Wed Dec 27 22:43:54 EST 2006
Published by EH.NET (December 2006)
Lien Bich Luu, _Immigrants and the Industries of London, 1500-1700_.
Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005. xiii + 366 pp. $100 (hardcover), ISBN:
0-7546-0330-X.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Patrick Wallis, London School of Economics.
The aim of Lien Bich Luu's study is to examine immigrants' impact on
the economy of early modern London. Taking as her starting point the
standard problem of how a relatively backward country caught up with
the more advanced industries of mainland Europe, Luu focuses on the
transmission of skills via migration into London in the second half
of the sixteenth century (there is relatively little here about the
period after 1610).
The first half of the book is a solid survey of the literature on
migration and early modern London. Luu begins by building a checklist
of the economic effects of migrants. The end point is largely
unsurprising -- essentially, local context and demand matter. A
supply of skilled migrants is not enough to ensure skills are
transferred. One neglected point that she highlights is that many
migrants move occupation when they move country.
The primary context for her story, the dramatic expansion of London,
is set out in chapter two. The third chapter discusses the English
crown's varied and largely unsuccessful attempts to import skilled
craftsmen to create new industries. Much more significant was the
state's not always graceful acceptance of mass religious migration.
The communities where these migrants settled often became centers of
textile production. These were often relatively short booms, however.
Many migrants left soon after they arrived, in part because of local
hostility, and whether many of these towns saw much skill transfer
remains moot.
Chapter four discuses London as the focus of foreign migrant
settlement in England throughout this period. Aliens made up over 12
percent of the city's population in the 1550s. But many remained
unsettled, hoping to return. Meanwhile, they lived in clusters, often
in areas where the guilds were weak. Through a good study of the
alien listings, Luu shows that immigrants engaged mainly in trades
already practiced in London. However, they did employ English
apprentices and servants, in part because of legal restrictions: as
she shows in chapter five, compassion toward fellow Protestants never
overcame fear of the threat of competition, and legal and
institutional discrimination against migrants remained widespread.
The repeated contrasts with Dutch cities' openness to immigrants
suggest that any skills that were transferred occurred in the teeth
of institutional and social resistance to change.
The empirical core of the book is the three case studies that make up
the second half of the book. The first is on silk weaving, a new
industry to England in the sixteenth century. In 1593, 20 percent of
alien households engaged in silk production. Exactly how silk weaving
was established remains uncertain. Certainly, many aliens took up the
trade only after arriving in London. Weavers were admitted to the
London guild, but were required to take on English apprentices. This
probably supplied the main mechanism for skill transfer, but Luu has
no way to prove her case. By the early seventeenth century there is
evidence of natives engaged in the trade, but silk weaving continued
to be an area where migrants concentrated into the eighteenth century.
The second case study is of the silver trade. The silver industry in
fifteenth-century London was relatively backward and relied on mobile
foreign journeymen. By the eighteenth century, migrants who settled
had made London a leader in silver production. Quite why English
silversmiths did not acquire skills from medieval traveling artisans
is debatable: Luu's hypothesis of a permanent skill deficit comes
close to begging the question. As with the weavers, alien
silversmiths were kept in a subordinate position by the guild. Over
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, increasing numbers of
English worked as apprentices and servants with migrants, but it was
not until the mid-eighteenth century that native work was of the same
quality as that of aliens.
Luu's final case study is beer brewing, which slowly displaced ale in
the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The themes are familiar: beer
was produced in London by aliens in the fifteenth century, but it
only became popular among the English in the sixteenth century. As
beer production expanded the industry consolidated. Aliens were
squeezed out by English entrepreneurs with greater access to capital.
The English also used institutions, particularly the Brewers'
Company, to discriminate against rivals (whether or not aliens had
weaker managerial skills, as Luu also suggests, is less convincing).
Throughout this period, aliens remained a significant part of the
brewing workforce. Again, the actual process of skill transmission
remains vague: marriage, apprenticeship and service all offered a way
to learn, but it is hard to identify which, if any, played a
particular part. That London beer brewers produced a slightly
different product to continental brewers adds a further ambiguity to
this account.
Luu's account of migrants and technological transfer is, in the end,
somewhat inconclusive. This is, perhaps, inevitable, given the
difficulties of observing or measuring the transfer of skills. Here,
however, the overall impression is of the difficulties of
transferring skills and the durability of native opposition toward
alien artisans. Each case study describes transmission taking more
than a century, leaving one wondering if mass migration really does
facilitate the transfer of skills. In sum, Luu's account is a useful
and welcome addition to the literature, but one that will sustain
rather than settle debate on immigration and economic change in early
modern Europe.
Patrick Wallis is the editor of _Guilds and Associations in Europe,
1100-1900_, which will be published shortly by the Centre for
Metropolitan History, University of London.
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