Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

The English diaspora in North America: Migration, ethnicity and association, 1730s–1950s
ISBN: 9781526103727
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Manchester University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: History ; American Studies ; Sociology;

Ethnic associations were once vibrant features of societies, such as the United States and Canada, which attracted large numbers of immigrants. While the transplanted cultural lives of the Irish, Scots and continental Europeans have received much attention, the English are far less widely explored. It is assumed the English were not an ethnic community, that they lacked the alienating experiences associated with immigration and thus possessed few elements of diasporas. This deeply researched new book questions this assumption. It shows that English associations once were widespread, taking hold in colonial America, spreading to Canada and then encompassing all of the empire. Celebrating saints days, expressing pride in the monarch and national heroes, providing charity to the national poor, and forging mutual aid societies mutual, were all features of English life overseas. In fact, the English simply resembled other immigrant groups too much to be dismissed as the unproblematic, invisible immigrants.

Tanja Bueltmann is Associate Professor in History at Northumbria University

Donald M. MacRaild is Professor of British and Irish History at University of Roehampton