Guernsey, 1814-1914: Migration and Modernisation

ISBN-13: 9781843833208 / Angielski / Twarda / 2007 / 346 str.

Rose-Marie Crossan

Opis

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, despite 600 years of allegiance to the English Crown, a majority of Guernseymen still spoke the language and retained aspects of the culture of France, the Island's closest neighbour, but England's hereditary foe. However, by 1914 Guernsey had been transformed from an essentially francophone to anglophone community. In this first comprehensive academic study of nineteenth-century Guernsey, the author analyses this huge sea-change. She devotes particular attention to the role of migration in this transition, since Guernsey experienced both substantial outflows (to North America and the Antipodes), and substantial inflows (from Dorset, Devon, Somerset, Hampshire and Cornwall; the Irish province of Munster, and the French dpartements of La Manche and Les Ctes-du-Nord). She investigates the various factors influencing the various migrant contingents, analyses their differing settlement patterns and their propensity to integrate and evaluates the less than welcoming reception they met with from insular poor law authorities. Overall, the book argues that while migration boosted the Anglicisation of the island, it must be viewed in the context of other causes and effects.