Managing Mobility : The British Imperial State and Global Migration, 1840–1860

In the first age of mass migration (1840–1860), the British imperial state intervened to ensure a racialised global economic order in the wake of Emancipation. Managing Mobility analyzes the large-scale movement of people as labor assets across the British Empire, considering the outcomes of these significant projects of social engineering.

Between 1840 and 1860 the British Empire expanded rapidly in scale, with rampant annexation of territory and ruthless suppression of rebellion. These decades also witnessed an unprecedented movement of people across the Empire and around the world, with over 2.6 million emigrants leaving Britain in the 1850s alone. Managing Mobility examines how the British imperial state facilitated the mass migration of its impoverished subjects as labor assets, shipped across vast expanses of ocean to contribute to the economy of the Empire. Philip Harling analyzes the ideological framework which underpinned these interventions and discusses the journeys taken by emigrants across four continents, considering the varied outcomes of these significant projects of social engineering. In doing so, this study demonstrates how the British imperial state harnessed migration to ensure and maintain a racialised global economic order in the decades after Emancipation.