Introduction

Between 1820 - when the United States first began to record immigration - and 1924, when the door was firmly shut, over thirty-six million people are known to have migrated to the US. They represented a substantial proportion of the 19.1 million passengers who left Britain between 1853 and 1913, of whom 13.3 million were British and Irish passengers and 5.3 million aliens. Whether the passengers sojourned, settled permanently or subsequently returned to Europe, their movement to, through and from Britain generated significant income streams for transatlantic shipping companies. The trade benefited not only those who transported the migrants but also companies engaged in ship construction and the port-cities that supported both seaborne travel and associated shipbuilding. This essay examines the ways in which Britain profited from the foreign component of this passenger trade and in particular at the employment of foreign-born agents within Britain and throughout the continent to develop the business. Individuals who worked as commercial agents, translators and lodging-house keepers in Britain, or as Agents General on the continent, proved as pivotal to the development of the passenger operations of the British merchant marine in the late nineteenth century as the more celebrated use of foreign crew - in particular, Lascar seamen - on the development of long-haul freight routes. German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and latter Russian agents all helped British companies such as Cunard, White Star, Anchor, Guion and Union-Castle to develop and maintain a powerful grip on specific transoceanic features of travel, despite the challenges posed by foreign competitors such as Hamburg-America and Norddeutscher Lloyd. Without the use of such foreign-born agents - within and without Britain - it is doubtful whether British companies could have retained their leading role in this highly competitive aspect of seaborne commerce. In turn, the use of such foreignborn agents demonstrates the complex and multi-faceted measures adopted by mid-Victorian shipping entrepreneurs to control transatlantic passenger shipping. Before, during and after shares of steerage traffic had been established through transatlantic passenger conferences, British companies gained a commercial advantage that their European rivals struggled to reduce. Central to this advantageous position, I argue, was the procurement and retention of services offered by foreign-born “agents.”