| Abstract: | This article draws on an unusually rich archive to explore the motives and mentality of poor English emigrants in the early nineteenth century. In 1819, the Colonial Department advertised a subsidized emigration scheme to South Africa; 2000 people wrote letters of application preserved in the National Archives. In studying the emigrant poor, historians have been primarily dependent on numerical data derived from passenger lists. The letters of application of 1819 allow more nuanced conclusions about the circumstances and the aspirations of the poor emigrant at a time of severe economic distress. The correspondence shows which trades were particularly drawn to emigration, particularly the framework knitters and the weavers who had lost not only their regular income but their trades. The letters also shed light on the gender tensions which lay beneath the surface of what was promoted as family migration. Most telling of all, the letters show that among the poor there was more to the decision to emigrate than fatalism and passivity. Poor emigrants expected to have to work for their living, but with the reward of greater security, enhanced prosperity, and – in the case of the male majority – the achievement of ‘independence’. |
