This book provides a vivid and accessible history of first-generation immigrants to England in the later Middle Ages. Accounting for upwards of two percent of the population and coming from all parts of Europe and beyond, immigrants spread out over the kingdom, settling in the countryside as well as in towns, taking work as agricultural labourers, skilled craftspeople and professionals. Often encouraged and welcomed, sometimes vilified and victimised, immigrants were always on the social and political agenda. Immigrant England is the first book to address a phenomenon and issue of vital concern to English people at the time, to their descendants living in the United Kingdom today and to all those interested in the historical dimensions of immigration policy, attitudes to ethnicity and race and concepts of Englishness and Britishness.
Autorentext
W. Mark Ormrod is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the University of York Bart Lambert is Lecturer in the History of the European City in the High and Late Middle Ages and a member of the HOST research group at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, BelgiumJonathan Mackman is Honorary Fellow in History at the University of York
Klappentext
Immigrant England, 13001550 provides a comprehensive account of the identities, nationalities, occupations, families and experiences of first-generation immigrants to England during the later Middle Ages. It addresses both official policy and public responses to immigration in the age of the Black Death, the Hundred Years War and the early Tudor monarchy, revealing how dramatic changes in the English economy fundamentally affected levels of tolerance and discrimination. Drawing on data unique in Europe before the nineteenth century, the book provides both a quantitative analysis of immigrants and a qualitative assessment of the reception these incomers received from English society at large. Accounting for one per cent or more of the population of England in the fifteenth century and coming from all parts of Europe and beyond, immigrants spread out over the kingdom. They settled in the countryside as well as in towns, and in a multitude of occupations, from agricultural labour to skilled crafts and professions. Often encouraged and welcomed, sometimes vilified and victimised, immigrants were always on the social and political agenda in late-medieval England. This book is the first to address a phenomenon and issue of vital concern to English people at the time, to their descendants living in the United Kingdom today and to all those interested in the historical dimensions of immigration policy, attitudes to ethnicity and race, and concepts of Englishness and Britishness.
Inhalt
1 Introduction: immigrant England2 Defining and regulating the immigrant3 Numbers and distribution4 Immigrants from the British Isles5 Immigrants from overseas6 Supplying the market7 Wealth, status and gender8 Old worlds, new immigrants9 Cultural contact10 Integration and confrontation11 Conclusion: nationalism, racism and xenophobiaBibliographyIndex