Flight to the West 1756–1803

Abstract

It is possible to write confidently of a history of British emigration from the middle of the eighteenth century, when victory in war with France after 1763 created a vast new British North American empire, at least on the map. The victory which made this possible raised important issues to contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic about what would happen to this continental empire. In particular, it raised the vision of a new and mighty American empire to some, while to others it contained within it the spectre of the possible depopulation of Britain itself. Population would ebb away across the Atlantic to the new empire in the future, and inevitable decline would become the fate of those left behind, victims of the victory rather than its beneficiaries. Even with the loss of the former British colonies to what became the United States in 1783, there still remained vast lands available in British North America, and a long debate over how to deal with British North America led to parliamentary legislation in 1803 intended to make the cost of voluntary emigration to America from Britain uneconomic. This was government action on British emigration forced through parliament by Scottish politicians, whose political leaders saw it as the part of Britain with most to lose to America; frustrating the project of ambitious forced Scottish development to near economic parity with England by determined economic and social reconstruction through opening up the possibility of access to land ownership elsewhere in the British Empire to the peasantry of Scotland.