Motives for migration to and from Britain - economics and commerceIndian and African trade and Irish famine

The East India Company and the growth of the British Empire

In 1600, Queen Elizabeth I granted the East India Company a monopoly of trade to East Asia. These 218 merchants established trading posts across India; trading money and goods for products that were valued highly in Europe such as spices, jewels and fine cloths.

There was fierce competition with other European nations for the right to trade in India. This forced the East India Company to employ a large army to guard their profits against Indian princes and rival European traders.

By 1858 the East India Company was no longer considered capable of safeguarding British interests in India, particularly after the Great Rebellion of 1857 when a large part of the Indian army rebelled against Company rule. The British government assumed direct control of their business and gradually expanded British influence across the continent.

Thousands of white Britons boarded boats destined for India to make their fortune or to help administer the British India, which became known as the British Raj. Many women also travelled to India, usually to find a suitable husband among the Britons making their fortunes. However people also travelled from India to Britain, notably Indian sailors, known as Lascars, working on board British vessels. Communities of Lascars could be found in most of Britain’s major ports in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Britain encouraged further connections between India and Africa through British use of indentured Indian workers to work in South African mines.

The Kenya to Uganda railway was also built by Indian indentured servants and after the railway was completed, they settled in East Africa. Around 50,000 Indians migrated to British East Africa in the late 19th and early 20th century.

White Britons were mainly driven by economic factors in their decisions to emigrate to distant parts of the Empire.

• In the mid-19th century, as a result of the Great Famine of 1845-52, over one million Irish people left the British Isles to seek a better life in the Americas.
• At the same time, thousands of Scottish tenant farmers were evicted from their villages in the Highlands and they also chose to emigrate. They settled across North America but also in Australia and New Zealand.

The Great Irish Famine

This meant that when Ireland suffered severe famine during the Great Famine in the 1840s, the British government followed a policy that led to death, misery and migration.

• In 1845, Ireland had stores of grain that could have been used to feed the starving people, but the British government officials would not release the stocks of grain to the people. The British insisted that the grain had to be sold for export to other places and at a full market price, which the Irish could not afford.
• In 1847, millions of Irish people suffered from hunger and disease, and over a million left the country, mostly for the USA.
• By 1861 there were over 800,000 Irish-born migrants living in Britain. This was the time when the railway system was being expanded all over England, and Irish men often found jobs as navvies working on the construction of these new railways.

White Settlers in British East Africa

• In the early 20th century, Kenya became a popular destination for white Britons that wanted to establish permanent settlements there.
• The new railway built by indentured Indian workers opened up much of the Kenyan interior to European settlement and thousands of Britons migrated to Kenya via the newly established city of Nairobi, over the next few decades.