National 5
Migration
Worksheet 2
Encouraging Emigration
Read through this activity and information sheet
Complete all activities in your class jotter
Emigration Act
Landlords
Eventually most Scottish Highland landowners looked to emigration as a solution to their over
population problem. Often the landowners paid the costs of crofters moving from their estates
to the colonies abroad. For example, James Matheson, the landowner on the island of Lewis,
paid for people to leave the land and even cancelled debts which were owed to him! By 1856
he had encouraged over 2200 crofters to leave Lewis.
1. Read the source below – why was paying for emigration a more attractive option to
land owners than other forms of help?
…landlords who actively pursued schemes of assisted emigration carefully
selected those with the least resources, who were likely to require support if they
remained at home from either … the estate or Poor law. Relief of this kind would
produce a greater drain on estate resources in the long run than the organisation of
assisted emigration.
Missionary Work
In the nineteenth century a number of Scots emigrated as missionaries to try and convert
people to Christianity.
The huge British Empire contained many different peoples who followed many different
religions. There were many men and women in Scotland who were determined to convert
these people to Christianity. Missionary societies were set up in Scotland to raise money, to
train missionaries, and to support missionary bases in many parts of the world, but especially
in Africa. Missionaries included:




Alexander Duff – He was the first Professor of Missions at New College, Edinburgh.
He worked in India and founded Madras College.
Mary Slessor – She settled in Nigeria in 1876 in an area new to Europeans and tried to
end slavery there.
Dr Jane Waterson – She set up a girls’ school in South Africa, trained as a doctor, and
settled in Nyasaland as both a doctor and a missionary.
David Livingston – He started working life in a Scottish cotton mill at the age of ten.
He later trained as A DOCTOR. He went to Africa as a missionary but became even
more famous as an explorer.
National 5
Migration
Worksheet 2
Many of these missionaries brought valuable practical skills as well as their Christian faith to
the areas where they settled. The enthusiasm for sending out missionaries from Scotland
tended to fade after the First World War.
2. Do you think it is fair to view missionary work as a reason for mass emigration? Give
reasons for your answer
3. Why do you think the enthusiasm for sending missionaries ended after the First World
War?
Charities
The sufferings of poor people led to some better-off people organising help for them. One
form of help was support for emigration.
In the early nineteenth century, as factory-made textiles became common, the weavers who
had made cloth on hand-looms were thrown out of work. At least 2,000 of them were helped
to re-settle in Canada by charities, with a little government support. Saint Barnado’s did a
little work in Scotland.
William Quarrier, who came from a poor area of Glasgow, never forgot the difficulty of his
childhood and developed a strong social conscience. This would have a huge effect on the
lives of thousands of destitute children in Scotland.
Between 1869 and 1939 over 100,000 children were migrated from the United Kingdom to
Canada by British philanthropic organisations. Although they were described — in the
parlance of the Victorian era — as ‘orphans, waifs and strays’, in fact around two-thirds had
at least one surviving parent and most were from families experiencing extreme poverty.
Once they arrived in Canada, the younger children were adopted, the older children
committed as indentured labourers. The Scottish philanthropist William Quarrier (1829-1903)
through his Orphan Homes of Scotland was involved in the migration of 7,000 of these
‘Home Children’.
The Young Men’s Christian Association sent boys to the colonies in the years between the
First and Second World Wars.
Some charities aimed to send young single women overseas to be servants and to marry some
of the many single men who had emigrated. The British Woman’s Emigration Association,
for example, set up local branch committees all over the country. Their job was to recruit
suitable girls. The girls who were helped to emigrate had their travel arranged and hostels
organised to stay in when they arrived overseas.
4. What do you understand by the term philanthropic?
5. What does the work of charities in helping people emigrate tell us about Victorian
attitudes to poverty?
National 5
Migration
Worksheet 2
Better Information
Better information is also a major factor that impacted upon emigration from Scotland.
The letters from emigrants to their families back home has been seen as the most significant
source of information. As transport (and telegraph) systems improved postal services became
more reliable. Letters that came from trusted members of the family proved to be a reliable
account of life and employment overseas.
Often letters home also contained enclosures (money) that could be used against the cost of
emigration. This encouraged families to become reunited. The same could be said for
returning migrants (many of them who followed seasonal or temporary migration patterns)
who could report on their time abroad. It would be wrong to suggest that all of those who
returned did so because the emigration experiment had failed.
Many temporary migrants returned with hugely positive reports of life abroad. The Emigrants
Information Office opened in 1886 as a source of impartial advice for migrants. They offered
information on land grants, wages, living cost as well as travel information.
Local newspapers also provided a significant amount of emigration information. Newspapers
such as the Aberdeen Journal were active in raising interest in emigration - particularly within
the rural communities of Aberdeenshire. They provided adverts for ship sailings, information
on assisted passage and numerous letters and articles on North American life.
During the 1920s and 1930s the principal aim of the emigrants was to find work and wages
and escape mass unemployment at home. This mostly affected the age group 16–29, skilled
rather than unskilled workers and men rather than women. Although most of the emigrants
were able to make a better life for themselves and their families abroad, the impact on
Scotland has been less favourable.
Many of the most productive and talented Scots have left their birthplace to enrich, both
economically and culturally, other countries at the expense of their own.
Coercion
We have seen an element of coercion already - the Highland landlords who offered to pay for
emigration as a way of removing crofters from the land. Although great opportunities
certainly existed for Scots emigrants, others were coerced into emigration by agents of foreign
firms who stood to benefit (both personally through commission based payments as well as
financial benefits for the companies involved) It is clear that coercion was used as a tactic to
encourage emigration.
The Canadian Pacific Railway Company (CPR) became active in the promotion of emigration
to Canada. They recognised that the railway was not simply an easy way to transport new
arrivals but was also the most effective way of opening up the wilderness and the prairies to
permanent settlement and industry. In 1880 it was allocated 25 million acres of land by the
Canadian Government. The land (which was between Winnipeg and the Rocky Mountains)
was to be developed to generate a profit.
As a way of ensuring that there was a much greater flow of traffic through the area, while also
expanding the settlements the CPR undertook an aggressive marketing policy designed to
National 5
Migration
Worksheet 2
stimulate emigration. Scotland was especially targeted due to our surplus (and highly skilled)
agricultural labour force.
CPR agents travelled around the country giving lectures and providing information about
emigration. The CPR also sought to make the lives of the emigrants significantly easier by
offering them ready made farms (complete with housing, barns and fences) included in the
sale of the land. Some of the land was even given away for free! In 1892 the Canadian
Government appointed two fulltime agents in Scotland who undertook tours of markets, town
halls and agricultural shows. Some of the agents were even able to deliver their lectures in
Gaelic if their audience required it. In this way, many Scots were coerced into emigration by
the offers they received and the aggressive nature of many of the foreign agents.
Emigration societies and Governmental help
Emigration societies had developed when handloom weavers, who had lost jobs as a result of
the Industrial revolution, put pressure on the government to help them leave Scotland for a
better life abroad.
The societies grew as economic problems also increased, particularly in the Highlands. After
the famine in Skye in 1846 an Emigration Society was set up there in 1851. This developed
into the Highlands and Islands Emigration Society. These societies raised money and helped
very poor crofters to leave Scotland for Australia and Canada.
Emigration was also seen as a way of removing excess population by the Government. In
1886 the Emigrants’ Information Office opened up, giving advice and information on land
grants, wages, living conditions and passage rates. Overseas governments and land companies
actively advertised the benefits of emigration.
The Government also provided help and encouragement for emigration. This help included
giving grants of land in places like Canada and Australia as well as loans of money to help
with the costs of passage. However, it was not until the 1922 Empire Settlement Act that the
Government became fully committed to funding emigration to the now self –governing states.
This act committed the Government to spending £3 million a year on a range of policies to
secure emigration for people. These policies included loans and grants and training courses
for new emigrants.
Eventually the colonies directly employed agents to encourage people to their own countries.
Often these agents had been emigrants themselves. One good example is James Adam from
Aberdeen who moved to Otago in New Zealand in 1847. Ten years later he returned to
Scotland as an agent. He encouraged 4000 Scots to emigrate to New Zealand.
Agents used a number of methods to encourage people to their lands from giving public talks
to private meetings. The New Zealand Government offered free passage to domestic servants,
as did the Government of Queensland in Australia. The Canadians were not happy about this,
the source below highlights their concerns.
National 5
Migration
Worksheet 2
From Angus Nicholson, Canada’s Special Immigration Agent in the Highlands of
Scotland, 1875.
All the competing Emigration Agencies formerly reported on, are still at work as actively
as ever. The New Zealand and Australian authorities are particularly alert, the streets of
every town and village being always well ornamented with their bills and posters offering
free passages and other inducements to emigrants. Not only so, but nearly all newspapers
being subsidised by means of their advertisements, are doing their full share in the same
direction. It has to be noted that a considerable number of potential recruits have been
diverted from Canada to New Zealand as a result of the latter’s offer of free passages. It is
extremely difficult for us to attract emigrants when these territories are offering free
passages while we expect the emigrants to pay their own fares to Canada.
By 1897 Canada had five agents in Scotland. It had only two agents in England. This
perhaps shows how important the skills sourced in Scotland were to the colonies.
6. Using the information above create a double (2 A4) textbook page in your jotter about
the .
You must include

The information you feel is important, in your own words as far a possible.

A picture

At least 2 activities to help a pupil studying this issue consolidate their
learning.