The Role of Foreign-born Agents in the Development of Mass Migrant Travel through Britain, 1851-1924
The Role of Foreign-born Agents in the Development of Mass Migrant Travel through Britain, 1851-1924
This chapter examines how Britain profited from the foreign component of the passenger trade through the employment of foreign-born agents in the development of British business ventures. It considers the role of commercial agents, translators, and lodging-house keepers on land, and merchant marines, Lascar seamen, and various maritime crew at sea, in effort to determine how pivotal foreign-born labour was to the British shipping industry. It argues that without the aid of foreign-born agents, British shipping companies would have lost their competitive international advantage fairly quickly. By analysing the British emigration market over the course of the nineteenth century; the activity of British ports; and actions of British shipping companies including Cunard and White Star, it concludes that foreign agents ensured that the revolution in transoceanic passenger shipping flowed through British companies, rectifying the historical assumption that foreign agents took advantage of the British market.
Keywords: British Passenger Shipping, Emigration Agents, Lascar Seamen, Liner Shipping, Transmigration, British Ports, British Migrant Market
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