Land and labour provides the first full-length history of the Potters’ Emigration Society, the controversial trade union scheme designed to solve the problems of surplus labour by changing workers into farmers on land acquired in frontier Wisconsin. The book is based on intensive research into British and American newspapers, passenger lists, census, manuscript, and genealogical sources. After tracing the scheme’s industrial origins and founding in the Potteries, it examines the migration and settlement process, expansion to other trades and areas, and finally the circumstances that led to its demise in 1851. Despite the Society’s failure, the history offers unique insight into working-class dreams of landed independence in the American West and into the complex and contingent character of nineteenth-century emigration.
Price: $130.00
Pages: 272
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Publication Date:
May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781526171351
Format: Hardcover
‘This is top-notch research on an important topic in English and American history, full of well-told and fascinating stories. It takes a refreshing look at both industrial and agricultural history in England and America and illustrates how their cultural and economic relationship took many forms in the nineteenth century.’
William E. Van Vugt, Calvin University
'Crawford has written a very accessible, enjoyable, and extremely solidly researched narrative of this early attempt to craft a non-governmental safety net by leveraging worker solidarity'
Jamie L Bronstein, Victorian Studies
Martin Crawford is Emeritus Professor of Anglo-American History at Keele University
Introduction
1 Industrial origins
2 1844: An emigration plan
3 1845–6: Finding land
4 1847–8: Settling the land
5 1849: Expansion and scrutiny
6 1850–1: Crisis and decline
Conclusion
