Work in progress: Indirect passage from Europe Transmigration via the UK, 1836–1914

Between 1836 and 1914, over thirty million European immigrants entered the United States of America. 1 Millions of others arrived in Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Argentina.They left in search of freedom and opportunity of a degree not found in their native Europe.The Europe they left behind was suffering from the effects of rapid urbanisation, agrarian depression and population increase.Life was difficult enough without the extremes of harvest failure or religious persecution, factors that encouraged would-be migrants into taking the decision to migrate to the other side of the world -when most had never ventured beyond their provincial borders.Theodore Blegen, Irving Howe and Philip Taylor have all described those areas within America in which these European immigrants eventually settled. 2 Charlotte Erickson and William Jones have studied the millions of British emigrants who left Britain during this period. 3Others, such as Thomas Appleton, Francis Hyde, Laurence Dunn, and Wilton Oldham, have highlighted the role played by powerful British shipping lines such as Allan, Cunard, Union and Castle, and White Star, in the movement of millions of migrants across the Atlantic and to the southern hemisphere. 4 The existing historiographical works provide a detailed explanation of how the majority of European immigrants arrived in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Quebec, Cape Town, Sydney, Buenos Aires and Auckland and the patterns that emerge through the analysis of their journey to the 'New World'.The purpose of this paper, and my Ph.D., is to examine those European migrants who made the decision to travel to the US and further afield indirectly via the UK.Such indirect migration represented a sizeable portion of the total number leaving Europe, particularly of those leaving the northern European countries of Finland, Germany, Norway, Poland, Russia and Sweden.Though 30 million European immigrants entered the US between 1836 and 1914, up to five million transmigrants, or 20 per cent of the total number of immigrants, passed through the UK.The migrants entered the UK via the eastern ports of Harwich, Hull, Grimsby, Leith, London, Newcastle and West Hartlepool.From these ports of arrival the transmigrants were then transported by train to the ports of Glasgow, Liverpool, London and Southampton, from where they could embark on the next stage in their journey.Though London served as the main port of entry for the millions of European immigrants entering the UK, it was the Humber ports of Hull and Grimsby that handled the majority of the transmigrants travelling via the UK -because the journey from the Humber to Liverpool was the shortest route in terms of time and distance to travel across the country.Of the five million European migrants who did arrive in the country between 1836 and 1914, over three million (or sixty per cent), did so via the Humber ports of Hull and Grimsby. 1

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