From the Mother Country: oral narratives of British emigration to the United States, 1860-1940
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Date
28/06/2012Author
Varricchio, Mario
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Abstract
This study investigates the experience of British (English, Scottish and Welsh)
emigrants to the United States in the 1860-1940 period. It is based on the analysis of
two large corpora of oral histories, about 180 interviews in total, preserved in libraries
as well as archives and libraries’ special collections and manuscript departments
scattered throughout the United States. In particular, the thesis draws on the interviews
conducted by the Ellis Island Oral History Project researchers since the 1970s and the
“life histories” gathered by the Federal Writers’ Project fieldworkers during the New
Deal era. The critical examination of these sources makes it possible to shed new light
on an extended period of British emigration to the United States, including the decades
following 1900, which have largely been neglected by scholars so far. In fact, the FWP
life histories of British immigrants have never been tapped by scholars before, and the
same is true as regards the Ellis Island accounts, with the exception of the interviews
with Scottish immigrants.
The Introduction to the thesis presents the subject, scope, structure and objectives of
the work, also providing a brief overview of the historiography in the field; the first
chapter discusses both the reliability of oral histories as historical sources and their
peculiarities; the second chapter specifically deals with the Ellis Island and Federal
Writers’ Project interviews, on the fieldworkers’ research strategy and the interview
approach they adopted, providing an in-depth critical analysis of the strengths and limits
of the documents on which the dissertation’s conclusions are based. The following
chapters trace the experiences of men and women who left Great Britain for the U.S. by
dwelling upon the pre-emigration, emigration proper and post-emigration phases, and
identify common aspects in Britons’ migratory experience as well as differences due to
their age, gender and nationality.
The analysis of the post-emigration phase focuses on Britons’ economic conditions,
work activity and social mobility in America, as well as on cultural and identity issues.
In particular, the last two sections of the thesis put to the test the widespread notions of
British immigrants’ economic success and of their cultural “invisibility” in America. In
fact, the evidence offered by the Ellis Island and Federal Writers’ Project oral histories
challenge the image of Britons as successful immigrants who blended into American
society relatively quickly and easily.