Hidden History: The British Emigrant to the United States 1803–1860

Abstract

After the passage of the first Passenger Act in 1803, the tide of public opinion in Britain regarding emigration began to turn. The long debate over assisted emigration eventually would be the medium through which emigration came to be perceived as a positive force in imperial expansion rather than a threat to the project of modernising the country. Perhaps that was as a result of the limitations to modernisation that became increasingly apparent after 1815, as postwar depression began to bite. There was a sense of economic crisis in Britain throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, although parts of the country continued to expand commercially and industrially. But there were obvious winners and losers, with the losers and those who thought they might be losers increasingly becoming interested in emigration, and the winners increasingly minded to allow them to emigrate. Within that change in the ideology of emigration, there was growing debate over whether to channel emigrants to the overseas empire or turn a blind eye to the growing importance of the United States as an emigrant destination. In 1801–1803, part of the anti-emigration rhetoric had been about preventing emigrants to add to the strength of the United States, and the initial interest in assisting emigrants to go to Canada had been to ensure that Canada would remain British and not become American.