Strangers Come to Devour the Land: Changing Views of Foreign Migrants in Early Eighteenth-Century England

Abstract

This article investigates the debates surrounding immigration to England some three hundred years ago and considers why it was that between the 1680s and the 1710s a discernible change occurred in how migrants were treated. Work on the emergence of a “British” Protestant identity and its relationship with continental Europe, on changing ideas of Englishness and on the campaign for a relaxation in rights of access to the English and colonial labor market are considered. The shift in popular and political responses to the arrival of refugees in England in 1709 provides a contrast to the charitable welcome extended to migrants a generation before and offers an opportunity to see that views of foreign migrants changed for a combination of reasons. True vocalization of “England’s first nationalist revolution” of 1688-89 came one generation later in 1709. Then, the first full pronouncement of a rhetoric of “suitability” for English society and of economic utility meant that a refugee community was denied Protestant charity, denied employment, and was directed away from England’s shores.