Australia, Migration and Empire Immigrants in a Globalised World

This edited collection explores how migrants played a major role in the creation and settlement of the British Empire, by focusing on a series of Australian case studies. Despite their shared experiences of migration and settlement, migrants nonetheless often exhibited distinctive cultural identities, which could be deployed for advantage. Migration established global mobility as a defining feature of the Empire. Ethnicity, class and gender were often powerful determinants of migrant attitudes and behaviour. This volume addresses these considerations, illuminating the complexity and diversity of the British Empire’s global immigration story. Since 1788, the propensity of the populations of Britain and Ireland to immigrate to Australia varied widely, but what this volume highlights is their remarkable diversity in character and impact. The book also presents the opportunities that existed for other immigrant groups to demonstrate their loyalty as members of the (white) Australian community, along with notable exceptions which demonstrated the limits of this inclusivity.

Chapter 1: Philip Payton and Andrekos Varnava, Migration, Australia and Empire.- Chapter 2: Eric Richards, British Emigrants and the Making of the Anglosphere: Some Observations and a Case Study.- Chapter 3: Heidi Ing, Emigrant Choices: Following Emigrant Labourers on the Cusp of the Age of Mass Migration.- Chapter 4: Melanie Burkett, Why Single Female Emigration to New South Wales (1832-37) was Doomed to Disappoint.- Chapter 5: Skye Krichauff, Squattor-cum-pastoralist or freeholder? How differences in nineteenth-century Colonists’ experiences affect their Descendants’ historical consciousness.- Chapter 6: Stephanie James, Distress in Ireland 1879-1880: The Unlikely Activation of the South Australian Community?.- Chapter 7: Fidelma Breen, ‘Yet we are told that Australians do not sympathise with Ireland’: South Australian support for Irish Home Rule.- Chapter 8: Anthony Nugent, Cornish Miners in Western Australia 1850-1896.- Chapter 9: Philip Payton, Bal-maidens and Cousin Jenny: The Paradox of Women in Australia’s Historic mining Communities.- Chapter 10: Bridget Brooklyn, Mary Booth and British Boy Immigration: From Progressivism to Imperial Nationalism.- Chapter 11: Andonis Piperoglou, The Memorialisation of Hector Vasyli: Civilisational Prestige and British Imperial Association in Greek Queensland.- Chapter 12: Andrekos Varnava and Evan Smith, Dealing with Destitute Cypriots in the United Kingdom and Australia, 1914-1931.- 

Philip Payton is Professor of History at Flinders University, South Australia, and Emeritus Professor of Cornish and Australian Studies at the University of Exeter, UK. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and has written and edited more than fifty books including ‘Repat’: A Concise History of Repatriation in Australia (2018) and The Cornish Overseas: A History of Cornwall’s Great Emigration (2019).

Andrekos Varnava is Associate Professor in Imperial and Military History at Flinders University, South Australia, and an Honorary Professor at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. He is the author of numerous works, including the forthcoming British Cyprus and the Long Great War, 1914-1925: Empire, Loyalties and Democratic Deficit (2019).