serve to introduce a migrant to a future marital partner.

When these networks were weak or absent, migratory flows were less likely to establish themselves. By the end of the nineteenth century there was significant migration from Europe to Latin America. Yet only a tiny number of British people settled in that continent, despite the ­considerable amounts of British capital invested there and the fact that several Latin American governments had set up immigration agencies in the UK.63

Take the case of Brazil. Its government provided ‘extravagant inducements’ to recruit rural labourers from Warwickshire and Gloucestershire in the early 1870s. It met with little success, however. Many of those who

60 For a useful discussion of the meaning and significance of ‘social networks’ in the pro-

cess of migration, see E. Delaney and D. M. MacRaild, ‘Irish Migration, Networks and

Ethnic Identities since 1750: An Introduction’, Immigrants and Minorities 23 (2005),

127–35.

61 ‘Knowing how to get to a certain destination and being aware of the circumstances

that might be faced on arrival had an important role to play in channelling emigrants

to certain parts of the world.’ See P. Hudson, ‘English Emigration to New Zealand,

1839–50: Information Diffusion and Marketing a New World’, EcHR 54 (2001), 680–98

(p. 682).

62 See especially here the work of D. Baines, Migration in a Mature Economy: Emigration and

Internal Migration in England and Wales, 1861–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1985), Emigration from Europe 1815–1930 (Basingstoke:  Palgrave Macmillan,

1991), and ‘Population, Migration and Regional Development, 1870–1939’, in R. Floud

and D. N. McCloskey (eds.), The Economic History of Britain since 1700, 3 vols., Vol II: 1860–

1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 25–55, esp. pp. 47–50.

63 Interestingly, some of these agents reported that objections were raised to their work from

British officials who wished to see migrants go to the colonies, and who warned of the

dangers of migrating to certain Latin American states: see A. Graham-Yooll, The Forgotten

Colony: A History of the English-Speaking Communities in Argentina (London: Hutchinson,

1981), pp. 179–80. For the activities of these agencies, see D. S. Castro, The Development

of Argentine Immigration Policy, 1852–1914 (San Francisco: Mellen Research University

Press, 1991), pp. 155–68.

79Overseas migration left Britain for Brazil died shortly after arrival; others moved on to the US or returned home. In the words of one scholar, this episode amply demonstrated ‘how favourable conditions were within the anglophile world for the average British emigrant – once they ventured outside the pale their difficulties multiplied’.64 Most of the British migrants who did go to Latin America lacked the necessary ‘social capital’ – the trust, reciprocity and solidarity manifested in kinship groups, co-ethnic organisations and other network types – to make their move a permanent success. Here it is instructive to consider the experiences of the skilled Cornish labourers in the gold and copper mining regions of Brazil, Mexico, Cuba and Chile.65 Their relocation was encouraged by the fact that many of Latin America’s mining companies were set up with British capital; the Cornish directors of these companies liked to employ Cornish mine managers. These managers then looked to the Cornish mines for technical expertise and skilled labour. Cornish workers were recruited on fixed contracts, for an annual specified wage, which covered the cost of their passage out and back, and provided lodgings and healthcare. However, the personal ties upon which these recruiting networks were based were never sufficiently strong to sustain migration over the longer term, as evidenced by the alacrity with which the Cornish moved on to other more attractive destinations within the English-speaking world – at first Australia in the 1850s and 1860s, and later South Africa in the 1880s – where wages were higher and to which the cost of transport had fallen. Argentina, meanwhile, took 12 per cent of Europe’s migrants, and ranked second as a recipient only to the United States.66 Almost half of these migrants came from Italy, while a third came from Spain. Although Argentina is sometimes spoken of as a region of Britain’s ‘informal empire’, Britons emigrating there to make a new life amounted to approximately 1 per cent of the 6 million people who arrived between 1857 and 1915, a community of less than 30,000.67 They were a highly selective group, comprising merchants, doctors, engineers, mechanics and other specialised trades. By the end of the nineteenth century they had already begun to train a local cadre of professionals and technicians to take their place.68

64 Richards, Britannia’s Children, pp. 189–90.

65 This paragraph draws on S. P. Schwartz, ‘Migration Networks and the Transnation­

alization of Social Capital:  Cornish Migration to Latin America’, Cornish Studies 13

(2005), 256–87. See also A. C. Todd, The Search for Silver: Cornish Miners in Mexico

(Padstow: Lodenek Press, 1977), esp. pp. 32–43.

66 J. C. Moya, Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–1930 (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1998), p. 46.

67 Graham-Yooll, The Forgotten Colony, p. 184.

68 See for example J. Pla, The British in Paraguay, 1850–1870 (Richmond: University of

Virginia Press, 1976), pp. 7–9, 183.

80Rural communities of British settlers in Argentina or, for that matter, elsewhere in Latin America, were few and far between. One of the better known is that of Patagonia, which David Lloyd George once famously described as a ‘little Wales across the sea’.69 A few hundred Welsh ­emigrants first settled in the Lower Chubut Valley in the mid 1860s. They were hoping to establish a stronghold of Welsh nationhood  – a place where they could protect their language, religion and customs.70 Argentine politicians differed on the desirability of a foreign settlement in Patagonia. Some members of Congress vocally opposed it, claiming that ‘wherever British colonists managed to establish themselves, the British government would eventually yield to an irresistible urge to claim their territory as inalienably British’. But the Ministry of the Interior wanted to ­establish Argentina’s suzerainty over Patagonia  – disputed with Chile – and saw organised settlement as the only effective method of doing so.71 The Welsh population of Patagonia swelled to a few thousand through further migration and natural increase. Yet the history of the colony was one of struggle from its inception, and only periodic grants from the Argentine government, and the tenacity of the settlers, kept it going. By the early 1900s, floods, depressed markets and the call-up of young men to serve in the Argentine army had precipitated the departure of 300 of their number. Apart from worsening economic prospects, what rankled with the Welsh settlers was their dislike of living under an alien flag: the territory’s first Argentine governor was inaugurated in 1884, and an 1896 law required state schooling to be in Spanish. The growth of the non- Welsh population in the valley, and the decision of the Buenos Aires government to sanction a scheme of Italian colonisation, intensified these concerns. In 1901, William Lewis, a farmer and keen imperialist, set up an Emigration Committee, which lobbied the British government and the dominion authorities to re-establish the Welsh colony somewhere else under the British flag.72 Although many of the settlers returned to Wales, a small number moved on from Patagonia to Canada (in 1902)

69 Graham-Yooll, The Forgotten Colony, Chapter 12. For the lesser-known Scottish Highland

presence in Patagonia, see G. Mackenzie, Why Patagonia? (Stornoway:  Stornoway

Gazette, 1996).

70 See G. Williams, The Desert and the Dream: A Study of Welsh Colonisation in Chubut, 1865–

1915 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1975), pp. 96–9, 184–8, and, more context-

ually, The Welsh in Patagonia: The State and the Ethnic Community (Cardiff: University of

Wales Press, 1991).

71 G. D. Owen, Crisis in Chubut: A Chapter in the History of the Welsh Colony in Patagonia

(Swansea: C. Davies, 1977), pp. 7–9.

72 Ibid., pp. 57–8.

81Overseas migration and later to Australia (between 1910 and 1915), enticed by promises of more or better farming land.73 British settlers in Latin America could not rely on the dense web of associations that supported their counterparts in the British World. A range of social networks impacted upon migrant behaviour across the settler empire, and a broad conceptual framework can be used to compare them (see Figure 3.2). Underpinning this framework is the assumption that the emigrant’s choice of destination was in good part shaped by both the quantity and quality of information at his or her disposal. It is, after all, improbable that anyone would have chosen to relocate to a completely unknown setting. Nor was a person likely to regard information received from all sources with the same credulity: the testimony of some individuals was trusted and valued more than others. Figure 3.2 attempts to relate this notion of relative trustworthiness to the various types of networks into which a prospective migrant could tap.

At the core of this framework sits the migrant and his or her family, indicating that relevant and reliable information most often came from those whom they knew best and with whom they had established personal relationships. Other types of network information mattered, but these were typically valued according to their relative closeness to the migrant’s own first-hand experiences. Figure 3.2 depicts this diagrammatically in terms of proximity to the core; the further away the source of information from the personal and familial, the less its sway over the migrant. Thus, radiating out in concentric circles from the family, we see the personal advice and recommendation of friends, followed by the next most common and effective form of encouragement and support for the emigrant – bands of fellowship offered by people from the same neighbourhood, locality or region. Other sources of information were normally less central to the decision-making process, unless, of course, emigrants could not rely on personal contacts or wider community networks in their chosen destination. Emigration agents, charities, pressure groups, trade unions, shipping and railway companies, private landlords, and others could supplement the private flow of information between friends and relatives, and publicise the resources and opportunities of particular locations. A tide of advice and guidance poured forth from these sources. These ‘agents of persuasion’, however, were generally regarded as less trustworthy because they were seen for what they were – interested parties trying to sell something.74

73 M. Langfield and P. Roberts, Welsh Patagonians: The Australian Connection (Darlinghurst:

Crossing Press, 2005).

74 M. Harper, Adventurers and Exiles: The Great Scottish Exodus (London: Profile Books,

2004), p. 111.

82Information from family

Information from close friends,

associates, and colleagues

Information from others

from the same locality,

region or community