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Men of the World: Casualties of Empire Building

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Global Migrants, Local Culture

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Abstract

Naturalization processes illustrated how relationships with workmates, spouses and kin integrated migrants into local society. The many lives of Robert Shaumann provide a vivid example of such informal incorporation. Originally from the Baltic port of Memel, Robert Shaumann gradually metamorphosed into Robert Sherman, birthplace South Shields, during a lengthy seafaring career. Born in 1848 or 1849 according to various documents, Robert Sherman stood 5 feet 4 1/2 inches tall and had blue eyes and black hair, or 5 feet 5 inches with brown hair. His earliest discharge papers, dating from the 1860s, identified their holder as Robert Schaumann or Heinrich Schaumann, born in Memel, then in Prussia. He sailed several times out of Memel to Dublin, Quebec, Bordeaux, Newcastle, Portsmouth, Swinemunde, Dunkirchen and Birkenhead in the Mersey.1 From 1870 Robert Schaumann or Schaman began sailing out of British ports, and in the course of 56 subsequent voyages between 1870 and 1913 reported birth in Sweden in 1870–73, Memel in 1873–74, in Germany as Robert Shamman in 1875, in Memel and Sweden in 1876 and in London in 1877–78. During 21 voyages between 1879 and 1889, he was born in Stockholm, Sweden or Memel. Robert Sherman first claimed birth in South Shields in 1890, and more or less permanently assumed this name, which he had been using intermittently since 1877.

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Notes

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  1. University of Arizona, USA

    Laura Tabili (Associate Professor of Modern European History)

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© 2011 Laura Tabili

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Tabili, L. (2011). Men of the World: Casualties of Empire Building. In: Global Migrants, Local Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230307711_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230307711_8

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