Who has the more legitimate claim to land, settlers who occupy and improve it with their labour, or landlords who claim ownership on the basis of imperial grants? This question of property rights, and their construction, was at the heart of rural protest on Prince Edward Island for a century. Tenants resisted landlord claims by squatting and refusing to pay rent. They fought for their vision of a just rural order through petitions, meetings, rallies, electoral campaigns, and direct action....

The 1767 decision to divide Prince Edward Island among elite British grantees shaped Island history for more than a century. Lady Landlords of Prince Edward Island examines this history through the lives of four women who, due to the vagaries of family formation and inheritance, became Island landlords. As absentee owners of large estates, each of the four women faced challenges from those who wanted land redistributed in freehold lots to actual settlers. Their individual management strate...

"Emma Griffin gives a new and powerful voice to the men and women whose blood and sweat greased the wheels of the Industrial Revolution" (Tim Hitchcock, author of Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London).This "provocative study" looks at hundreds of autobiographies penned between 1760 and 1900 to offer an intimate firsthand account of how the Industrial Revolution was experienced by the working class ( The New Yorker). The era didn't just bring ...

In the century before the great famine of the late 1840s, the Irish people, and the poor especially, became increasingly dependent on the potato for their food. So when potato blight struck, causing the tubers to rot in the ground, they suffered a grievous loss. Thus began a catastrophe in which approximately one million people lost their lives and many more left Ireland for North America, changing the country forever. During and after this terrible human crisis, the Briti...

The exodus from England that gathered pace during the 19th century accounted for the greatest part of the total emigration from Britain to Canada. And yet, while copious emigration studies have been undertaken on the Scots and the Irish, very little has been written about the English in Canada.Drawing on wide-ranging data collected from English record offices and Canadian archives, Lucille Campey considers why people left England and traces their destinations in Ontario and Quebec....

The impact of the British Empire on the history of the Upper Ottawa Valley is explored through the experiences of early emigration-assisted 19th-century Scottish immigrants.Between 1815 and 1832, Great Britain settled more than 3,500 individuals, mostly from the Scottish Lowlands, in the Ottawa Valley. These government-assisted emigrations, which began immediately after the Napoleonic Wars, are explored to reveal their impact on Upper Canada.Seeking to transform their lives...

'The Scots have always been a restless people', says leading Scottish historian Marjory Harper 'but in the nineteenth century their restlessness exploded into a sustained surge of emigration that carried Scotland almost to the top of a European league table of emigrant exporting countries.' This is the first book to provide a comprehensive account of that 'Great Exodus'. In many ways it challenges the popular belief that the Scottish Diaspora were reluctant exiles. There were indeed those ...

The Canada Company was responsible for the opening and settling of over two million acres of land in Upper Canada. Author Robert C. Lee focuses his attention on the extensive parcel of land on the shores of Lake Huron that became known as the Huron Tract. His comprehensive research explores the underlying forces leading to the formation of the Company, the intriguing mix of people charged with responsibilities for the Company and the overall impact of its operations, leading to its present...

From a range of leading academics and historians, this collection of essays examines Irish emigration during the Great Famine of the 1840s. From the mechanics of how this was arranged to the fate of the men, women and children who landed on the shores of the nations of the world, this work provides a remarkable insight into one of the most traumatic and transformative periods of Ireland's history. More importantly, this collection of essays demonstrates how the Famine ...

The Great Famine in Ireland was a catastrophe of immense proportions. Eviction, emigration and death from starvation were widespread. Landlords, eager to dispose of 'surplus' tenants, engaged in 'assisted passages', whereby tenants were given financial incentives to emigrate. The clearances of uneconomic tenants from the 85,000-acre Coolattin Estate in County Wicklow by Lord Fitzwilliam were the most organised in Ireland during and after the Famine years. From 1847 to 1856 Fitzwilliam remo...

This book re-examines the relationship between Britain and colonial slavery in a crucial period in the birth of modern Britain. Drawing on a comprehensive analysis of British slave-owners and mortgagees who received compensation from the state for the end of slavery, and tracing their trajectories in British life, the volume explores the commercial, political, cultural, social, intellectual, physical and imperial legacies of slave-ownership. It transcends conventional divisions in history-...

In Search of a Better Life challenges the traditional histories of British and Irish migration, the stories of oppression and exile that form an essential part of the existing literature. By no means were all migrants forced to leave their country by circumstances; many looked forward to a better life abroad. They were largely opportunists rather than victims, whether financed by the state or by landlords or philanthropists, or, as was the case for the majority, b...