Irish Migration to the West Coast, 1864-1900 - New Zealand Journal ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

LYNDON FRASER of personal networks in explaining the origins, composition and dynamics of migrant flows. For a useful introduction to the literature, see Monica Boyd, 'Family and Personal Networks in International Migration: Recent Developments and New Agendas', International Migration Review, 23,3 (1989), pp.638-70; Stephen Castles and Mark Miller, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World, London, 1998. 12 Miles Fairburn, The Ideal Society and Its Enemies: The Foundations of Modern New Zealand Society, 1850-1900, Auckland, 1989, p.165. 13 ibid., pp.164-7. 14 ibid., p. 191-2. By contrast, Fairburn claims the combined weight of penal settlement, chain gang, and assignment system may have provided the earliest waves of Australian migrants with 'an organisation in embryo'. 15 In my view, networks are best understood as transnational institutions that bind together migrants and non-migrants in areas of origin and destination through ties of kinship, friendship, neighbourhood, community and other types of affinity. Migrant networks may also incorporate exploitative social arrangements. See Jon Goss and Bruce Lindquist, 'Conceptualising International Labor Migration: A Structuration Perspective', International Migration Review, 29,2 (1995), pp.317- 51. A similar conception of transnational networks is used in an analysis of the global Chinese diaspora by Brian Moloughney and John Stenhouse, '"Drug-besotten, sin-begotten fiends of filth": New Zealanders and the Oriental Other', NZJH, 33, 1 (1999), pp.51-56. 16 These findings match those reported in micro-studies of other groups by Raewyn Dalziel, Maureen Molloy, Charles Sedgwick, James Ng and Andrew Trlin, further underlining the importance of informal social networks in shaping migration outcomes. See Raewyn Dalziel, 'Emigration and Kinship: Migrants to New Plymouth, 1840-1843', NZJH, 25,2 (1991), pp. 112-28; Maureen Molloy, 'Kinship, Authority, and Transitions to Adulthood: the Highland Scots at Waipu, New Zealand, 1854-1914', Journal of Social History, 22,3 (1989), pp.487-506; Charles P. Sedgwick, 'The Politics of Survival: A Social History of the Chinese in New Zealand', PhD thesis, University of Canterbury, 1982; James Ng, Windows on a Chinese Past, 2 vols, Dunedin, 1993, 1995; Andrew Trlin, Now Respected, Once Despised: Yugoslavs in New Zealand, Palmerston North, 1979. 17 On Irish migration to Australia, see especially Patrick O'Farrell, The Irish in Australia, rev. ed., Sydney, 1993, and David Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation: Personal Accounts of Irish Migration to Australia, Melbourne, 1995. 18 John Macdonald and Ralph Shlomowitz, 'Passenger Fares on Sailing Vessels to Australia in the Nineteenth Century', Explorations in Economic History, 28 (1991), pp.192-207. 19 David Fitzpatrick, Irish Emigration 1801-1921, Dublin, 1985, p.22. 20 David Fitzpatrick, 'Irish Emigration in the Later Nineteenth Century', Irish Historical Studies, 22 (1980), p.131. 21 On Irish women's government-assisted migration see Robin Haines, '"The priest made a bother about it": the travails of "that unhappy sisterhood" bound for colonial Australia', in Trevor McClaughlin, ed., Irish Women in Colonial South Australia, St. Leonards, 1998, pp.43-63. The subject is more fully developed in Robin Haines, Emigration and the Labouring Poor: Australian Recruitment in Britain and Ireland, 1831-61, New York, 1997. 22 O'Farrell, The Irish in Australia, pp.70-71. 23 ibid., pp.69-85; Patrick O'Farrell, 'The Irish In Australia and New Zealand, 1791-1870', in W.E. Vaughan, ed., A New History of Ireland: Vol. V: Ireland Under the Union, 1,1801-70, Oxford, 1989, pp.670-1. 24 An excellent introductory survey is found in Donald Harman Akenson, The Irish Diaspora: A Primer, Toronto, 1993, p.96; R.F. Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600-1972, London, 1988, pp.323-4. 25 Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation, p.l. 26 ibid., pp.7-9; Akenson, The Irish Diaspora, pp.98-108. 27 Census figures are extracted from Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation, p.6, n.9. 28 Akenson, The Irish Diaspora, p. 102, Table 23; O'Farrell, The Irish in Australia, pp.66-67. 29 Descendant information, John F. Tourelle. 30 The Cyclopedia of New Zealand, Christchurch, 1906, V, pp.258, 549, 571. 31 Descendant information, Ron Patterson. 32 Census of New Zealand, 1867-1906. The Australian Census figures for 1901 are extracted from Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation, p.6, n.10. 33 Census data from the counties and small goldfield boroughs for the years 1878-1906 reveal this distinctive pattern. The same observation has been made by McCaskill, p.6/20. 34 Jack Greene employs the term 'charter group' to denote the disproportionate influence exerted 222
IRISH MIGRATION TO THE WEST COAST, 1864-1900 by the earliest arrivals in new societies, 'who took possession of the land, devised ways to manipulate local resource materials for their own survival and profit, reordered the physical and social landscape, and worked out the political, legal, and other cultural arrangements appropriate to their situation'. See Jack P. Greene, 'Pluribus or Unum? White Ethnicity in the Formation of Colonial American Culture', History Now: Te Pae Tawhito o Te Wa, 4 (1998), p.4. The expression is also useful in Irish diaspora studies, where it spurs recognition of the active role played by Irish migrants in the construction of empire. 35 The most convincing explanation for the north-east's prominence is that the West Coast acquired part of its Ulster component through earlier recruitment campaigns undertaken by the provincial governments of Otago and Canterbury. Both provinces conducted mobilization drives in Ulster. The connection is further strengthened when one considers that two-fifths of all the northerners had arrived in New Zealand before 1865. 36 Murray McCaskill, 'The Goldrush Population of Westland', New Zealand Geographer, 12 (1956), pp.31-50. 37 Cummins to Forrest, 29 July 1874, Marist Archives, Wellington. 38 See, for example, Diocesan Return for the Parish of Ahaura, 1 July 1892, Christchurch Diocesan Archives (CDA); Carew to Grimes, 9 April 1895, CDA. 39 The Canterbury percentages are taken from Keith Pickens, 'Canterbury 1851-1881: Demography and Mobility. A Comparative Study', PhD thesis, Washington University, St. Louis, 1976, Table 1:21, p.192. While Pickens's research was confined to emigrant males, his figures closely match my own unpublished data taken from the death certificates of all Irish-born migrants whose deaths were recorded in Christchurch between the years 1876-1900. For the Australian proportions from 1911 cited here, see Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation, p.14, n.24. 40 See Kerby Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America, New York, 1985, pp.350, 376-8 and W.E. Vaughan and A.E. Fitzpatrick, eds, Irish Historical Statistics: Population, 1821-1971, Dublin, 1978, passim. Irish Anglicans belonged to the Church of Ireland, which was the established state church from 1537 to 1870. For a succinct analysis of Irish religious life during the period covered by this essay, see S.J. Connolly, Religion and Society in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, Dublin, 1985. 41 The phrase is taken from a letter by Henry Selfe Selfe to John Hall, 19 November 1862, Hall Papers, quoted in Richard Greenaway, 'Henry Selfe Selfe and the Origins and Development of Canterbury', MA thesis, University of Canterbury, 1972, pp.197-8. 42 Miller, pp.369-80. 43 Of the 548 women in this sample, 257 were married overseas and 39 in New Zealand locations other than the West Coast. 44 Weldon's biography is sketched by Anne Hutchison in The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Vol. One, 1769-1869, Wellington, 1990, p.581. On Goodwin, see Kathleen W. Orr, in A People's History: Illustrated Biographies from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Volume 1, 1769-1869, Wellington, 1992, pp.88-90. 45 Chris McConville, 'The Victorian Irish: Emigrants and Families, 1851-91', in Patricia Grimshaw, Chris McConville and Ellen McEwen, eds, Families in Colonial Australia, Sydney, 1985, p.5. 46 This sense of estrangement is neatly captured in David Fitzpatrick's analysis of the background to a sequence of 13 letters written by members of the Dunne family in Queensland and County Meath. Christopher Dunne, the son of a substantial tenant farmer, had broken with parental control and the closely regulated property match by eloping to Dublin with a labourer's daughter, Bridget Timmins, before either of them had come of age. The couple were married in the city five years later despite 'a dramatic protest on the church steps from Christy's mother' and their impropriety entailed separation from the Dunne household. They took free passages to Brisbane on the Golden City in 1864. See Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation, pp.296-333; Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, pp.402-9. 47 The median age for West Coast Irish males at the time of their arrival in New Zealand during the nineteenth century was 28.5 years, compared with 25.9 years for Irish women. 48 A similar pattern existed in San Francisco. See R.A. Burchell, The San Francisco Irish, 1848-1880, Manchester, 1979, pp.49-51. 49 See David Fitzpatrick, 'The Disappearance of the Irish Agricultural Labourer, 1841-1918', Irish Economic and Social History, 1 (1980), pp.60-82; W.E. Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants in Mid-Victorian Ireland, New York, 1994, p.7. 50 Fraser, To Tara via Holyhead, Table 1.5, p.43. 223
Page 1 and 2: New Zealand Journal of History, 34,
Page 3 and 4: IRISH MIGRATION TO THE WEST COAST,
Page 25: IRISH MIGRATION TO THE WEST COAST,
Page 29: IRISH MIGRATION TO THE WEST COAST,

Irish Migration to the West Coast, 1864-1900 - New Zealand Journal ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?