Home and Belonging in the British Atlantic Word, c.1750–1830

Abstract

This dissertation explores the significance of ‘home’ in the lives and letters of temporary migrants in the British Atlantic world from the mid-eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries. It centres on the experiences of Britons who migrated temporarily to Jamaica, Nova Scotia, and Upper Canada, three British colonies that are not often considered together. Focusing primarily on personal correspondence, this study analyzes both material and emotional aspects of home and belonging for these temporary migrants and the friends and family they left behind in Britain. It employs a broad conceptualization of ‘home’ as something both physical and conceptual that was also connected to identity and belonging. There are three interconnected arguments advanced by this research. The first is that studying temporary migrants, especially to different colonial locations, throws the significance of home during this period into sharper relief. The second is that these experiences reveal that home was complicated, variable, and changeable, and its study requires an approach that accounts for this complexity. The third is that ideas about home, and these people’s attempts to create and sustain a sense of home despite distance, were entangled with processes of colonialism and empire. Despite their intention of returning to Britain, these temporary migrants tried to make themselves feel at home in the colonies, while also sustaining connections to their past and future homes in Britain. These processes included assessing the habitability of the colonies in terms of factors like climate and society, and 'improving' these places by building homes and settlements. They also involved sending and receiving objects and letters across and around the Atlantic as a means of seeking both emotional and physical comfort, and of maintaining relationships and connections to people and places. Finally, they entailed grappling with questions of return, belonging, and the ‘ideal’ location to make home in the long term. In all cases, these ideas were changed with time, distance, and experience. Ultimately, this study contributes to our understanding of the complex relationship between home, belonging, and identity, as well as their connection to processes of empire and colonialism in the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century British world.