Points of Departure: Remittance Emigration from South-West Ulster to New South Wales in the Later Nineteenth Century

Abstract

L i n d s a y P r o u d f o o t a n d D i a n n e H a l l Summary: This paper considers aspects of the local geographies of Australian emigration created in southwest Ulster by the New South Wales governmentsponsored remittance emigration scheme between 1858 and 1884. The scheme mobilized the financial resources of settlers in New South Wales to part-fund the passage of friends and relatives from Britain and Ireland. The paper utilizes the comprehensive socioeconomic and demographic archive generated by the scheme, to explore the response of rural communities in thirteen civil parishes in Counties Cavan and Fermanagh to this opportunity to emigrate. It concludes that although the emigrant sample's demographic profile accorded with conventional models of Irish assisted emigration, it was also marked by pronounced over-representation of Protestants and under-representation of Catholics. Possible explanations for this are considered in terms of the positionality and human capital of the three major denominations and the efficiency of their social networks in negotiating the bureaucratic process in Australia. I N T R O D U C T I O N Academic paradigms change, but scholarly interest in international migration remains as strong as ever. Recent synoptic literature has reviewed the diverse tropes through which scholars in a range of disciplines have viewed the causes, practices, and consequences of European emigration during the nineteenth century. The cultural grounding for their engagement is hardly to be doubted. Over 40 million emigrants are estimated to have left à The authors wish to acknowledge the generous financial support of the Leverhulme Trust for the research on which this paper is based. They also acknowledge the National Library of Australia and the State Records Authority of New South Wales for permission to use material held in their care.

The emigrant’s friend?

“…30 Indeed, a recent examination of referees cited by a sample of 1,844 'remittance emigrants' from Cavan and Fermanagh to New South Wales between 1858 and 1884 confirms that for a majority of Protestants and Catholics, a cleric, usually of their own denomination, was the first choice. 31 Those references, required under the terms of a particular scheme of emigration, had a clear purpose. However, there is considerable evidence that many later emigrants, were they to acquire a general letter of introduction from their religious minister, would struggle to benefit materially from it.…”