Migration and Empire

Migtion and Empire provides a unique comparison of the motives, means, and experiences of three main flows of empire migrants. During the nineteenth century, the proportion of UK migrants heading to empire destinations, especially to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, increased substantially and remained high. They included so-called `surplus women' and `children in need', shipped overseas to ease perceived social problems at home. However, empire migrants also included entrepreneurs and indentured labourers from South Asia, Africa, and the Pacific (plus others from the Far East, outside the empire), who relocated in huge numbers with equally transformative effects in, for example, central and southern Africa, the Caribbean, Ceylon, Mauritius, and Fiji. The UK at the core of empire was also the recipient of empire migrants, especially from the `New Commonwealth' after 1945.

Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine analyse these several migration flows with a strong appreciation of the commonality and the complex variery of the migrant histories. Legacies remain, but by the 1970s political change and shifts in the global labour market had eroded the once intimate relationship between migration and empire.

Marjory Harper is Professor of History at the University of Aberdeen
Stephen Constantine is Professor of Modern British History at Lancaster University