One and all : the Cornish in nineteenth century New South Wales

Abstract

Emigration was a common nineteenth century Cornish experience. It occurred as Cornish men and women dispersed across the world as a result of downturns in mining and in the other traditional Cornish industries of farming and fishing. Cornish emigrants left a land whose differences from other parts of Britain had been maintained through centuries of isolation and through Cornwall's separate ethnicity, history, geography and culture. The most common pattern of emigration was that of Cornish miners, and those in related occupations, moving to a mining area and settling there in a recognisably Cornish community. There was no mining industry in New South Wales before the mid-nineteenth century, and early Cornish immigrants to the colony were generally those from the landowning classes who had sufficient capital to set themselves up on land in the colony. It was only when schemes for free and assisted passages were introduced later in the century, that Cornish men and women from the labouring classes were able to contemplate emigration to New South Wales. The stated occupations of the majority of these assisted immigrants were labourer or tradesmen, with a minority of miners. Although they did not fit the general pattern of miners forming a discrete community near the mines, these Cornish immigrants followed settlement patterns similar to those in other emigrant destinations. The numbers of assisted immigrants to the colony were swelled by other Cornish who had paid their own fares, or who had come first to other Australian colonies. Some settled in gold, tin or copper mining communities, while others went to inland farming districts. Still others settled in Sydney or along the coast. In all of these places, they gathered in recognisably Cornish communities. As in Cornwall, and in other emigrant destinations, many of the Cornish who came to New South Wales were Methodists. Cornish immigrants were usually involved in other community groups as well, and often in local and colonial politics. They became good citizens of their adopted country without losing their Cornish identity. They settled, and remained, as cohesive and recognisably Cornish groups in New South Wales because of their cultural and ethnic differences from other settlers. Other factors were their practices of chain migration and intermarriage (which sometimes occurred over several generations), shared occupational skills, and personal choice. In New South Wales, where the occupation of mining was not the major determinant in the choice of settlement areas, Cornish immigrants continued the pattern set in mining communities across the world. They settled and remained together showing that, in New South Wales, this decision was strongly influenced by personal choice. They stayed together because they chose to do so, because they were Cornish.