97Overseas migration World.139 The CPR used the ASE’s branch network to attract skilled labour from Britain – as many as 30 per cent of the artisans in certain CPR divisions were recruited this way. Significantly, the ASE was strongest in Montreal where British immigrants dominated the CPR’s workshops. Union members who rose to supervisory positions frequently discriminated in favour of the ASE when hiring, and the company appeared happy to accept this custom as an effective means of sourcing skilled workers.140

Migrant remittances

Reconstructing the day-to-day world of the nineteenth century emigrant is not easy. To do so, most historians have turned to individual testimony.141 ‘The personal letter sent throughout interlinked national postal systems was the most widespread instrument of migrant communication through the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century.’142 Such letters relate the origins, expectations, successes and failures of migrants. But little private correspondence of this kind survives, and what there is comes mainly from the more literate parts of the migrant population. Meanwhile published letters were frequently subject to editorial improvement.143 It is hard to know how representative these sources actually are.

There is, however, another key dimension of the migrant’s experience, closely entwined with their family structures – remittances. These were the one-off and regular payments made by migrants to support people ‘back home’. An emerging body of literature on today’s remittance activity draws attention to the scale of these monetary flows and their role in alleviating poverty in recipient countries.144 By comparison, remittance

139 Kirk, Comrades and Cousins, pp. 2–3.

140 McCormack, ‘Networks among British Immigrants’, pp. 66–7.

141 For a selection of the key works, see C. Erickson, Invisible Immigrants: The Adaptation of

English and Scottish Immigrants in Nineteenth Century America (London: London School

of Economics, 1972); D. Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation: Personal Accounts of Irish

Migration to Australia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994); McCarthy, Irish

Migrants in New Zealand; K. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to

North America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985); and P. O’Farrell, Letters from

Irish Australia (Kensington, NSW: New South Wales University Press, 1984).

142 B. S. Elliott, D. A. Gerber and S. M. Sinke, ‘Introduction’, in Elliott, Gerber and Sinke

(eds.), Letters across Borders: The Epistolary Practices of International Migrants (Basingstoke:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 1–29 (p. 2).

143 For a critical evaluation of letters as a source, see E. Richards, ‘Voices of British and

Irish Migrants in Nineteenth Century Australia’, in C. G. Pooley and I. D. Whyte (eds.),

Migrants, Emigrants and Immigrants: A Social History of Migration (New York: Routledge,

1991), pp. 19–41.

144 See for example BME Remittance Survey: Research Report, prepared for the Department

of International Development by ICM, 27 July 2006.

98practices have received much less attention from historians, mainly because it was not clear until recently what type of source material could be used to reconstruct them. Newly discovered data in the Post Office Archives offers unparalleled insights into how much money was sent home by British migrants, and allows us to explore their variety of motives for doing so. It gets us ‘up close’ to the nature of a migrant’s attachment to, and involvement with, the society he or she left behind. It also sheds light on how far remittance behaviour differed between those who left Britain for the colonies and those who left for the United States. A lack of data notwithstanding, remitting monies home has long been recognised as an accepted part of the emigrant experience, a constant reminder that physical separation from families had not dissolved a migrant’s emotional ties and financial responsibilities towards them. Two factors in particular are known to have motivated the majority of remitters: a sense of obligation to fund the next round of emigration (via oneoff payments and pre-paid tickets to finance the voyages of other family members), coupled with a desire to provide more regular material support to friends and relatives left behind.145

If the payment of remittances was common throughout the nineteenth century, it was not until the 1870s that their total volume began to rise rapidly, a product of the growing wealth and numbers of emigrants and the increasing ease with which they could transfer funds internationally.146 In the early part of the century migrants had to rely on established methods of communication or on personal contacts to send money home. ‘Pocket’ and ‘envelope’ transfers were the usual means of doing so. Migrants carried money on a trip back home, or entrusted a friend or relative to do so, or they sent it through the post in cash. All types of people were in the habit of remitting. There is even record of illiterate prostitutes using scribes to send money back home to the ‘old country’.147 The fact that

145 Baines, Migration in a Mature Economy, p. 17; Erickson, Invisible Immigrants, pp. 38, 238,

242; P. O’Farrell, The Irish in Australia: 1788 to Present (Sydney: University of Notre

Dame Press, 2000), pp. 69, 86; Murdoch, British Emigration, pp. 111, 118; A. Schrier,

Ireland and the American Emigration: 1850–1900 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Press, 1958), pp. 16–17, 103; D. C. North, ‘The United States Balance of Payments,

1790–1860’, in National Bureau of Economic Research, Trends in the American Economy

in the Nineteenth Century: Studies in Income and Wealth (Princeton: Yale University Press,

1960), p. 616; Richards, Britannia’s Children, pp. 142, 144, 145, 164–5, 167; Taylor, The

Distant Magnet, pp. 101–4.

146 For a fuller account of migrant remittances in the English-speaking world, see

G. B. Magee and A. S. Thompson, ‘Lines of Credit, Debts of Obligation: Migrant Remit

tances to Britain, c. 1875–1913’, EcHR 59 (2006), 539–77, and ‘The Global and the

Local: Explaining Migrant Remittance Flows in the English-Speaking World, 1880–

1914’, Journal of Economic History 66 (2006), 177–202.

147 Van Onselen, The Fox and the Flies, p. 200.

99Overseas migration these transfers were largely invisible to official eyes explains why virtually no record of their magnitude exists. By the mid nineteenth century, shipping firms, exchange and press agencies, and immigrant groups were also acting as intermediaries, while banks and financial houses offered remittance services to their customers, albeit only for those wishing to transfer large sums of money. For the typical migrant, though, the real breakthrough came later with the money and postal order systems operated by the British and colonial post offices, which allowed for small amounts of cash to be sent through the mail. By 1873, a reliable international money order service was in full swing between the United Kingdom and the majority of its colonies, as well as with a number of other foreign countries, including the United States. From its inception the system proved very popular and brought large volumes of funds from overseas migrants to the UK. Postal orders, introduced domestically in 1881, were extended throughout the empire with the creation of the Imperial Postal Order Service in 1904. They experienced a high annual growth rate in the decade up to the First World War, though they were not exchanged with foreign countries.

From 1873 to 1913 somewhere between £200 million and £270 million was remitted to and from the United Kingdom (see Table 3.3). When allowance is made for outward monetary flows, the net gain to the UK was around £130 million to £200 million, equivalent to 3.4 per cent of British exports or 0.79 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1913. The USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa were the most important source of remittances. It is worth noting here that the colonies were the main beneficiaries of remittances from the UK; Australia, Canada and South Africa took 56, 42 and 17 per cent respectively of the value of the remittances they had sent to the UK: the USA only 12 per cent. It is clear from Table 3.3 that America, by some margin, remitted the most money to the UK. Other than in the late 1890s, remittances from America grew on average at a steady 7 to 8 per cent each year. By contrast, remittances from the empire grew at about 5 per cent per annum until 1900, after which their rate of growth increased to over 12 per cent, an acceleration that allowed the empire as a whole to overtake America as the main source of remittances prior to the First World War.

Within the empire different patterns of remittance emerge. As one might expect, it was the neo-Britains, or self-governing dominions, that contributed most of the money received back home. Australia, until the late 1880s, was the leading remittance source. With the onset of its major depression at the end of that decade, however, real remittance flows contracted sharply. They recovered again only during the years immediately Table 3.3. Total real remittances to the United Kingdom, 1875–

1001913 (1913 £millions).

Gross

Net

Gross

Net

(Estimate 1)

(Estimate 2)

Australia

8.6

3.8

11.1

6.1

Canada

14.6

8.5

18.9

12.6

New Zealand

4.0

2.6

5.2

3.7

South Africa

15.5

12.9

20.2

17.4

India

7.0

2.2

9.2

4.0

Empire

64.8

43.1

84.3

61.2

USA

86.1

75.5

117.9

106.7

Total

199.4

132.6

268.5

197.8

Note: Before 1895, South African figures are calculated from data on South

and West Africa and the Cape Colony. Canada includes Newfoundland. Two

estimates are provided, based on different assumptions. Estimate 1 is the

more ‘conservative’ method.

Source: Magee and Thompson, ‘Lines of Credit’.

before the First World War, when there was a renewed surge in its remittance activity, consistent with the rapid increase in empire migration at this time. New Zealand and Canada experienced a similar pre-war explosion of remittances, with the value of transfers from New Zealand more than doubling, and that from Canada quadrupling, between 1900 and 1913. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the real remittances of both of these colonies had exhibited a much slower growth, punctuated at times by periods of actual decline, such as in the late 1880s and early 1890s in New Zealand, and in the late 1890s in Canada. In contrast, remittances from South Africa grew rapidly throughout the nineteenth century, reaching a peak during the Boer War, when thousands of British servicemen remitted pay back to their families.

Typical remitters in 1910–13 sent significantly more funds back to the UK than did their counterparts in 1875–9 (see Figure 3.3). Within the empire, South Africans and New Zealanders were typically the most generous remitters. In fact, until the second half of the 1890s they matched, if not exceeded, Americans in the sums of monies they were willing to send. The other striking feature of Figure 3.3 is the scale and almost continuous growth of remittances received from the average American remitter. Starting from a situation of parity in 1875–9, the average Briton residing in the United States was, by 1914, remitting more than three times as much as his or her compatriots in the Overseas migration

10112 10 Australia 8

Pounds

Canada 6 NZ South Africa 4 USA 2 0

1875

1879

1883

1887

1891

1895

1899

1903

1907

1911

Year Figure 3.3 Real remittances to the UK per remitter, 1875–1913 (1913

£millions). Estimate 1 of remittances has been used. Canada includes

Newfoundland.

settler societies of the empire.148 Even in those parts of the British World where individuals were most keen to remit back to Britain – New Zealand and South Africa – the amounts each remitter transferred were the equivalent to no more than half of the corresponding American figure at this time. The proportion of the average remitter’s income sent to Britain can be read as a measure of his or her financial ‘connectedness’ to friends and family back home. The data in Figure 3.4 put the generosity of Canadian remitters in a more favourable light. They suggest that in the 1870s Canadians were a society that, on a personal level, was comparatively well connected to Britain. The data further confirm the high and growing level of involvement of migrants to America with their families in Britain. In the mid 1870s migrants in America and the settler colonies remitted roughly similar proportions of their income. Thereafter, a divide opens up. By 1910–13, the average American remitter was choosing to send a proportion of income back to the UK around four times greater than his or her counterpart in the neo-Britains – in other words, roughly one in every six to seven dollars earned compared to one in every twenty-five.

148 What explains the size of the average US remittance? It is worth remembering (a) that

the nature of the US labour market, and the cheapness and ease of getting to the US,

made it attractive to early returners who brought back capital to buy assets in the UK;

and (b) that migrants often exceeded average savings rates in Britain, as many left the

country on their own, yet determined either to bring their families out later or to return

themselves: contemporary remittance behaviour underlines this point.

10218

Proportion of Income

Australia

Canada

USA

1875 1878 1881 1884 1887 1890 1893 1896 1899 1902 1905 1908 1911

Year

Figure 3.4 Proportion of average remitter’s income sent as remittances

to the UK, 1875–1913. South Africa has not been included in this

figure since GDP data prior to 1913 are not available. Estimate 1 of

remittances has been used. Canada includes Newfoundland.

The Cornish in South Africa were among the most prolific remitters.149 From the 1880s Cornwall provided a highly mobile and skilled workforce that made a major contribution to the gold-mining industry around Johannesburg – they formed about a quarter of the white mining workforce by the beginning of the twentieth century, some 10,000 miners in all.150 Though some were permanent settlers who took their loved ones with them, most went alone. The families whom they left behind would anxiously await the arrival of a regular remittance in the South African

149 Our reason for selecting Cornwall to illustrate the importance of remittances for local

communities is simple: there is a rich historiography on the Cornish diaspora, much

of which has been published under the aegis of the Institute of Cornish Studies at

the University of Exeter. See especially here P. Payton, The Cornish Overseas (Fowey:

Alexander Associates, 1999). That said, the social and economic impacts of remittance

transfers can also be explored for other regions in the UK. Here the reader’s attention

is directed towards Marjory Harper’s seminal studies of Scottish emigration, helpfully

summarised in her recent Adventurers and Exiles, which, inter alia, highlights the func-

tion of remittances in chain migration, the close relationship between remittances and

migrant correspondence, the different patterns of remittance behaviour between farm-

ers and artisans, and the hardship caused by a breakdown in the transmission of earn-

ings to dependants at home; see pp. 93, 111, 188, 27, 306. Meanwhile, C. Erickson

(ed.), Emigration from Europe, 1815–1914: Select Documents (London: A. and C. Black,

1976), pp. 139, 231–2; and Richards, Britannia’s Children, pp. 144, 166–8, lay emphasis

on the importance of remittances in providing the pre-paid tickets that brought the

friends and relatives of migrant labourers and artisans to the USA.

150 R. Dawe, Cornish Pioneers in South Africa: ‘Gold and Diamonds, Copper and Blood’ (St

Austell: Cornish Hillside Publications, 1998), pp. xv, 123.

103Overseas migration mail.151 According to contemporary estimates, in the mid 1890s in Redruth alone a weekly sum of approximately £1,000 was received, while by the early 1900s it was thought that every mail was bringing £20,000 to £30,000 for ‘the wives and families and the old folks at home’.152 Many Cornish families were reliant on the money that came from the Transvaal goldmines. Hence when the South African mail arrived, people would flock into the towns from the surrounding villages to collect their money, and business in local shops would boom.153 Conversely, when the ‘home pay’ did not arrive, the county’s Board of Guardians were left to pick up the pieces – though they themselves were helped by the charitable work of several Cornish Associations on the Rand, organisations that also played a key role in raising relief funds for the widows and orphans of miners killed in accidents or by lung disease. Other beneficiaries of South African remittances included Cornish schools, places of worship and community projects. In this way, Cornish miners were able to strengthen and reaffirm ties to their former communities. Moreover, this inflow of remittances need not necessarily be viewed pessimistically in terms of ‘propping up’ an ailing Cornish economy. Rather, it has been argued that remittances played a more constructive role by ‘lessening constraints upon production and investment’ in several areas of Cornwall.154 Whether viewed negatively or positively, however, it is clear that the constant flow of remittances from South Africa provided a lifeline for Cornwall until at least the First World War.

A closer analysis of why migrants remitted monies home lends weight to the view that family networks were the lynchpin of the migration process. Above everything else, sending money home to relatives was an expression of obligation to them, and of gratitude for their help in establishing the migrant in more economically rewarding circumstances. Although separated from their family by great distances, migrants continued to feel responsible for the wives, children, parents and other dependent relatives they had left behind. They conceived of their move as a strategy to maximise the income and material well-being not just of themselves but of the family as a whole. Driven by this implicit contract, remittances could be sent almost irrespective of income. Thus it is underlying notions of duty

151 S. P. Schwartz and R. Parker, Tin Mines and Miners of Lanner: The Heart of Cornish Tin

(London: Halsgrove Press, 2001), pp. 157–8.

152 C. Lewis Hind, Days in Cornwall (London: Methuen, 1907), p. 352, quoted in Payton,

The Cornish Overseas, p. 347.

153 Payton, The Cornish Overseas, p. 245.

154 S. P. Schwartz, ‘Cornish Migration Studies: An Epistemological and Paradigmatic Critique’,

in P. Payton (ed.), Cornish Studies 10 (2002), 136–65 (quotation from p. 151).

104and kinship that mainly account for these monetary flows – by sending monies home migrants were able to protect the integrity of the family unit, to support and strengthen kinship networks, and to mesh together family and household economies both in the newly adopted country and their place of birth. Indeed, remittances were perhaps the most tangible manifestation of the benefits that migration could bring, and of the tenacity of ‘Old’-world social ties. In several respects, the remittance behaviour of American and empirebound migrants was strikingly similar. Our data suggest that many migrants to the United States, just like those who left for the colonies, continued to be deeply connected to British society for some time after their arrival. Averaged across our period, remittances per migrant were considerably higher for those people who went to the United States; and this disparity, if anything, grew over time. To be sure, the high levels of monies sent back to Britain by American migrants partly reflect the better economic opportunities and high real wage levels there. Yet, equally, they reflect the strength of kith-and-kin ties – a mutually sustaining and beneficial Anglo-American relationship at ‘grass-root’ level.

Nonetheless, the distinctive nature of emigration from the United Kingdom to the United States, when compared to other parts of the British World, did lead to real differences in remittance behaviour. Lower transport costs to America facilitated short-term, seasonal labour migration, so that a significant number of skilled workers who migrated across the Atlantic had no fixed intention of staying,155 and ‘even among those who did remain, the possibility of returning to Britain constituted an active alternative choice for some time’.156 American consuls, for example, remarked on the fact that many British migrants were intent on remaining only for a few years, their objective being to return with enough money to live in comparative comfort in the UK.157 Such migrants – or ‘birds of passage’, as they were called – were rarely accompanied by their dependants, and tended to have relatively high rates of saving out of their earned income. Their aim was to build up a nest egg in America with a view to setting up in business or acquiring land on their return, or providing for their retirement in the UK. English bricklayers in New York, Welsh

155 Whereas it is argued that return migration from Australia was much less likely because

the ‘real and psychic distances between Europe and Australia were much greater than

those between Europe and America’, and many Australian migrants were ‘modest folk’

(e.g. domestic servants and agricultural labourers) who were unlikely to have prospered

so quickly that they could afford a double passage; see E. Richards, ‘Running Home

from Australia: Intercontinental Mobility and Migrant Expectations in the Nineteenth

Century’, in Harper, Emigrant Homecomings, pp. 77–104.

156 Erickson, Invisible Immigrants, p. 236.

157 Magee and Thompson, ‘The Global and the Local’, p. 192.

105Overseas migration colliers in Pennsylvania, Aberdeen granite masons in New England and Sheffield steel workers in Pittsburgh all fit this pattern.158 They either remitted money in anticipation of their return, or returned home with their savings. For such US-based remitters, earning capacity was paramount; funding future rounds of migration, or accumulating assets in America, were matters of lesser importance.

The most striking feature of the remittance story of the ‘long’ nineteenth century is the skill and tenacity with which British migrants forged long-distance social ties. The sending of monies home – both the sheer scale of the flows and the variety of purposes to which they were put – is testimony to how previous generations of migrants were able to construct complex webs or networks of association stretching all the way from their place of settlement to their place of origin. By so doing, migrants maintained a multiplicity of involvements in their home and host societies, on an ongoing and regular basis. The role of the latest round of technological innovations in promoting trans-nationalism can easily be exaggerated, therefore. While airplanes, fax machines, mobile phones and electronic mail have, in the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries, greatly