Introduction: Macro-and Micro-Histories, Diasporas and the Influence of Eric Richards

Eric Richards was a master of blending broad conceptual insights with meticulously researched details about the particular experiences of individuals, families and communities. He had an enviable ability to comprehend and articulate complex themes cogently, straightforwardly and convincingly. His skill in juxtaposing impersonal economic forces with their personal consequences was demonstrated from his earliest publications on agricultural development, industrialization and demographic upheaval on the Sutherland estate in the Scottish Highlands, and executed with particular originality in his courageous and controversial biography of Patrick Sellar, probably the most notorious agent of clearance policies on that vast northern property. But Eric, an emigrant himself, was also a pre-eminent historian of the British diaspora, whose skill in undertaking both macro-history and intimate micro-studies was clearly evident in two seminal publications: Britannia's Children and particularly his final monograph, The Genesis of Modern Migration. In that magisterial book, which builds on and amplifies Britannia's Children, we find a seamless blend of theory and empirical data, as well as a well-proportioned balance of local, national and international perspectives. Theoretical and historiographical chapters are interspersed with practical illustrations of the outworking of theory, drawing on Eric's lifetime of research into migration and diaspora. The chronological and geographical sweep is wide, and his examples –from locations that include the Isle of Man, Swaledale in Yorkshire, Sussex, Shropshire, Kent, London and Cornwall, as well as London, Highland Scotland and the west of Wales and Ireland – provide the reader with a taste of the motives and experiences of migrants from many different backgrounds.

James Macandrew, whose life story is at the heart of this study, is – like the emigrants who populate the pages of Eric's books – representative of wider trends in the saga of diaspora, not least through the ups and downs of his transnational career, and his political and economic involvements after his arrival in New Zealand. I am indebted to Eric, who was my mentor and model for many years, for showing me the strengths, as well as the pitfalls, of biography as a lens through which to view the philosophy, process and practice of intercontinental migration over long timeframes and in multiple locations.

‘There is nothing more agreeable to picture and nothing more pathetic to behold’ wrote Robert Louis Stevenson in 1879, reflecting on his crossing of the Atlantic in the steps of his mistress and future wife, Fanny Osborne. His fellow passengers he described as ‘a company of the rejected; the drunken, the incompetent, the weak, the prodigal’. Yet, rather incongruously, he continued, ‘it must not be supposed that these people exhibited depression. The scene . . . was cheerful. Not a tear was shed on board the vessel. All were full of hope for the future, and showed an inclination to innocent gaiety.’1 Stevenson’s juxtaposition of image and reality was replicated in many other accounts of emigrant travel in the nineteenth century, and the relationship between expectations and experiences is a recurring theme in this analysis of the voyage, viewed primarily through the eyes of emigrants from Scotland to North America, Australia and New Zealand.

By the time Robert Louis Stevenson went to America, steam had eclipsed sail and transatlantic travelling times had been slashed. Nevertheless, a voyage in an emigrant ship was still a test of endurance rather than a luxury cruise, and did nothing to build up the passengers’ strength for the challenges of the new life that lay ahead. Modern perceptions of the privations of the emigrant voyage have been neutralised by generations of airline travel which, for all its discomforts, has certainly shrunk the globe, making it difficult to appreciate the tedium and the trials of overseas travel in the nineteenth century, particularly by sailing ship, but also in the faster, more reliable age of steam and rail.

A wealth of sources

Our lack of comprehension is certainly not attributable to deficient evidence, for the actual process of emigration was always a subject of great interest.It generated innumerable eye-witness accounts, since keeping a diary was, if nothing else, a strategy for coping with boredom during a long sea passage, at least for cabin passengers. Emigrants’ journals can be supplemented by captains’ logs, along with instructions and advice frequently offered in pamphlets and guidebooks and the evidence of official enquiries that exposed fraudulent practices or picked over the pieces of shipping disasters.