Islands of exit

Abstract

Most of the islands of Britain were largely unaffected by direct industrialisation before 1850: they were on the periphery of the great changes. The Isle of Man provides relatively straightforward conditions in which to examine the operations of migratory flows in a context which remained primarily rural, with some mining and fishing as secondary factors. The emigration records of the Isle of Man and Guernsey display great contrasts in their trajectories, though the final shape was rather similar. The Isle of Man was only marginally affected by the emigrations, though population pressure slowly diminished during the rest of the nineteenth century. Dramatic and sudden exoduses of several hundred people from the Isle of Man began in the mid-1820s. It was essentially a concentrated outflow of Manx people to Ohio, where the emigrants developed strong connections which were sustained for more than a century.