This project built on my ongoing study of British workers who went to France. In the decades that followed the end of the Napoleonic wars, France was the major destination for British skilled workers. Several factors contributed to this trend. The size of the country and its closeness to Britain, the fact that France was lagging behind British industry in several sectors, and the Anglomania of some in the French elite, created abundant opportunities in France for British investors, engineers and workers. For instance, the railway line between Paris and Le Havre, was built by Britons between 1841 and 1847. It was a technical achievement, with many bridges, long tunnels and stunning viaducts. Its financial capital was Scottish and French; it was built under the supervision of a British engineer, Joseph Locke, whose British contractors, William Mackenzie and Thomas Brassey, became two of the most successful 19th-century railway entrepreneurs. All in all, Brassey built some 1,500 km of railways in France, as well as between Bilbao and Miranda (Spain), Charleroi and Givet (Belgium), Buffalera, Torino (Italy) and Culoz (France), Pistoia and Prato (Italy), Amsterdam (Netherlands) and Emmerich (Germany). Likewise John Cockerill played a decisive part in building the first railroads in Belgium, using machinery purchased from the British engineers Robert and George Stephenson. Early German railroads also relied upon British locomotives, initially driven by British mechanics. More generally, British machines were sold across Europe.
What social and cultural factors enabled British capital to flow to continental enterprise, British skills to shape labour processes in Europe and British male and female labourers to seek and find continental employment? More broadly, how did these phenomena play out on the continent in this period? What were the practicalities of labour migration? Did migrant Britons constitute isolated or relatively integrated communities? Why and how were they targeted by xenophobic riots? What were their religious and cultural lives? Were they involved in trade unions or political associations? To address these questions, this project has focused on four aspects of the social and cultural history of British influence. First, it has assessed the quantitative parameters of this migration; second, it has examined the practicalities of migration; third, it has explored British migrants’ relations to and integration with local populations; fourth, it has examined the cultural, religious and associational activities of migrants—their schools, religious practices, associations, newspapers, games and leisure.
