Emigration from the British Isles
Why People Left the British Isles
Between 1688 and c.1730, large numbers of people emigrated from the British Isles to the Americas — some willingly, some under compulsion. Push factors included religious persecution (Quakers, Puritans, Catholics), economic hardship, the aftermath of war in Ireland and Scotland, and penal transportation. Pull factors included the promise of land ownership, religious freedom in some colonies, and commercial opportunity. Movement was diverse in origin and destination: English dissidents, Ulster Scots, Irish Catholics under Penal Laws, and transported felons all took different routes under very different circumstances.
Voluntary Emigration and Religious Communities
William Penn founded Pennsylvania in 1681 as a “Holy Experiment” — a colony of religious tolerance. Quakers, Mennonites, German Pietists and others settled there. Penn actively recruited settlers from England, Wales and Germany. By 1700 Pennsylvania had around 18,000 settlers. Penn’s 1701 Charter of Privileges guaranteed freedom of worship and representative government, making his colony one of the most attractive destinations for religious dissenters.
Ulster Scots (Scots-Irish) emigrated in large numbers from the 1680s onwards, driven by rack-renting landlords, the Woollen Act (1699) which damaged Irish textile exports, and religious discrimination against Presbyterians. They settled mainly in Pennsylvania and along the Appalachian frontier, where their frontier culture would shape American history for generations.
Three categories of emigrant: voluntary settlers (religious dissenters, economic migrants); indentured servants (contracted labour for a fixed term, often 4–7 years, in exchange for passage); and transported prisoners (felons and political prisoners sentenced to labour in the colonies).
Indentured Servitude
Indentured servitude was distinct from chattel slavery: the indenture was a legal contract for a fixed term, after which the servant gained freedom and sometimes a small land grant. In practice, however, conditions were often brutal — servants could be bought and sold during their term, faced corporal punishment, and many died before completing their indentures. By the 1680s indentured labour was being replaced on the largest plantations by the purchase of enslaved Africans, as plantation owners found enslaved people more profitable (lifelong, heritable labour).
Political transportation began with Cromwell, who transported Irish Catholic prisoners to Barbados and Virginia in the 1650s. In 1685, following the Monmouth Rebellion, Judge Jeffreys sentenced hundreds of rebels to transportation to the Caribbean — the “Bloody Assizes.” The Transportation Act 1718 later formalised penal transportation to the American colonies for serious crimes. Transported prisoners had no choice and faced hard labour; those who survived their sentence often could not afford return passage and remained in the colonies.
The Irish Catholic Diaspora
The Penal Laws and the aftermath of the Williamite War drove significant Irish Catholic emigration. The “Wild Geese” — around 12,000 Jacobite soldiers who left for France in 1691 — were the most dramatic example, but Catholic emigration continued throughout the early eighteenth century. Many Irish Catholics settled in Maryland, founded as a Catholic refuge but under Anglican control after 1689, and in the Caribbean colonies. Others served in the French, Spanish and Austrian armies, where Irish brigades became celebrated military units. Unlike voluntary Protestant emigrants, Irish Catholic emigrants often left under compulsion and with few resources.
Forced and semi-forced emigration from Ireland included the Wild Geese (1691, to France), Monmouth rebels transported by Judge Jeffreys (1685), and Catholics emigrating under the pressure of Penal Laws. Voluntary Ulster Scots emigration was primarily driven by economic and religious discrimination against Presbyterians.
James Oglethorpe founded Georgia in 1733 — slightly after our period but rooted in it — as a philanthropic colony for debtors and the poor who might otherwise face prison in England. Oglethorpe initially banned slavery in Georgia, though this prohibition was later reversed. His colony illustrates the idealistic dimension of some British colonial projects alongside their commercial and penal purposes.
Experiences in the Colonies
The experience of emigrants varied enormously by status and origin. Voluntary settlers with capital, like Quaker families who joined Penn’s “Holy Experiment,” could acquire land and build prosperous farms. Ulster Scots who settled on the Appalachian frontier faced different conditions: they carved homesteads from woodland, often in conflict with Native American communities, and developed a distinct “Scots-Irish” culture that would shape American frontier identity for generations.
Indentured servants faced harsh conditions regardless of their origin. Masters could extend indentures for minor infractions. Women servants who became pregnant had their indentures automatically extended. By the time servants completed their term, many found that promised land grants were difficult to obtain in older-settled areas. This frustration contributed to colonial instability — Bacon’s Rebellion (1676), which drew heavily on disaffected former servants, had demonstrated the danger of a large class of landless free men. Planters increasingly preferred to invest in enslaved Africans, whose children would also be enslaved, over indentured servants who would eventually demand freedom and land.
For transported prisoners — Monmouth rebels, Irish prisoners from the Williamite wars, and later convicted felons under the Transportation Act 1718 — the colonies were a place of punishment, not opportunity. They had no choice of destination, no legal protections, and no resources. The fate of transported prisoners shows that the British Empire was simultaneously a space of opportunity for some and a system of coerced labour for others.