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Migration has played an important part in Britain's history from c1000 to the present day. It has influenced Britain’s economy, politics, culture and relationship with the wider world. 
Every single person living in Britain today is descended from immigrants. From the first settlers about 25,000 years ago, people have come here, settled and mixed with each other. Throughout our history, moving here has changed the people who came and they have changed Britain. Our changing population has been an unchanging fact. The story of migration is the story of our nation seen through the lives of all of us.
As you study migration you will encounter the major events and changes in the history of Britain.  These include the Norman Conquest, the Hundred Years' War, the Reformation, enslavement, the British Empire, the Industrial Revolution, the two World Wars, the Cold War, the European Union and the modern conflicts causing mass movement of people seeking safety. You will also see how Britain’s economy and its relationship with the wider world changed and developed over 1000 years. Immigrants to Britain played a part in all of these, sometimes a key role.
Immigration is a controversial political topic in our own time. Many of today’s issues and debates are the same as those in the past, while others are very different. Studying the history of migration will help you think about today’s arguments in context, with evidence, so that you can make informed judgements that learn from history.

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Migration has played an important part in Britain's history from c1000 to the present day. It has influenced Britain’s economy, politics, culture and relationship with the wider world. 
In 1000 England was ruled by Saxons and Danes; migrants who had invaded and settled. The next invaders were the Normans who seized control of the country. They brought with them European Jews who were first welcomed and protected, but later persecuted and deported. During the Middle Ages immigrants arrived from all over Europe, for many reasons and bringing many skills, and settled all over England.
In the 16th and 17th centuries they were joined by women and men from North Africa as well as Gypsy Travellers, and then by Protestant refugees from France and the Low Countries. As Britain expanded its foothold in India and the Caribbean and began trading in enslaved Africans, increasing numbers of Africans and Indians arrived here to work.

With the Industrial Revolution and the growth of the factory system, there was mass migration of people seeking work, from Ireland, Scotland and Italy especially. Merchant seamen from along the shipping routes in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and Scandinavia arrived and, in many cases, stayed. Others - many from Germany - came to start businesses. There were refugees, too, including political exiles and large numbers of Eastern European Jews fleeing racially motivated violence.
In the early 20th century immigration controls tightened. In the world wars Germans, Austrians and (in World War Two) Italians were interned. Britain still accepted refugees - large numbers of Belgians in World War One and smaller numbers of Jews escaping Nazi persecution in the 1930s. After World War Two larger scale migration from Britain’s former colonies in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean began. Towards the end of the century there was a high level of migration of workers from member states in the European Union, as well as increasing numbers of people fleeing foreign wars hoping to be granted refugee status and be allowed to live in the UK. When London hosted the 2012 Olympics it could claim that it had a community from every competing state living in the city.

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Migration has played an important part in Britain's history from c1000 to the present day. It has influenced Britain’s economy, politics, culture and relationship with the wider world. 
People migrated to Britain for many reasons. Many were refugees fleeing persecution and seeking asylum and safety. Some were forced to come here against their will, kidnapped or enslaved. Most, however, were economic migrants looking for work and a better life.
Britain was sometimes welcoming, and sometimes unwelcoming, to immigrants. Some integrated into British society quickly and easily, while for others it was a constant struggle. Several times throughout our history members of minorities had to organise and take action for recognition of their right to stay and belong.
The responses of different sections of British society varied. Governments often welcomed immigrants because they brought great economic benefit. On the other hand, many laws were passed to control and restrict immigration, especially in recent years. Working people sometimes feared that immigrants threatened their jobs and wages. There were times of anti-immigrant violence and even expulsion. However, most settled and were eventually accepted in cities, towns and villages.
There has been a deep and profound cultural and social impact, affecting language, fashion, food, music, literature and religious life. Economically, immigrants played a key role in the rise of manufacturing, the development of banking and capitalism, the industrial and technological revolutions and the modern service economy. The impact was not always easy, however. The changes brought by immigration often resulted in upheaval, conflict and communal tensions, as well as pressure on jobs and services.
In the 11th century England was colonised by the Normans. 800 years later Britain was the coloniser, ruling a fifth of the world’s people. Most of the migration stories over the last millennium (1000 years) were connected with Britain’s growing world role. The history of this country cannot be detached from world history, and the millions of people who migrated here were an outcome of that reality.
One pattern repeats again and again throughout our history. People arrive and are seen as outsiders, aliens, ‘the other’ with their strange customs, clothes, food and beliefs. Over time, they become British and what ‘Britishness’ means changes to include them. Some of those who migrated join those who are suspicious of the next arrivals, until they too become part of a ‘Britishness’ that has changed again.  On one occasion in the Middle Ages, the silk weavers guild complained that Flemish weavers were threatening the jobs of ‘English’ women silk weavers. Many of those women were themselves immigrants from Italy and the Middle East.

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Immigration was constant and needed. Most migrants settled peacefully but they were not always welcomed. Ideas of who ‘belonged’ and who did not often changed.
We are all descended from migrants. The earliest ancestors of people living in Britain today arrived about 25,000 years ago from other parts of Europe. Since then people continued to migrate here for thousands of years for three main reasons:
Trading routes by sea from Northern Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa have existed for centuries, bringing goods and people.
The Roman conquest from AD43 brought people from across the Roman Empire including Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.  Soldiers from what is now Croatia, for example, built a fort in Cumbria, and a Bulgarian cavalry officer was buried in Colchester. Some settled and made a life here.
After the Roman armies left Britain, Roman influence remained for centuries. Peoples’ lives mixed ancient British and Roman influences. Between the 5th and 11th centuries, many Germanic people - Angles, Saxons and Jutes  - arrived to conquer and settle. The kingdoms they created had a wide mix of languages and cultures. They continued to have trading links with the rest of Europe and North Africa and possibly further afield to Asia. Viking invaders settled in large numbers in the north and east in the 9th and 10th centuries and at different times England was ruled by Saxon and Viking monarchs.
England in 1000 was already a multicultural and multilingual society, and had been for centuries. We know this from various kinds of evidence:


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Immigration was constant and needed. Most migrants settled peacefully but they were not always welcomed. Ideas of who ‘belonged’ and who did not often changed.
Most people were farmers who lived in the same villages all of their lives.  Some were freemen owning their own land but many were villeins who worked for their lord in return for some land. Most people ate what they grew. Other things they needed they would either make themselves or buy in local markets. The markets were in towns where craftspeople, merchants and traders lived with their servants. The making and selling of goods was controlled by the different craft guilds which had a lot of power. Everything was made by hand and artists and craftspeople were greatly valued.
England had a mainly primary economy, producing raw materials. Its most valuable export was high quality wool which merchants sold to weavers in the Low Countries who made it into cloth.  Kings who wanted to increase their wealth to fight wars did so by taxing goods coming in and out of England. They realised that England - and the Crown - would be richer if people learned how to weave fine woollen cloth themselves and sell it overseas.
Death was very present in people’s lives. Many mothers died in childbirth, infant mortality was high and in the mid 14th century the Black Death killed up to half the population. This caused a serious labour shortage: England needed farm workers, servants and craftspeople all over the country.
The monarchy and the Church looked for ways to borrow money for wars and building projects. They needed to find wealthy people who would lend them money: however, the Church did not allow Catholics to lend money with interest.

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Immigration was constant and needed. Most migrants settled peacefully but they were not always welcomed. Ideas of who ‘belonged’ and who did not often changed.
We are all descended from migrants. The earliest ancestors of people living in Britain today arrived about 25,000 years ago from other parts of Europe. Since then people continued to migrate here for thousands of years for three main reasons:
Trading routes by sea from Northern Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa have existed for centuries, bringing goods and people.
The Roman conquest from AD43 brought people from across the Roman Empire including Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.  Soldiers from what is now Croatia, for example, built a fort in Cumbria, and a Bulgarian cavalry officer was buried in Colchester. Some settled and made a life here.
After the Roman armies left Britain, Roman influence remained for centuries. Peoples’ lives mixed ancient British and Roman influences. Between the 5th and 11th centuries, many Germanic people - Angles, Saxons and Jutes  - arrived to conquer and settle. The kingdoms they created had a wide mix of languages and cultures. They continued to have trading links with the rest of Europe and North Africa and possibly further afield to Asia. Viking invaders settled in large numbers in the north and east in the 9th and 10th centuries and at different times England was ruled by Saxon and Viking monarchs.
England in 1000 was already a multicultural and multilingual society, and had been for centuries. We know this from various kinds of evidence:


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Immigration was constant and needed. Most migrants settled peacefully but they were not always welcomed. Ideas of who ‘belonged’ and who did not often changed.
England was a Catholic country; the church was central to people’s lives and it controlled thinking about life and death. For two hundred years from 1095, England was involved in the Crusades, a series of wars that were fought to control the lands around Jerusalem. This encouraged hostility against Jews and Muslims. Hatred against Jews - religious anti-Semitism - was stirred up by some people with power and influence.
There was great tension between the ruling class and the mass of the population who had no say in government. This sometimes erupted into rebellion when minority groups were targeted by rioters.
Many foreigners were under the protection of the monarch. This meant they could be seen as being on the side of the ruling class. When times were hard, foreigners were blamed for unemployment and rising prices.

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Immigration was constant and needed. Most migrants settled peacefully but they were not always welcomed. Ideas of who ‘belonged’ and who did not often changed.
In theory, anyone born in lands ruled by the king was a citizen and anyone born elsewhere was an ‘alien’ or foreigner. However, this was often complicated.

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Immigration was constant and needed. Most migrants settled peacefully but they were not always welcomed. Ideas of who ‘belonged’ and who did not often changed.
Immigrants arrived in England for many different reasons:
Most immigrants came to England looking for work. There were opportunities here for skilled artisans who wanted a better life for themselves and their families.
Problems in their own homelands forced many to migrate. People came to escape war and economic collapse and some were refugees.
Those in power encouraged some groups to come. Some were encouraged to come because their skills were needed to boost England’s economy. Others were invited because they could lend money to ruling kings and bishops.
A few were forced to come and live here. Some were political prisoners, while others were kidnapped and sold as slaves.
Some immigrants belonged to the ruling classes. They included foreign nobles and princesses arriving with their attendants to marry kings.
On the whole, foreign-born immigrants settled in well during the Middle Ages, becoming part of local communities. However, there was often resentment from those who felt immigrants were getting unfair special treatment, taking local jobs and pushing up prices.
Their treatment depended on where they came from. Those born in lands controlled by the English Crown were not seen as foreign. However, those born outside the Crown’s realms were known as ‘aliens’.
Their treatment depended on how useful they were. When they were needed, immigrants often enjoyed Crown protection. However, as Jews found in the 13th century when King Edward I expelled them from England, that could suddenly and completely change.
Their treatment depended on when they were here. In times of war or economic hardship, immigrants could be victimised. When there was a labour shortage they could be welcomed.
The terrible treatment of Jews in the early Middle Ages had an impact on Jewish communities across Europe. The racist myth of the Blood Libel and other measures against Jews spread across the continent, with tragic results of Jews being put on trial and murdered in several countries.
Later, as foreign and local-born people mixed, grew up together and learnt from each other in communities all over the country, the social and cultural impact must have been great, affecting the ways in which people understood each other’s cultures. We do not have direct evidence of this because most people could not read or write. However, the facts that immigrants were so widely distributed and that we know of very few cases of conflict suggests that most settled and integrated.
Immigrants had a very great economic impact, in different ways at different times:

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Immigrants came to work in many occupations. Some came as refugees. The Normans came as invaders. Jews were invited by King William I because he wanted to borrow from Jewish moneylenders.

               
                 The Normans who arrived with an army in 1066 were military invaders. William  the Conqueror claimed he was the rightful King of England, and after the Battle of Hastings in 1066, he took control of England by force, becoming its ruler. William had promised all Norman nobles who joined the invasion that they could have land which was then seized from Anglo-Danish owners.
This migration was different from all the others that followed because the Normans took political and economic power and imposed their rule forcefully.
William controlled England by means of a series of connected measures. He built castles on high points with a view over towns and countryside, and with living quarters for troops. He imposed strict systems of justice and taxation and, to help him collect taxes, organised a survey of all the land and property in the kingdom. This was recorded in the Domesday Book.

      
        William also imposed the feudal system. This was a form of organisation and control in which everyone had their place. He also made sure that people close to him were in charge of the Church.

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Immigrants came to work in many occupations. Some came as refugees. The Normans came as invaders. Jews were invited by King William I because he wanted to borrow from Jewish moneylenders.
Jewish settlers arrived in England in about 1070, invited by William the Conqueror. To carry out his building programme (castles and cathedrals) he needed to borrow large sums of money, however Catholic teaching did not allow Christians to lend money with interest. Jewish people were therefore encouraged, sometimes forced, to be moneylenders. William wanted them in England so that he could borrow money and so they could help in the administration of his government.
While some Jewish moneylenders - such as Aaron of Lincoln and Licoricia of Oxford - became extremely rich, many Jews simply had ordinary jobs within the communities where they lived. These ranged from doctors to fishmongers. They lived in many parts of England and Wales, sometimes in distinct communities practising their rituals, and sometimes alongside the wider population.
They were allowed to mix freely and were given a 'Charter of Liberties' by King Henry I which meant they could go to the safety of the King’s castles if they were in danger.  This meant the general population sometimes saw them as being on the side of the rulers. They also had to pay higher taxes than everyone else in return for protection from the Crown.
It is difficult to get a full picture of the lives of Jews in the 11th and 12th centuries because we do not have any written accounts from Jewish people living at the time. They do appear in some tax records and legal documents and there are occasional buildings recorded, such as the Jew’s house in Lincoln and the remains of a ritual bath in Bristol, however there is still a great deal that we do not yet know.
A lot of migrants came to England from the Low Countries, several small states in what is now Belgium and the Netherlands. Many came as refugees from war as it was only a short sea journey to the south of England, where conditions were more peaceful and wages were better.
Weavers were encouraged to come by kings such as Henry III and Edward III who wanted them to pass on weaving skills to English craftspeople.  They were attracted by the fact that King Edward III let them set up their own weavers’ guild (which meant they could control their own business) and promised to help them if the English guilds caused problems for them. King Edward III also let them work wherever they wanted to. For a time he even stopped English wool leaving the country so the Flemish weavers would have to come here to work.

Many other Flemish and Dutch artisans came and settled in England. Tailors, glaziers, brick makers and shoemakers were among the many that crossed by sea to the south east of England. Craftspeople also came from Ireland, Scotland and France to fill a wide variety of occupations; from priests and saddle makers to goldsmiths and bakers.

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Immigrants came to work in many occupations. Some came as refugees. The Normans came as invaders. Jews were invited by King William I because he wanted to borrow from Jewish moneylenders.

               
                 The Normans who arrived with an army in 1066 were military invaders. William  the Conqueror claimed he was the rightful King of England, and after the Battle of Hastings in 1066, he took control of England by force, becoming its ruler. William had promised all Norman nobles who joined the invasion that they could have land which was then seized from Anglo-Danish owners.
This migration was different from all the others that followed because the Normans took political and economic power and imposed their rule forcefully.
William controlled England by means of a series of connected measures. He built castles on high points with a view over towns and countryside, and with living quarters for troops. He imposed strict systems of justice and taxation and, to help him collect taxes, organised a survey of all the land and property in the kingdom. This was recorded in the Domesday Book.

      
        William also imposed the feudal system. This was a form of organisation and control in which everyone had their place. He also made sure that people close to him were in charge of the Church.

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Immigrants came to work in many occupations. Some came as refugees. The Normans came as invaders. Jews were invited by King William I because he wanted to borrow from Jewish moneylenders.
In the 15th century approximately one in every 10 people in England was foreign-born, and in London it was one in six. People came for many different reasons and everyone had their own story. Apart from artisans and craftspeople, the most common causes for migration were:
From the 1220s, wealthy banking families from Lombardy in what is now Italy began to set up in London, lending money to kings such as Edward I who used it for wars and castle building in Wales. They replaced the Jewish moneylenders who were eventually expelled when they were no longer needed.
At the same time, German merchants from the Hanseatic League (who traded between northern European cities) set up a trading settlement called the steelyard on the banks of the river Thames in London.  It was a community with its own chapel and accommodation. The king gave these bankers and merchants a Charter in 1303, allowing them to trade in wool and other goods at reduced tax rates. There were also Spanish and Portuguese wine merchants in some English ports.
There was a dark trade in enslaved young people from Iceland centred around the ports of Bristol and Hull. Some were kidnapped from their homes by English sailors, while others were sold by their poor and penniless parents. They were brought to England by force and then sold, often to artisans  who used them as servants or labourers. Records show that there were Icelandic children in several towns in the English Midlands.
Some foreigners who came to settle were from the nobility and royalty. They included foreign nobles, some of them refugees, arriving under Crown protection. When foreign princesses arrived to marry kings, they brought many relatives and attendants who settled with them. Migrants with good connections could get letters of denization from the King, granting them the right to stay.
Servants and labourers were, by far, the largest group which came to work across England. Many of them were from Ireland, Scotland and France. Households in the towns and artisans’ workshops all over the country depended on foreign labour.

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Migrants had different experiences. Norman rule was resisted unsuccessfully and Jews were terrorised and expelled. Though most migrant workers settled well, they were sometimes targeted.
The poor often hated their Norman rulers and, in the early years of King William I’s rule, there were several rebellions which were put down violently.
The Anglo-Danish lords who had lost their land and property to William's Norman lords posed a threat to William's rule. Some of them joined King Sweyn of Denmark when he invaded England in 1069, without success. In what is known as the Harrying of the North, William’s forces destroyed the countryside around York, starving out the remaining rebels, killing animals and burning crops.
When a landholder called Hereward led a rebellion in the Isle of Ely in eastern England, the Normans dealt with the uprising by using a law called murdrum. If a Norman was murdered and the killer was not found, everyone in the area had to pay a fine.
Although Hereward and other forest fighters, known at the time as the ‘green men’,   caused difficulties for the Normans, they were eventually defeated.
The Norman lords successfully imposed their rule on England. The main threat to Norman kings would be their own relatives and other lords who challenged their position. Over the centuries there were many battles for power which resulted in civil wars.

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Migrants had different experiences. Norman rule was resisted unsuccessfully and Jews were terrorised and expelled. Though most migrant workers settled well, they were sometimes targeted.
Conditions for Jews in England got steadily worse in the 12th and 13th centuries as anti-Semitic attacks increased in frequency and violence.
    The Crusades were a time of rising opposition against all faiths that were not Catholic and attacks on Jews grew, stirred up by some priests who blamed Jews for the death of Jesus. When times were hard, Jews - the only religious minority - were scapegoated and blamed. Many ordinary people who resented the special protection Jews had received and connected them with their hated rulers were ready to turn on them. Meanwhile the monarchy, borrowing from Italian bankers, depended less and less on money from rich Jews and so offered them less protection.
In 1144 Jews in Norwich were accused of ritually murdering a local boy in an imitation of the death of Jesus. They sought safety in the castle but the myth of the Blood Libel spread across Europe. Jews were massacred in London in 1189 and York in 1190, and many restrictions were placed on Jews in the following years.  A child murder in Lincoln in 1255 led to another Blood Libel and 18 Jews were hanged.
King Henry III imposed heavy taxes on Jews in 1250, forcing them to claim back money people owed them, which made them even more unpopular. As a result, anti-Jewish riots erupted and hundreds of Jews were murdered. In some cases the archa (the local record of who owed money to Jews) was destroyed. In 1275 King Edward I imposed the Statute of Jewry. This statute ruled that Jews were no longer allowed to collect interest and most people owing them money would not have to pay. This made him popular with the many people who owed money. This was a disaster and forced most Jews into extreme poverty. They were forced to trim edges off coins, melt them down and sell the silver. This was highly illegal. If caught - and many were - they were executed.
Under the statute Jews also had to wear yellow badges and were allowed to live in only a few towns. King Edward I wanted to force them to convert to Christianity, however while some agreed, many refused. In 1290 King Edward I expelled all the remaining 3000 Jews from England and they were forced to walk to the south coast and cross by sea to northern Europe as refugees. Many died on the journey - in one case, a ship’s captain left his passengers on a sandbank to drown when the tide rose. It is reported that he told them to call on their God to save them so it seems to have been a vindictive act.
Some Jews did remain, either as Christian converts or through hiding their true identity, but it took nearly 400 years for a Jewish community to return to England.

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Migrants had different experiences. Norman rule was resisted unsuccessfully and Jews were terrorised and expelled. Though most migrant workers settled well, they were sometimes targeted.
The poor often hated their Norman rulers and, in the early years of King William I’s rule, there were several rebellions which were put down violently.
The Anglo-Danish lords who had lost their land and property to William's Norman lords posed a threat to William's rule. Some of them joined King Sweyn of Denmark when he invaded England in 1069, without success. In what is known as the Harrying of the North, William’s forces destroyed the countryside around York, starving out the remaining rebels, killing animals and burning crops.
When a landholder called Hereward led a rebellion in the Isle of Ely in eastern England, the Normans dealt with the uprising by using a law called murdrum. If a Norman was murdered and the killer was not found, everyone in the area had to pay a fine.
Although Hereward and other forest fighters, known at the time as the ‘green men’,   caused difficulties for the Normans, they were eventually defeated.
The Norman lords successfully imposed their rule on England. The main threat to Norman kings would be their own relatives and other lords who challenged their position. Over the centuries there were many battles for power which resulted in civil wars.

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Migrants had different experiences. Norman rule was resisted unsuccessfully and Jews were terrorised and expelled. Though most migrant workers settled well, they were sometimes targeted.
By the 15th century there were immigrants from all over Europe in Medieval England and they were spread all over the country. We know this from documents that have survived including letters, court records and - most of all - tax records in the alien subsidy returns, a list which included details like names, place of residence and sometimes occupations and origins. In the later Middle Ages, all foreign-born males and some females (in cases where they were heads of households) were taxed and their names, occupations and places of residence were written down.
One Medieval historian has said that the records show that no one was more than ten miles away from an immigrant. Foreign-born people included goldsmiths, bakers, inn-keepers, doctors, priests, farm labourers, tailors, brewers, weavers - in fact, a whole cross-section of occupations in towns and countryside.
Official reception of immigrants was sometimes warm, especially in the 14th century. In the 1330s, King Edward III gave strong protection to Flemish weavers. After the Black Death in the late 1340s so many people had died that there was a serious shortage of workers and artisans. At this time immigrants were welcomed to fill the gap and there were foreign-born workers in most towns and villages. In 1354 a law gave aliens who appeared in court the right to be tried by a half-alien jury. After 1370, letters of denization gave migrants the same rights and protection as English citizens.
On the whole, foreign-born immigrants settled in well during the Middle Ages and became part of local communities. While they were classed - and taxed - as aliens, their children born in England were full citizens. Some did very well indeed, rising to be mayors and freemen of their towns or highly regarded in their occupation.
Entries in tax records together with archaeological finds and DNA evidence also suggest the presence of people from Asia or Africa. We know too that goods and ideas reached our shores from beyond Europe.

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Migrants had different experiences. Norman rule was resisted unsuccessfully and Jews were terrorised and expelled. Though most migrant workers settled well, they were sometimes targeted.
Although most medieval immigrants settled peacefully and became part of their communities, at times of crisis they could be vulnerable and at risk of violent attacks.
The craft guilds in cities such as London believed foreign workers were undercutting them and so saw them as a threat to their members’ livelihoods.
They frequently put pressure on their rulers to impose controls on immigrant workers.
All of these measures were imposed because English merchants placed a lot of pressure on weak kings.
Wealthy foreigners were often hated because people believed they received special privileges and saw them as being on the side of the rulers.  During the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt rioters in London murdered about 150 foreign weavers and merchants. The story goes that they were asked to say the words ‘bread and cheese’ and if they answered with an accent, they were beheaded.
In times of war, ‘enemy aliens’ could have their goods confiscated or be deported. Flemish merchants, French migrants and Irish immigrants were all expelled from England at different times. 
Many people resented foreign merchants and bankers who they thought had come only to make money for themselves. During the 1381 revolt and again in 1492, the London steelyard was destroyed by rioters.
One of the most useful sources for detail of medieval immigrants’ lives, is also an example of how pressure was put on immigrants. The 1440 alien subsidies were special taxes imposed on aliens as a result of anti-foreigner pressure. They record the names, occupations and places of residence of immigrants at the time.
Think about this statement:
‘Medieval England was a very difficult place for foreigners to settle in.’ How far do you agree?
Read through this guide making a note of evidence to support this statement.  Why were foreigners and minority groups sometimes made to feel unwelcome?
Then read through making a note of evidence to oppose the statement. Why were foreign migrants sometimes welcomed?

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The impact of migration was huge, from how the Normans governed with Jewish money to how migrants kick-started manufacturing and trade. There were also tensions that sometimes exploded dangerously.
The Norman conquerors and their descendants, who controlled England for centuries, had a huge impact on our laws, land ownership and system of government which is still felt today.  They invaded and colonised England and organised the fastest and deepest transfer of land and wealth in the country’s history. Within a few years of William the Conqueror becoming king, over 40 per cent of the land was in the hands of a small number of people, all of whom were foreign.
The Normans abolished slavery after information collected for the Domesday Book had revealed that about 10 per cent of the people were slaves.  The way we name ourselves also comes from the Normans because they introduced the system of surnames to show people’s occupations or where they had migrated from.
The Normans also introduced a new language, a dialect of Old French, although for some time only the conquerors would have understood it which meant that there was one language for the rulers and another for the ruled. Over time Old English and Old French came together in one language, but the separation between ‘higher’ words of French origin (eg, commence) and the ‘common’ words of English origin (eg, begin) persists and is reflected even in 21st century newspapers.

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The impact of migration was huge, from how the Normans governed with Jewish money to how migrants kick-started manufacturing and trade. There were also tensions that sometimes exploded dangerously.
The most obvious impact of the Jews brought over by King William I can be seen in the way he and his successors spent the funds they borrowed from moneylenders. The money was used to build castles, cathedrals and churches. It paid soldiers’ wages as Norman kings exerted their power in England and northern France.  It enabled the Normans to rule. Meanwhile, in the towns where they lived, Jewish moneylenders made it possible for local businesses to start up with loans to get them on their feet.
However, the later treatment of England’s Jews set a dark precedent. The Blood Libel originated in England and spread across Europe resulting in the murder of many Jews. England was the first place to make Jews wear a yellow badge, a measure copied by Nazis in the 20th century. After Jews were deported from England in 1290, other countries copied and expelled Jews.

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The impact of migration was huge, from how the Normans governed with Jewish money to how migrants kick-started manufacturing and trade. There were also tensions that sometimes exploded dangerously.
The Norman conquerors and their descendants, who controlled England for centuries, had a huge impact on our laws, land ownership and system of government which is still felt today.  They invaded and colonised England and organised the fastest and deepest transfer of land and wealth in the country’s history. Within a few years of William the Conqueror becoming king, over 40 per cent of the land was in the hands of a small number of people, all of whom were foreign.
The Normans abolished slavery after information collected for the Domesday Book had revealed that about 10 per cent of the people were slaves.  The way we name ourselves also comes from the Normans because they introduced the system of surnames to show people’s occupations or where they had migrated from.
The Normans also introduced a new language, a dialect of Old French, although for some time only the conquerors would have understood it which meant that there was one language for the rulers and another for the ruled. Over time Old English and Old French came together in one language, but the separation between ‘higher’ words of French origin (eg, commence) and the ‘common’ words of English origin (eg, begin) persists and is reflected even in 21st century newspapers.

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The impact of migration was huge, from how the Normans governed with Jewish money to how migrants kick-started manufacturing and trade. There were also tensions that sometimes exploded dangerously.
In the 14th and 15th centuries, Flemish and Dutch craftspeople brought skills that helped move the economy from a primary one based on raw materials to a secondary manufacturing one. This brought new wealth to England based on woollen textiles. They had a huge impact on the fortunes of towns in southern and eastern England and even Manchester, where Flemish weavers began the textile business which would eventually become world famous.
The economic impact was huge. Thanks to the input of Flemish cloth workers, for example, cloth production rose rapidly. England was beginning to produce its own cloth and makers, merchants and the Crown profited from the trade. Woollen cloth would be England’s main source of wealth for several hundred years.

            Immigrants brought many other skills, too. Dutch women taught brewers in East Anglia how to make beer using hops rather than with barley. Flemish brick makers were highly regarded and their styles influenced house construction.
Italian financiers had a significant impact on England’s military expansion. Italian money funded King Edward I’s campaign in Wales, the very first stage of English empire building. Loans to King Edward III helped fund English forces in the Hundred Years’ War. Lombard banking families, such as the Bardis, helped create the beginnings of London as an international financial market; a position it still holds today.
The bases set up by Hanseatic merchants at the steelyards in London and Lynn enabled England to become a key European trading centre, with woollen cloth a major commodity. Trade with cities around the North and Baltic Seas increased, bringing money to the Crown through tax on imports and exports.

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The impact of migration was huge, from how the Normans governed with Jewish money to how migrants kick-started manufacturing and trade. There were also tensions that sometimes exploded dangerously.
If asked at the time, people would probably have given different answers, as they do today.  English wool dyers or ale brewers may well have feared an influx of people they thought were competing with them for jobs. Members of London guilds and English merchants may have worried about threats to their profits.  At times, people suspected that foreigners - especially the French - were acting for the enemy.  But the fact that migrants were scattered so far and wide, in nearly every town and village, and that we have very few accounts of tension, suggests that they mostly fitted in and settled down.  People were used to the presence of 'aliens'. Most people, when asked, may well have seen immigration as a good thing, especially after the shortage of skills and labour following the Black Death.
With the long view we can see that Medieval immigration was very good indeed for England’s economy and, therefore, people’s lives. Migrants brought much needed manufacturing and creative skills. At the start of this period, England was part of a small island on the edge of Europe, invaded and colonised, producing basic raw materials. By 1500 it had a growing manufacturing economy based around the cloth trade, linked to a trading and financial centre of increasing importance. Migrants made this possible.
Most migrants themselves, if asked whether the move had been good for them, would probably have been positive.  England usually offered greater safety, a better income and the chance to build a new life. At times, however, there was great danger, most of all for the Jews, whose experience was a very dark chapter in English history.
England was both welcoming and unwelcoming, a pattern that still continues today.
Was the story of immigration to Medieval England a largely positive one?
This is a complex question. Read through this guide and note down evidence of the effect of immigration on the people already living here, on the migrants themselves, and on the country as a whole.

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Huge changes emerged from the Reformation, the Union with Scotland, the beginnings of empire, new global trade routes, the growth of business and the trade in enslaved Africans. 
The Reformation - when millions of people rejected the Roman Catholic Church and turned to Protestant Churches - was one of the key changes in European history and it had a significant effect on migration to Britain.
In 1500 England was a Roman Catholic country. By 1750, after the turmoil of the 16th century Reformation and the 17th century civil wars, Britain was the leading Protestant power in Europe. Catholic Spain and France were its main enemies.
   The country became a key place of safety for Protestant refugees . These included:
They were all initially welcomed but were eventually treated very differently based on their wealth and the skills they could offer.
By the mid-18th century, British society was more accepting of different religious practices, partly thanks to immigration. Protestant and Jewish communities had their own places of worship and similar freedoms were being offered to Nonconformists and, eventually, Catholics.

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Huge changes emerged from the Reformation, the Union with Scotland, the beginnings of empire, new global trade routes, the growth of business and the trade in enslaved Africans. 
In 1500 England and Scotland were separate kingdoms. Following the Act of Union in 1707, England and Scotland had joined together to form Great Britain.
In 1500 England already had an empire. Wales had been conquered in the Middle Ages and much of Ireland was under English military control.  As English power grew in the 17th and early 18th centuries, it began to seize coastal areas that could be reached directly by sea. English forces invaded the east coast of North America and Caribbean islands such as Barbados, St Kitts and Jamaica.
The Royal African Company set up fortresses on the West African coast and used these to transport enslaved people across the Atlantic to work on plantations in the Americas.  Meanwhile the East India Company’s trading posts in India grew into military forts and control of trade with Asia - previously held by the Dutch and the Mughal Empire - passed to Britain as a result of agreements with Indian rulers.
By 1750, England had been transformed into the British Empire. Its early growth and the Triangular Trade in enslaved Africans resulted in new patterns of migration to Britain from Africa, India and the Americas.
 Letter to the Royal African Company and their reply

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Huge changes emerged from the Reformation, the Union with Scotland, the beginnings of empire, new global trade routes, the growth of business and the trade in enslaved Africans. 
The Reformation - when millions of people rejected the Roman Catholic Church and turned to Protestant Churches - was one of the key changes in European history and it had a significant effect on migration to Britain.
In 1500 England was a Roman Catholic country. By 1750, after the turmoil of the 16th century Reformation and the 17th century civil wars, Britain was the leading Protestant power in Europe. Catholic Spain and France were its main enemies.
   The country became a key place of safety for Protestant refugees . These included:
They were all initially welcomed but were eventually treated very differently based on their wealth and the skills they could offer.
By the mid-18th century, British society was more accepting of different religious practices, partly thanks to immigration. Protestant and Jewish communities had their own places of worship and similar freedoms were being offered to Nonconformists and, eventually, Catholics.

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Huge changes emerged from the Reformation, the Union with Scotland, the beginnings of empire, new global trade routes, the growth of business and the trade in enslaved Africans. 
Just as Flemish and Dutch artisans had kick-started the growth of manufacturing in the Middle Ages, Walloons and Huguenots played a key part in the move to a capitalist economy based on banks, credit, stocks and shares.
This was a period when wealth and power started moving away from aristocratic landowners to businesses trading internationally in commodities such as sugar, tobacco, spices, tea, coffee and textiles.
The Bank of England, partly financed by Huguenots, and the London Stock Exchange formed the financial hub of Britain. This system of trade and profit required Britain to gain access to raw materials and cheap or enslaved labour. This resulted in increasing numbers of African and Asian people being brought to Britain, in most cases as forced labour.
The world of commerce and stock markets that was born in 17th and 18th century Britain is still the dominant economic system in the 21st century.

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Huge changes emerged from the Reformation, the Union with Scotland, the beginnings of empire, new global trade routes, the growth of business and the trade in enslaved Africans. 
This was a time of glaring contradictions in the way Europeans, in Britain especially, came to see humanity.
On the one hand, from the 1660s onwards, new understanding of science and a new appreciation of the arts brought freer humanist ideas. These valued critical thinking and emphasised the value of human beings. Developments in astronomy, physics, medicine and literature focused on experiment and human understanding rather than religious law. The movement known as the Enlightenment opened up ideas of personal liberty. Enlightenment thinkers started to question traditional authority, believing that humanity could be improved through rational change, and that everything in the universe could be rationally explained. In England a new political settlement reduced the power of the monarchy and gave more freedom to Parliament.
However, at the very same time, the Royal African Company was building its slave fortresses and the East India Company was extending its trading posts in Asia. Africans were being enslaved and transported across the Atlantic and Indians were becoming locked into Britain’s trading network as child servants and nannies. This exploitation of human beings for profit was justified by dehumanising them with the idea that they were less human than Europeans. Racist ideas built around skin colour spread and infected all aspects of society.

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Most migrants came because of violence and upheaval elsewhere - religious wars, conquest or enslavement. They were affected by a changing world.
By far the largest group of immigrants in Early Modern England were Protestant refugees fleeing persecution in European countries. They came in four main waves:
After the execution of King Charles I, during the Protectorate, a small number of Jews were allowed to return, nearly 400 years after they were expelled from England. In 1655, Oliver Cromwell submitted a petition to the Council of State calling for Jews to be allowed to return to Britain. He met with resistance at the Whitehall Conference in December that year. Ultimately it was decided that as England’s Jews had been expelled in 1290 by a king, and there were no longer kings ruling England, the previous expulsion had no legal basis.
Cromwell accepted Jews for several reasons. He thought they might be a source of revenue and help him fight against his Catholic enemies. He was also persuaded by Dutch rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel to help Jews fleeing persecution in many parts of Europe. Cromwell shared a widely-held view that the end of the world was coming. In keeping with Bible teaching, he believed that Jews would be recalled from the four corners of the world at the time of the Last Judgement.
During the late medieval and Tudor period, nomadic Gypsies began arriving in England. Over the centuries they had migrated from northern India through Central Europe.

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Most migrants came because of violence and upheaval elsewhere - religious wars, conquest or enslavement. They were affected by a changing world.
We know that a small number of Africans were living settled lives in Tudor England and we know that some came from North Africa. 
    
  After the Reformation, when King Henry VIII rejected the Catholic Church, relations between the Protestant English and Muslim North African governments were good because they had a common enemy in Catholic Spanish.  The North Africans resented the fact that Spanish forces had re-conquered Spain and taken control away from its previous Moorish rulers.
Other African immigrants were Moors who had come directly from Spain. They may - like one of the attendants of Queen Catherine of Aragon - have been Muslims who converted to Christianity.
Other immigrants came from West Africa. They included:

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Most migrants came because of violence and upheaval elsewhere - religious wars, conquest or enslavement. They were affected by a changing world.
By far the largest group of immigrants in Early Modern England were Protestant refugees fleeing persecution in European countries. They came in four main waves:
After the execution of King Charles I, during the Protectorate, a small number of Jews were allowed to return, nearly 400 years after they were expelled from England. In 1655, Oliver Cromwell submitted a petition to the Council of State calling for Jews to be allowed to return to Britain. He met with resistance at the Whitehall Conference in December that year. Ultimately it was decided that as England’s Jews had been expelled in 1290 by a king, and there were no longer kings ruling England, the previous expulsion had no legal basis.
Cromwell accepted Jews for several reasons. He thought they might be a source of revenue and help him fight against his Catholic enemies. He was also persuaded by Dutch rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel to help Jews fleeing persecution in many parts of Europe. Cromwell shared a widely-held view that the end of the world was coming. In keeping with Bible teaching, he believed that Jews would be recalled from the four corners of the world at the time of the Last Judgement.
During the late medieval and Tudor period, nomadic Gypsies began arriving in England. Over the centuries they had migrated from northern India through Central Europe.

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Most migrants came because of violence and upheaval elsewhere - religious wars, conquest or enslavement. They were affected by a changing world.
The East India Company was set up by a group of English merchants who began trading in Asia after 1600, with the support of the English Crown. They set up trading posts called ‘factories’ on the coast of India which grew to become armed settlements.  These settlements needed administrators and officers and so many English men travelled out to work there.
By the mid-18th century Britain dominated trade in Asia and the East India Company took control of India. Several of the English people who went as employees of the Company hired Indian children as servants and women as nannies and wet nurses for their children. Many Company employees became extremely rich and were known as ‘nabobs’. When they returned home they sometimes brought the child servants and nannies (ayahs) with them.  They wanted to continue in England the opulent lifestyle they had enjoyed in India. These women and children were taken away from their families and communities, and from people who spoke their languages, to live in a very different environment.
In 1660, the monarchy under King Charles II set up the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa (which later became the Royal African Company). It had a monopoly over trade with West Africa, protected by the Royal Navy. English involvement in the trade in enslaved Africans grew rapidly. The small number of free Africans in England were joined by others who arrived as a result of enslavement.
How most came to Britain is unknown. Some came directly from the West African coast, while others came from the Caribbean and North America as servants.
Find and print out an outline map of the world. On the map, mark the places immigrants came from and draw arrows from those places to Britain. Along the arrows, write the reasons for migrating to Britain.

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While most Protestant refugees were welcomed, other groups, such as Gypsies and foreign Catholics, were not. Africans and Jews settled quietly but enslavement and empire brought great change.

    
    Most Walloons and Huguenots were well received because they were seen as allies and fellow Protestants. When the biggest wave of Huguenots came in the 1680s they were granted denization by King Charles II, mainly because they were victims of the French King Louis XIV (England’s greatest enemy at the time). At a time when English Nonconformists and Catholics were not allowed to worship freely, Walloons and Huguenots were allowed their own churches.
Although some were rich, with relatives already living here, many refugees were poor and dependent on handouts. The Anglican Church organised collections of money to help support the refugees.
Walloons and Huguenots settled mainly in London and the south-east of England, often setting up communities in distinct areas such as Soho in London. In addition to their religion, Walloons and Huguenots were also welcomed because they brought much-needed skills and wealth that helped to boost England’s economy. One particular skill was wool and silk weaving. In places like Canterbury and Spitalfields in East London, Huguenot entrepreneurs employed large numbers of poorer Huguenots as their weavers.
They also introduced many other skills to England, such as feather and fan work, high-quality clock making, woodcarving, papermaking, clothing design and cutlery making.

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While most Protestant refugees were welcomed, other groups, such as Gypsies and foreign Catholics, were not. Africans and Jews settled quietly but enslavement and empire brought great change.
In 1517 there were a series of serious anti-foreigner riots in London that became known as ‘Evil May Day’. These riots were stirred up by preachers, especially a Dr Bell who described foreigners as “aliens and strangers" who "eat the bread from the poor fatherless children.”
Rioting was directed especially at the Hanseatic  merchants and Lombard bankers around the Steelyard, as well as the rich foreigners in the royal court. Many Londoners were angry and felt that immigrants were making money at their expense, and so ordinary immigrants suffered violent attacks. After five hours, the rioting was eventually put down by government troops and, while many of those arrested were later pardoned, 14 rioters were convicted of treason and hanged.
Eventually, with the rise of English and Dutch merchants, the Crown no longer needed the Hanseatic merchants, and in 1597 they were expelled and the Steelyard was closed down.
Not all Protestant refugees received the same welcome as the majority of Huguenots and Walloons. When 13,000 Palatine Germans arrived in the Thames estuary in 1709, £20,000 was raised by church congregations to support them because they were seen as fellow Protestants. However, their initial welcome did not last.
They arrived at a time of rising poverty in England with high food prices and rising taxes. Local authorities in London feared that Palatines would be classed as ‘vagrants’ that by law they would have to support under the Poor Laws. When it was discovered that a third of the immigrants were in fact Catholics and arriving because of poverty and not persecution, sympathy for them drained away.
In the short term, the Government set up refugee camps in Blackheath and Clerkenwell. The longer term solution was to ship the Palatine Germans to America but that proved too expensive so the Government planned to send them to Ireland instead. A few refused and managed to find their way to America. Most returned to their homeland, leaving a very few to try to survive in England. For those 3000 that did go to Ireland, it was a disaster. They were hated by local Catholics who were suffering under English rule, could not apply their farming skills in a different environment, and were as poor as they had been in Germany.
Gypsies suffered extreme persecution. They moved from place to place at a time when most people still lived all their lives in the same village. Their nomadic lifestyle meant that they existed outside the control of the authorities, and they were seen as a threat. They faced a lot of prejudice and in the 16th century there were several attempts to expel them from the country:
Another group who faced great danger towards the end of the 16th century were Catholic priests, many of whom came over secretly from France, Spain or Italy. If they were caught celebrating Mass they could be executed.
Although many welcomed Huguenot refugees there were also some who reacted negatively to their arrival. Weavers, clockmakers and other craftspeople feared that their jobs were threatened, while others resented the special favours given to the newcomers. During this period, there were occasional anti-foreigner riots, when poorer Huguenots were attacked.

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While most Protestant refugees were welcomed, other groups, such as Gypsies and foreign Catholics, were not. Africans and Jews settled quietly but enslavement and empire brought great change.

    
    Most Walloons and Huguenots were well received because they were seen as allies and fellow Protestants. When the biggest wave of Huguenots came in the 1680s they were granted denization by King Charles II, mainly because they were victims of the French King Louis XIV (England’s greatest enemy at the time). At a time when English Nonconformists and Catholics were not allowed to worship freely, Walloons and Huguenots were allowed their own churches.
Although some were rich, with relatives already living here, many refugees were poor and dependent on handouts. The Anglican Church organised collections of money to help support the refugees.
Walloons and Huguenots settled mainly in London and the south-east of England, often setting up communities in distinct areas such as Soho in London. In addition to their religion, Walloons and Huguenots were also welcomed because they brought much-needed skills and wealth that helped to boost England’s economy. One particular skill was wool and silk weaving. In places like Canterbury and Spitalfields in East London, Huguenot entrepreneurs employed large numbers of poorer Huguenots as their weavers.
They also introduced many other skills to England, such as feather and fan work, high-quality clock making, woodcarving, papermaking, clothing design and cutlery making.

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While most Protestant refugees were welcomed, other groups, such as Gypsies and foreign Catholics, were not. Africans and Jews settled quietly but enslavement and empire brought great change.
In addition to being welcomed or persecuted, there were other immigrant groups who were met with indifference.
From what we can tell, Africans living in Tudor England lived quiet lives in a range of occupations including court trumpeter, shoemaker, needlemaker and servant.
Although the state-sponsored pirates John Hawkins and Francis Drake had begun to be involved in the Portuguese trade in enslaved Africans, black people living in England were free. Racist attitudes existed but were not yet dominant and there are lots of examples of black people being treated fairly at this time:
Religious difference mattered far more than ‘racial’ difference in Tudor England and it may have been far easier to be black than to be Catholic.
Although there was some opposition from within his own Council, Oliver Cromwell invited Jews to return to Britain in 1656.  When the first group arrived from Spain in 1656 they came quietly, settling in East London and building a synagogue. They did not have full rights but they were allowed to trade and work in finance. Small communities grew up in London and some other coastal cities. Some became rich but others were poor street traders who probably experienced prejudice and discrimination.

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While most Protestant refugees were welcomed, other groups, such as Gypsies and foreign Catholics, were not. Africans and Jews settled quietly but enslavement and empire brought great change.
From the late 1600s, life for people in Britain of African and Asian origin became more difficult. The growth of the British Empire and the trade in enslaved Africans brought larger numbers of African and Asian immigrants, many of them forced migrants, and new ideas about racial superiority took hold.
Indian child servants and ayahs (nannies) arrived with East India Company families, while African servants were brought from the Caribbean or directly from Africa. The fashion for wealthy families to have and show off African or Indian child servants - seen in many paintings of the time - meant that many children lived far from their families. They were often well looked after, but also patronised. Their lives may have been lonely, surrounded by people of an alien culture and language. Some, when they were no longer children, were abandoned.
Meanwhile the Royal African Company was managing a growing trade in enslaved Africans, taken to work on sugar and tobacco plantations in the Americas. Ideas of a racial hierarchy based on skin colour developed as a way of justifying slavery and empire.
The law was confused. Enslavement in the colonies was allowed by law, but not lawful in Britain. Some Africans and Indians working as servants were not free, as is clear from court cases and advertisements about runaways. However, court and parish records also show that others were treated equally.
Treatment of servants varied from kindness to extreme violence. In a few cases black people were actually sold into slavery in Britain, and some owners treated their servants as slaves even though the law in theory protected them. Most black residents appear to have lived ordinary lives and worked alongside white maids, washerwomen, labourers, cooks and sailors, sharing their lives.  There were black people in many occupations including innkeepers, barmaids and farm labourers.
‘Britain welcomed immigrants in the period between 1500 and 1750’. How far do you agree with this statement?
Go through this guide and make a list of all the examples you can find that support the statement, ie. examples of a welcoming Britain.
Then go through and list all the examples you can find that oppose the statement, ie. examples of an unwelcoming Britain.
How far do you agree with the statement, and why?

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Huguenot investment and skills helped bring greater wealth to Britain, as did the expansion of a trading empire and the slave trade. Ideas about racial difference also began to spread.
The Huguenots had a huge economic impact on Britain. They revitalised the silk weaving trade, kick-started various manufacturing industries, such as cutlery making in Sheffield, and invested heavily in growing businesses. The skills and energies of Huguenot immigrants played an important part in the transformation of Britain into Europe’s major industrial power. Many Huguenots joined the armed forces, with some even rising to the highest officer positions.
Huguenots were key investors in the Bank of England and its first Governor was descended from Huguenot immigrants. They were also at the heart of the growth of capitalism. The Bank - and the creation of the National Debt - meant that the government could borrow money to fight wars that enabled the British Empire to grow and protected the Atlantic for slave ships and the plantation system.
Walloons, Huguenots and later Jews were allowed to have their own places of worship. At that time the same freedom was not allowed to English Nonconformists or Catholics. However, the allowances given to Protestant and Jewish refugees paved the way to similar freedoms for other groups and helped make British society more open to religious differences.
Over a few generations, Huguenots integrated well into British society. Up to a quarter of Londoners may have some Huguenot ancestry.  Huguenot fashions and styles, influenced by their own craftspeople, became fashionable.

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Huguenot investment and skills helped bring greater wealth to Britain, as did the expansion of a trading empire and the slave trade. Ideas about racial difference also began to spread.
The Africans and Indians who worked as servants in the houses of the wealthy were part of the system that brought great economic wealth to Britain.
Financed by the banks and insurance companies, businesses shipped goods, such as guns and metalware, to West Africa.  There the goods were exchanged for enslaved people who were transported to the Americas to be sold and work on plantations. As ‘chattels’, they and their descendants became the ‘property’ of their owners. The commodities they produced - sugar and tobacco above all - were shipped to Britain and sold to generate great profits for the trading companies. Africans who came to Britain were caught in this system and part of what built Britain’s wealth.
Employees of the East India Company started to bring domestic servants back to England to work for them. These women who worked as nannies were known as ayahs. The pay and conditions offered in England were superior to what they could get in India but life was not always good for these people. Sometimes they were promised a return to their home country which never materialised. Children were also brought from India to England to work as servants.
In Britain where enslavement was not lawful, black people worked alongside poorer white workers and bonds often grew up between them. This kind of social mixing among the working classes provided a support structure for black immigrants. And African servants who ran away would often be sheltered by both black and white working people.

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Huguenot investment and skills helped bring greater wealth to Britain, as did the expansion of a trading empire and the slave trade. Ideas about racial difference also began to spread.
The Huguenots had a huge economic impact on Britain. They revitalised the silk weaving trade, kick-started various manufacturing industries, such as cutlery making in Sheffield, and invested heavily in growing businesses. The skills and energies of Huguenot immigrants played an important part in the transformation of Britain into Europe’s major industrial power. Many Huguenots joined the armed forces, with some even rising to the highest officer positions.
Huguenots were key investors in the Bank of England and its first Governor was descended from Huguenot immigrants. They were also at the heart of the growth of capitalism. The Bank - and the creation of the National Debt - meant that the government could borrow money to fight wars that enabled the British Empire to grow and protected the Atlantic for slave ships and the plantation system.
Walloons, Huguenots and later Jews were allowed to have their own places of worship. At that time the same freedom was not allowed to English Nonconformists or Catholics. However, the allowances given to Protestant and Jewish refugees paved the way to similar freedoms for other groups and helped make British society more open to religious differences.
Over a few generations, Huguenots integrated well into British society. Up to a quarter of Londoners may have some Huguenot ancestry.  Huguenot fashions and styles, influenced by their own craftspeople, became fashionable.

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Huguenot investment and skills helped bring greater wealth to Britain, as did the expansion of a trading empire and the slave trade. Ideas about racial difference also began to spread.
This was a time known as ‘The Enlightenment’ when scientific understanding grew along with ideas that individuals should be free to choose their own beliefs and to live their lives freely without domination by tyrannical rulers.
However during the same period, with the trade in enslaved Africans growing and Britain expanding its empire, the idea that humanity was divided into ‘races’ and that some were superior to others also took hold.
As trade in the forced transportation of African people across the Atlantic increased, a system of control came into effect to:
The racist idea that darker skinned people were inferior began to spread and influence social relations. Negative references to people of African and Indian origin, with comments on their blackness, became increasingly common. As religious divisions became less significant, ‘racial’ ones became more noted. Whereas Africans in Tudor England seem to have lived easily within wider society, now relationships between black and white people were affected by racial ideas.
Perhaps the deepest and most dangerous legacy of this period was the development of ideas about ‘race’ based on skin colour that we still suffer from in the 21st century.
This was the period in Britain’s history when it began to growth in wealth and power.
List the different ways listed in this guide which demonstrated how Britain amassed wealth. How was this growing wealth linked to the movement of people?

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British wealth and power came from the slave plantations, trade, the factory system and empire. Migrant workers from across the world made this possible and helped to lead movements for change.
In 1750 the triangular trade in enslaved Africans was at its height. Sugar, tobacco and cotton plantations in the Caribbean and North America were bringing great profits to Britain’s businesses and banks. Some of these profits were invested in the entrepreneurs and inventors of the Industrial Revolution.
Britain’s black population was growing and consisted both of people tied to their owners as servants  and of free black people in a variety of occupations including a shopkeeper, a publican, an actor, a violinist and members of the armed forces. Parish records of births, marriages and deaths show that black people were living in all parts of Britain.
Opposition to slavery grew thanks to the publication of autobiographies written by former enslaved people which highlighted the abuse of their human rights.  The slave uprisings on the Caribbean plantations also drew attention to the plight of enslaved people. Opposition became a mass movement in which some British people of African origin played leading roles.
In 1807 Parliament abolished the slave trade and, after many slave rebellions in the Caribbean, enslavement in the British Empire officially ended in 1833 under the Slavery Abolition Act. Emancipation did not bring immediate freedom: former enslaved people were still tied to their owners as apprentices for a time. Meanwhile the slave owners received huge financial compensation from the British government during the 1830s for the loss of their 'property'. This payment was part of the Act and one of the reasons why wealthy, often slave-owning, Members of Parliament (MPs) agreed to it.
Although enslavement still continued illegally for some years, the law was now clear. However, the trade in enslaved Africans had left a poisonous legacy of racist ideas based on skin colour. To justify the slave trade, control the plantations and divide black plantation workers from their white fellow-labourers, ideas of racial difference grew and took hold. Black people were dehumanised and portrayed as inferior.

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British wealth and power came from the slave plantations, trade, the factory system and empire. Migrant workers from across the world made this possible and helped to lead movements for change.
Britain’s wealth was based on trade and its growing empire was a source of cheap raw materials and cheap labour. Goods from the Americas, Africa and especially Asia were brought to Britain on merchant ships.
After 1757, when the East India Company took control of most of India, its shipping fleet dominated trade between Asia and Europe. Sailing ships brought tea, spices, porcelain and textiles from China, India and Arabia. As the demand for these luxuries grew, more workers were needed on the ships.
At times of war, for example the Napoleonic Wars against the French in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, white sailors were drafted into the Royal Navy. Asian, African and West Indian men filled their places on merchant sailing ships. Their work, often in terrible conditions, was crucial to Britain’s growing wealth.
By the late 19th century, at the peak of the industrial age, steamers brought goods such as coffee, tea, sugar, cotton, spices, tobacco, timber and wines from all over the world to Britain’s ports.  They then carried manufactured export products, such as textiles, machinery and household goods to overseas markets. Seamen from overseas continued to be hired in large numbers and were the majority on many ships.

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British wealth and power came from the slave plantations, trade, the factory system and empire. Migrant workers from across the world made this possible and helped to lead movements for change.
In 1750 the triangular trade in enslaved Africans was at its height. Sugar, tobacco and cotton plantations in the Caribbean and North America were bringing great profits to Britain’s businesses and banks. Some of these profits were invested in the entrepreneurs and inventors of the Industrial Revolution.
Britain’s black population was growing and consisted both of people tied to their owners as servants  and of free black people in a variety of occupations including a shopkeeper, a publican, an actor, a violinist and members of the armed forces. Parish records of births, marriages and deaths show that black people were living in all parts of Britain.
Opposition to slavery grew thanks to the publication of autobiographies written by former enslaved people which highlighted the abuse of their human rights.  The slave uprisings on the Caribbean plantations also drew attention to the plight of enslaved people. Opposition became a mass movement in which some British people of African origin played leading roles.
In 1807 Parliament abolished the slave trade and, after many slave rebellions in the Caribbean, enslavement in the British Empire officially ended in 1833 under the Slavery Abolition Act. Emancipation did not bring immediate freedom: former enslaved people were still tied to their owners as apprentices for a time. Meanwhile the slave owners received huge financial compensation from the British government during the 1830s for the loss of their 'property'. This payment was part of the Act and one of the reasons why wealthy, often slave-owning, Members of Parliament (MPs) agreed to it.
Although enslavement still continued illegally for some years, the law was now clear. However, the trade in enslaved Africans had left a poisonous legacy of racist ideas based on skin colour. To justify the slave trade, control the plantations and divide black plantation workers from their white fellow-labourers, ideas of racial difference grew and took hold. Black people were dehumanised and portrayed as inferior.

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British wealth and power came from the slave plantations, trade, the factory system and empire. Migrant workers from across the world made this possible and helped to lead movements for change.
Britain’s Industrial Revolution brought such wealth and power that it became the world’s superpower. This depended both on shipping routes and the factory system. Factories all over the country, but especially the cotton mills in the north of England, needed large numbers of workers. Pushed by poverty and pulled by the chance of work in growing cities such as Manchester, whole families left the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish countryside where they had lived for generations. This mass internal  migration took place alongside migration from other parts of Europe, notably Italy.
As cities grew, hundreds of thousands of people became part of an industrial workforce. Workers organised themselves into trade unions and a labour movement that pressed for social and political change. Demands for voting rights, higher wages and better living conditions were often led by migrant workers.
Industrial Britain offered business opportunities too. During the 19th century, the growing urban population offered an opportunity for people setting up small businesses dealing in popular items such as street food, clothing or household goods. Britain also attracted entrepreneurs from overseas who believed their ideas and business ventures might take off in the most technologically advanced country in Europe.
Many migrants settled in areas of cities where they could be close to others who shared their culture and language. This made it easier to find work and accommodation, socialise, shop and generally survive in a new city.  Certain areas of cities became identified with particular groups, for example the Irish in the Scotland Road area of Liverpool, Italians in Manchester’s Ancoats and, in London, communities were established in Limehouse (Chinese), Clerkenwell (Italian) and Spitalfields (eastern-European Jews).

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People migrated to Britain for different reasons - forced labour, poverty, hope of work, business and to escape to safety. All came because of Britain’s wealth, empire and world dominance.
We do not know exactly how many people of African origin were living in Britain in the late 18th century. Many were here as a result of the Transatlantic Trade in enslaved Africans.
After emancipation, when Parliament abolished slavery throughout the British Empire, and during the 19th century black people continued to come here in smaller numbers and settle. They included refugees escaping enslavement in the United States of America.
Others who were forced to come here were merchant seamen from India, Africa and the West Indies who were hired in their homelands but then abandoned in ports on their arrival here, becoming ‘accidental migrants’. Opposition from white seamen and their union meant it was hard for them to get jobs on ships which could return them to their homes. 

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People migrated to Britain for different reasons - forced labour, poverty, hope of work, business and to escape to safety. All came because of Britain’s wealth, empire and world dominance.
The ‘push’ for many migrants to Britain was poverty in their own countries.
For these people, Britain’s booming industrial economy offered the hope of jobs and survival.

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People migrated to Britain for different reasons - forced labour, poverty, hope of work, business and to escape to safety. All came because of Britain’s wealth, empire and world dominance.
We do not know exactly how many people of African origin were living in Britain in the late 18th century. Many were here as a result of the Transatlantic Trade in enslaved Africans.
After emancipation, when Parliament abolished slavery throughout the British Empire, and during the 19th century black people continued to come here in smaller numbers and settle. They included refugees escaping enslavement in the United States of America.
Others who were forced to come here were merchant seamen from India, Africa and the West Indies who were hired in their homelands but then abandoned in ports on their arrival here, becoming ‘accidental migrants’. Opposition from white seamen and their union meant it was hard for them to get jobs on ships which could return them to their homes. 

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People migrated to Britain for different reasons - forced labour, poverty, hope of work, business and to escape to safety. All came because of Britain’s wealth, empire and world dominance.
Throughout the 19th century Britain was seen as a place of safety for political refugees. Many activists and thinkers who were at risk in their own countries were free to live, write and be active here. Examples included:
Mostly, they lived here for a time in exile and then returned to their homeland.
The most significant group of refugees in this period was the Jews from Eastern Europe. They came because they were subject to violent attacks - pogroms -  in what is now Russia, Poland and Ukraine. They were desperately fleeing terror - some travelled entirely on foot - and Britain’s relatively open door meant that about 140,000 arrived from the 1880s onwards, settling mainly in urban areas such as East London, Leeds and Manchester.
Many of these Jewish refugees were - like many Irish and Scottish immigrants - hoping to travel on to the USA, but  could not afford to travel further than Britain. Many others joined relatives already in the UK.

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People migrated to Britain for different reasons - forced labour, poverty, hope of work, business and to escape to safety. All came because of Britain’s wealth, empire and world dominance.
The main 'pull' causing people to come to Britain was factory work. The Industrial Revolution had created a huge supply of jobs but there were not enough people to fill all the vacancies. The country needed migrant labour and the promise of employment meant that people were drawn to travel to Britain in hope of work and a better life. The main areas of employment were:
Meanwhile merchant shipping lines were hiring men to work on board, picking them up at their ports of call. Captains often preferred 'coloured seamen' (the term used at the time) because they were more comfortable in hotter climates, often did not drink alcohol (many were Muslim) and, most importantly, because they could pay them less than white sailors. Chinese, Malay, Indian, Somali and Yemeni seamen worked on ships trading with Asia. West Africans and West Indians were hired on the Atlantic routes. Greek crews were picked up in the Mediterranean. Norwegians worked on the North Sea and Baltic routes.
Many of these merchant seamen settled in Britain’s ports such as Liverpool, Cardiff, Hull, London and South Shields. Some chose to live there after jumping ship due to poor treatment and conditions onboard. Others were abandoned by their employers when they landed at port, either because they were not needed or because of opposition from white seamen. 
A very different group of immigrants were the young entrepreneurs who came to study and work. Unlike many countries in 19th century Europe, Britain was at peace and its economy favoured new ideas and enterprise. Among those who arrived and stayed, many of whom were German, were the founders of major businesses such as Reuters, as well as banks such as Baring and Rothschild.

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Large numbers of migrants fleeing hardship found work in industrial Britain. Most saw their lives improve slowly, though many faced often appalling living conditions and growing racial prejudice.
Before slavery in the British Empire was abolished under the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, the status of black people in Britain was complex. This was because the law was not clear. British law allowed enslavement overseas, on the slave ships from West Africa and the West Indian plantations.  Inside the British Isles, however, slavery was not legally sanctioned.
Some black people were held in conditions of enslavement here in Britain and some were violently abused. We know this from advertisements about runaways and from court cases. However most Africans lived here in freedom, as can be seen from parish records. Court documents show Africans accused of crime were treated in the same way as white people. A few Africans thrived in Britain: Ignatius Sancho who was born on a slave ship became a wealthy composer, actor, and writer and was the first black Briton to be allowed to vote in elections.
The case of James Somerset in 1772 was important. He had escaped from his master who then recaptured him in Britain and tried to force him to return to Jamaica. The Lord Chief Justice ruled that he could not be taken from Britain by force. While in Britain, he was free.
It is not clear whether there was a distinct black community in places like London and Liverpool, or whether black people lived as part of the wider working class. After 1833 and in the later 19th century, their presence is harder to trace because they were not recorded as ‘black’ in census returns. Paintings, cartoons and later photographs often show black people present in many parts of Britain, and it is likely that many people were of African descent, often through intermarriage. They appear to have been assimilated into the wider population.
The ‘Black Loyalists’ who had been promised freedom from enslavement if they fought for Britain in the American War of Independence, were brought here when Britain lost the war. Many of them ended up destitute, begging on London’s streets. Over 400 were transported to Sierra Leone in West Africa in a resettlement project by the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor.
Autobiographies by people who had previously been enslaved - Mary Prince, Ottobah Cugonao and Olaudah Equiano - helped turn many people against slavery and the trade in enslaved people. Prince who suffered terrible treatment at the hands of her owners published her autobiography, The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave in 1831 and was the first black woman to do so. Equiano and Cugoano also played leading roles in the campaign for the abolition of enslavement with their organisation ‘Sons of Africa’. The Abolition movement has influenced many campaigns for justice since. 
William Davidson and Robert Wedderburn were both the children of black enslaved mothers and white fathers who became political activists against slavery and for the rights of working people. Davidson was hanged and beheaded for his part in the Cato Street Conspiracy - a plot to assassinate leaders of the government.
William Cuffay (from St Kitts in the Caribbean) was a leader of the Chartist movement for political reform, and was convicted of preparing to set fire to certain buildings as a signal for an uprising and was transported to Tasmania in 1848. Many of the Chartists’ demands are now an accepted part of our Parliamentary system, such as secret ballots in elections, votes for all and payment to MPs so that not only the rich could stand for election.
Some black people, such as Queen Victoria’s god-daughter Lady Sarah Forbes Bonetta, the nurse Mary Seacole and the composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, achieved success and prominence in late Victorian society. There were several popular black entertainers such as the circus owner Pablo Fanque whose company travelled all over the country.
This was a time when ‘pseudo-scientific’ racist ideas, justifying enslavement and empire by dehumanising people who had been colonised, were widely held. One notable case was the African American actor Ira Aldridge. Although he was a highly successful performer of Shakespeare’s leading roles all over Europe, his performance of Othello in London received racist reviews and was forced to close.

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Large numbers of migrants fleeing hardship found work in industrial Britain. Most saw their lives improve slowly, though many faced often appalling living conditions and growing racial prejudice.
In the 1840s, the potato crop in Ireland was wiped out by a disease. This led to widespread famine among the poor tenant farmers as the potato was a stable of their diet.  To escape the famine many left Ireland in waves of mass migration. Ireland was then a part of Great Britain, ruled from London. The majority came to work in the factories of the North West of England, especially Liverpool, which was easily reached by boat from Dublin and Belfast. Many families arrived in a poor state - hungry, weak and sick - and found themselves living in overcrowded, unhealthy ‘court dwellings’. Death rates were high. We know of this from reports written by Liverpool’s Medical Officer of Health. However, conditions were much the same for the English working classes at that time.
Many Irish families joined equally poor migrants from all over Britain, working in harsh conditions in the textile factories of the north west of England. Another common employment for Irish men was to work as ‘navvies', digging the earth to build canals, roads, railways and docks. This work took them all over the country.  Irish seamen and dock workers settled in port communities such as South Shields and Cardiff.
The very hard life experienced by hundreds of thousands of poor Irish migrants was made far worse by extreme racism. In cartoons, newspaper articles, speeches by politicians and popular jokes, Irish people were portrayed as savage, violent, drunken and animal-like.  Anti-Irish racism was widespread and nasty. Other reasons for divisions between English and Irish workers included:
There were sometimes anti-Irish and anti-Catholic riots and sometimes violence between Irish Catholics and Protestants, for example in the 1840s and 1850s in Cardiff, Greenock, Stockport and towns in north-west England.
However, Irish people also mixed with the English population and intermarriage was common. There was also a large number of middle-class Irish immigrants, including artists, writers and business people. Many soldiers and officers in the British Army were Irish. By 1900, most Irish families were seeing an improvement in their lives.
Liverpool Mercury report on Irish migrants 

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Large numbers of migrants fleeing hardship found work in industrial Britain. Most saw their lives improve slowly, though many faced often appalling living conditions and growing racial prejudice.
Before slavery in the British Empire was abolished under the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, the status of black people in Britain was complex. This was because the law was not clear. British law allowed enslavement overseas, on the slave ships from West Africa and the West Indian plantations.  Inside the British Isles, however, slavery was not legally sanctioned.
Some black people were held in conditions of enslavement here in Britain and some were violently abused. We know this from advertisements about runaways and from court cases. However most Africans lived here in freedom, as can be seen from parish records. Court documents show Africans accused of crime were treated in the same way as white people. A few Africans thrived in Britain: Ignatius Sancho who was born on a slave ship became a wealthy composer, actor, and writer and was the first black Briton to be allowed to vote in elections.
The case of James Somerset in 1772 was important. He had escaped from his master who then recaptured him in Britain and tried to force him to return to Jamaica. The Lord Chief Justice ruled that he could not be taken from Britain by force. While in Britain, he was free.
It is not clear whether there was a distinct black community in places like London and Liverpool, or whether black people lived as part of the wider working class. After 1833 and in the later 19th century, their presence is harder to trace because they were not recorded as ‘black’ in census returns. Paintings, cartoons and later photographs often show black people present in many parts of Britain, and it is likely that many people were of African descent, often through intermarriage. They appear to have been assimilated into the wider population.
The ‘Black Loyalists’ who had been promised freedom from enslavement if they fought for Britain in the American War of Independence, were brought here when Britain lost the war. Many of them ended up destitute, begging on London’s streets. Over 400 were transported to Sierra Leone in West Africa in a resettlement project by the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor.
Autobiographies by people who had previously been enslaved - Mary Prince, Ottobah Cugonao and Olaudah Equiano - helped turn many people against slavery and the trade in enslaved people. Prince who suffered terrible treatment at the hands of her owners published her autobiography, The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave in 1831 and was the first black woman to do so. Equiano and Cugoano also played leading roles in the campaign for the abolition of enslavement with their organisation ‘Sons of Africa’. The Abolition movement has influenced many campaigns for justice since. 
William Davidson and Robert Wedderburn were both the children of black enslaved mothers and white fathers who became political activists against slavery and for the rights of working people. Davidson was hanged and beheaded for his part in the Cato Street Conspiracy - a plot to assassinate leaders of the government.
William Cuffay (from St Kitts in the Caribbean) was a leader of the Chartist movement for political reform, and was convicted of preparing to set fire to certain buildings as a signal for an uprising and was transported to Tasmania in 1848. Many of the Chartists’ demands are now an accepted part of our Parliamentary system, such as secret ballots in elections, votes for all and payment to MPs so that not only the rich could stand for election.
Some black people, such as Queen Victoria’s god-daughter Lady Sarah Forbes Bonetta, the nurse Mary Seacole and the composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, achieved success and prominence in late Victorian society. There were several popular black entertainers such as the circus owner Pablo Fanque whose company travelled all over the country.
This was a time when ‘pseudo-scientific’ racist ideas, justifying enslavement and empire by dehumanising people who had been colonised, were widely held. One notable case was the African American actor Ira Aldridge. Although he was a highly successful performer of Shakespeare’s leading roles all over Europe, his performance of Othello in London received racist reviews and was forced to close.

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Large numbers of migrants fleeing hardship found work in industrial Britain. Most saw their lives improve slowly, though many faced often appalling living conditions and growing racial prejudice.
For the merchant seamen who settled in British ports, particularly the Africans, Arabs and Asian seamen known as Lascars, life was initially very hard. They were single men far from home, unemployed for long periods and in extreme poverty. Most lived in lodging houses. At first these were run by the East India Company but later, after the British government took direct control of India in 1858, many were run by people from their own communities. The government, under pressure from the Seamen’s Union and because of negative racial attitudes, passed laws intended to make it hard for them to stay.
In effect, it was a 'colour bar'. On land, many were forced by poverty into begging and often had trouble with the police.
Indian, Chinese, Arab and Somali men came from societies with strong cultures and complex civilisations. In Britain, however, they were portrayed in the media as inferior, ‘exotic’ and even sinister and threatening. Their settlements were given nicknames - ‘Chinatown’ in London’s Limehouse, ‘Tiger Bay’ in Cardiff’s Butetown and ‘Little Arabia’ in South Shields’ East Holborn - and were stereotyped as places of crime to be feared.
In spite of many difficulties, against which some rebelled by going on strike or jumping ship (leaving when the ship docked), many immigrants survived and put down roots. Some married local women and started our first modern working-class multicultural communities. Others moved from work on the ships to setting up businesses such as cafes, lodging houses, shops and - in the case of the Chinese - laundries. Bengalis, Gujaratis, Yemenis and Somalis built up Britain’s first Muslim communities in the port areas of Cardiff, Liverpool, Hull, London and South Shields.
Meanwhile, many wealthy Indians also came to the UK. Some came to study, while others, such as Maharajah Duleep Singh, joined high society. At the start of the 19th century, Sake Dean Mahomed set up London’s first Indian restaurant and then his ‘Shampoo’ beauty business in Brighton that became the height of fashion. At the end of the century two Indians, Dadabhai Naoroji (Liberal) and Sir Manerchee Bhownaggree (Conservative), were elected as Members of Parliament at Westminster.

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Large numbers of migrants fleeing hardship found work in industrial Britain. Most saw their lives improve slowly, though many faced often appalling living conditions and growing racial prejudice.
While some Italian immigrants were wealthy, the vast majority were from poor families in villages in southern Italy. On arrival they settled in many large cities such as Manchester where they lived similar lives to Irish migrants, with whole families working in the textile mills or men employed in road building. Here and in other cities such as Glasgow and London’s ‘Little Italy’, Italians also started up businesses in a new street food - ice cream. Some family businesses did extremely well.
There were also many German immigrants in the 19th century. Many bakeries were German-run and the ‘full English’ breakfast was in fact a German import. Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert was German and close ties between the countries encouraged many Germans to come as students and stay as engineers, designers and businessmen.
Although Italian, German and other European immigrants did experience some hostility, this was far less than that experienced by the Irish or the Lascars.

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Large numbers of migrants fleeing hardship found work in industrial Britain. Most saw their lives improve slowly, though many faced often appalling living conditions and growing racial prejudice.
During the 19th century the legal status of Jews in Britain steadily improved.  In 1830 Jews were allowed to trade freely. In 1858 the first Jewish Member of Parliament (MP) Lionel de Rothschild took his seat in Parliament. Numbers increased steadily through natural growth until there were about 65,000 Jews in the UK in 1880. Most were of Sephardi origin, originating in Spain and Portugal. Many were middle class and relatively well off.
 For the Ashkenazi Jews who arrived in large numbers from the 1880s onwards, however, things were very different.  They were from poor, rural families in villages and small towns and were escaping the terror of pogroms in Eastern Europe. Most arrived with little or nothing. Many intended to move on to the USA, but when they found themselves in the UK, they settled near their place of arrival. As a result the East End of London gained a highly concentrated Jewish population. The main source of income was the textile trade. Jewish tailors and seamstresses worked at home or in the many sweatshops. For many Jewish migrants, conditions were terrible; living in extreme poverty in overcrowded, cold and damp lodgings. Many were forced into theft and prostitution.
While the earlier upper class Jews had mixed into the wider population, the new arrivals stuck closer to their traditions of language, food and culture. They were often politically active; for example in the 1889 tailors’ strike. There were tensions with the earlier Jewish settlers, too.  Some Jewish leaders feared that the new arrivals would cause a rise in anti-Semitism. Others, together with non-Jews, raised money to help the refugees and ran charitable missions and soup kitchens.
Anti-Semitism was on the rise by the end of the 19th century in the climate of pseudo-scientific racism that claimed some ‘races’ were inferior to others. In novels, short stories and the popular press, Jews were portrayed as sinister, to be feared and were dehumanised. Places such as London’s Whitechapel were written about by journalists as if they were a foreign country. Pressure grew for laws restricting the immigration of ‘foreign aliens’.
 Complaints about Jewish workers in 1903

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Britain was at the height of it's global power and mass immigration impacted on all aspects of life: from food and fashion to faith, politics and commerce.
Between 1750 and 1900 Britain’s wealth depended on industry. It needed raw materials to be shipped from around the world. British factories then made manufactured goods, such as clothing and machinery, which were transported across the country and exported to the world. Coal was the fuel that powered the factory machines and Britain was fortunate to be rich in coal deposits. Coal was also exported, bringing more profit to this country.
At the same time, consumer goods, such as tea, sugar and tobacco, were shipped to Britain and traded here, bringing profit to planters, shipping companies, merchants and shopkeepers.
Immigrant labour was at the heart of all these processes.
Industrial Britain needed cheap labour, which migration provided. Economic growth created more jobs for British workers. By 1900, although wide gaps in wealth existed, living and working conditions for most people were better than they had previously been.

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Britain was at the height of it's global power and mass immigration impacted on all aspects of life: from food and fashion to faith, politics and commerce.
19th century mass immigration affected the lives of everyone in Britain, sometimes in ways we don’t realise. Here are four examples:
The Huguenots arrive in Sussex 

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Britain was at the height of it's global power and mass immigration impacted on all aspects of life: from food and fashion to faith, politics and commerce.
Between 1750 and 1900 Britain’s wealth depended on industry. It needed raw materials to be shipped from around the world. British factories then made manufactured goods, such as clothing and machinery, which were transported across the country and exported to the world. Coal was the fuel that powered the factory machines and Britain was fortunate to be rich in coal deposits. Coal was also exported, bringing more profit to this country.
At the same time, consumer goods, such as tea, sugar and tobacco, were shipped to Britain and traded here, bringing profit to planters, shipping companies, merchants and shopkeepers.
Immigrant labour was at the heart of all these processes.
Industrial Britain needed cheap labour, which migration provided. Economic growth created more jobs for British workers. By 1900, although wide gaps in wealth existed, living and working conditions for most people were better than they had previously been.

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Britain was at the height of it's global power and mass immigration impacted on all aspects of life: from food and fashion to faith, politics and commerce.

    
    This was a period of great political change which saw campaigns for both the abolition of the slave trade and, later, the abolition of slavery itself. Movements for voting reform also began during this period as did the rise of working class organisations such as the trade unions and the Labour Party.  Social action to tackle poverty, combat disease and improve housing also happened during this time. Many migrants were actively involved in politics, in many different ways. These are some of the examples we know about:


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While levels were low in the early 20th century, the later period saw mass immigration. The 20th and early 21st centuries were also a time of increased immigration controls. 
This was a period of growing tension in the world and growing anti-immigrant feeling in the UK. This came partly from some politicians and much of the popular press who stirred up feeling against Jewish immigrants to get votes or increase sales, and partly from the National Sailors' and Firemen's Union  who resented foreign merchant seamen, especially the Chinese.
The 1905 Aliens Act severely restricted immigration, the first of many laws to do so in the 20th century. Public opinion was also turned against foreign immigrants as a result of a series of terrorist actions, including the ‘Houndsditch Outrage’ and the ‘Siege of Sidney Street’, which were carried out in London by opponents of the Russian government. In the years that followed 1905, immigration levels were low.
World War One brought a sharp rise in nationalism and violence directed against German and Austrian residents. This was especially the case in 1915 when a German submarine sank a passenger ship, the Lusitania. Many German shops and businesses were attacked and Germans and Austrians were taken away and interned.
On the other hand, some immigrants were welcomed during the war. A quarter of a million Belgians fleeing their wartorn country - the biggest influx of refugees ever to the UK - were generally welcomed and well received and thousands of wounded Indian troops were looked after in Brighton’s Grand Pavilion.
After the war, there were serious tensions over employment between returning servicemen and seamen from Africa, Asia and the West Indies. Violence with a strong racist element erupted in 1919 in Liverpool, Cardiff, Glasgow, London and other ports. These riots took place between January and August and resulted in five deaths and many vandalised properties.

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While levels were low in the early 20th century, the later period saw mass immigration. The 20th and early 21st centuries were also a time of increased immigration controls. 
The period between World War One and Word War Two was one of low immigration and high unemployment as immigration laws and restrictions on merchant seamen were tightened.
The rise of the anti-Semitic fascist Blackshirts in Britain culminated in their attempted march through East London’s Jewish area. This was prevented by anti-fascist protesters at the Battle of Cable Street in 1936. The fact that Jews and non-Jews came together to defend their streets from an attack showed that a united community response to racism was possible and could succeed.
Some Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany were accepted in Britain, but many were refused at a time when immigration was highly restricted and anti-Semitism was on the rise. In 1938 and 1939, however, about 10,000 Jewish children came to safety in the UK on what became known as the Kindertransport.
Jack Adler's Kindertransport story 
During World War Two, ‘enemy aliens' including many members of the large Italian community, were again interned.
As was the case in World War One, during World War Two large numbers of colonial troops fought for Britain. The merchant convoys had a large proportion of African, Arab and Indian seamen, many of them from port cities such as Cardiff and Liverpool.
After the war, Polish servicemen living in the UK were allowed to stay and be joined by their families.

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While levels were low in the early 20th century, the later period saw mass immigration. The 20th and early 21st centuries were also a time of increased immigration controls. 
This was a period of growing tension in the world and growing anti-immigrant feeling in the UK. This came partly from some politicians and much of the popular press who stirred up feeling against Jewish immigrants to get votes or increase sales, and partly from the National Sailors' and Firemen's Union  who resented foreign merchant seamen, especially the Chinese.
The 1905 Aliens Act severely restricted immigration, the first of many laws to do so in the 20th century. Public opinion was also turned against foreign immigrants as a result of a series of terrorist actions, including the ‘Houndsditch Outrage’ and the ‘Siege of Sidney Street’, which were carried out in London by opponents of the Russian government. In the years that followed 1905, immigration levels were low.
World War One brought a sharp rise in nationalism and violence directed against German and Austrian residents. This was especially the case in 1915 when a German submarine sank a passenger ship, the Lusitania. Many German shops and businesses were attacked and Germans and Austrians were taken away and interned.
On the other hand, some immigrants were welcomed during the war. A quarter of a million Belgians fleeing their wartorn country - the biggest influx of refugees ever to the UK - were generally welcomed and well received and thousands of wounded Indian troops were looked after in Brighton’s Grand Pavilion.
After the war, there were serious tensions over employment between returning servicemen and seamen from Africa, Asia and the West Indies. Violence with a strong racist element erupted in 1919 in Liverpool, Cardiff, Glasgow, London and other ports. These riots took place between January and August and resulted in five deaths and many vandalised properties.

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While levels were low in the early 20th century, the later period saw mass immigration. The 20th and early 21st centuries were also a time of increased immigration controls. 
Migrants from Commonwealth countries began to come to the UK in increasing numbers in the late 1940s and 1950s.  They came because there were not enough jobs in their own countries and because Britain desperately needed workers. They worked mainly in areas of great labour shortage, such as on buses and in hospitals, and settled in areas of cheaper housing in cities such as London and Birmingham. They experienced frequent racial discrimination. Landlords refused to let rooms to black and Irish tenants and ‘colour bars’ operated in some workplaces.
As the British economy picked up in the late 1950s and 1960s, immigration increased to fill vacancies in factories in London, the North and the Midlands. In these instances, men usually came first and were later joined by their families. As a result, Britain’s cities became increasingly multicultural. However, as this was also a period of large-scale emigration of Britons leaving to live elsewhere (such as the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), the number of people leaving the country was higher than the number coming in.
Increased immigration saw a rise of anti-immigrant politics, most famously expressed by Enoch Powell in his 1968 speech in Birmingham and Margaret Thatcher in 1978.
When Asian refugees who had been expelled from East Africa arrived in the UK, they were met with hostility from sections of the press and protests organised by anti-immigration groups.  The most prominent of which was the National Front, which wanted to ban all non-white immigration. In response to this, anti-racist activity - in which second-generation migrants took a leading role - took many forms including mass demonstrations and music festivals.
By the early 1980s, high youth unemployment, poor social conditions, racist murders and anger at police tactics directed at young black people resulted in violent confrontations with police in London, Leeds, Birmingham and Liverpool.
The high levels of racial tension led to new legislation being introduced in the form of the Race Relations Act 1965 which made it illegal to discriminate on racial grounds. During the same period, successive governments enacted ever tighter immigration controls by passing the Race Relations Act 1968 and the Race Relations Act 1975.

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While levels were low in the early 20th century, the later period saw mass immigration. The 20th and early 21st centuries were also a time of increased immigration controls. 
The UK’s membership of the European Union (EU) meant that it signed up to the ‘free movement of workers'. This policy meant that anyone in the EU had the right to move to any member country to work. During the early 2000s when Britain’s economy was booming, hundreds of thousands of people from all over Europe came to work here, mainly in service industries. Although very large numbers of British people also migrated to other EU countries, the number of people coming in became greater than the number leaving.
After the financial crash in 2008, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) which campaigned for the UK to leave the EU and an end to 'mass uncontrolled immigration' grew in popularity. By the 2015 general election and the 2016 referendum on membership of the EU, immigration was a major political issue.
This period saw an acute rise in the number of refugees and displaced people in the world, as a result of regional and civil wars. While many asylum seekers made their way to Britain, increasingly strict asylum and immigration laws made it more and more difficult to live here as an asylum seeker and to achieve refugee status. Wars and instability in the Middle East and many parts of Africa caused the displacement of millions of people, many of whom came to Europe. Some crossed Europe hoping to find a way to enter the UK but ended up living in refugee camps outside Calais.
In the wake of UK involvement in Middle Eastern wars and several terrorist incidents, the early 21st century saw a rise in anti-Semitic incidents and a sharp increase in Islamophobic attacks.
During this same period, Britain became increasingly mixed culturally, not only in its cities but in smaller communities, too.  This had a deep cultural and social effect. While most British people were relaxed with cultural diversity, both the nature of British ‘identity’ and the merits of ‘multiculturalism' were hotly debated and continued to divide opinion.

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Immigration was usually due to a search for work or safety. Numbers grew in the late 20th and early 21st centuries because of the EU’s free movement policies and humanitarian crises in many countries.
Immigration controls in the early 20th century made it difficult for people to settle in Britain. One group which did manage to put down roots were immigrant seamen hired to work on merchant ships. This was a result of many white seamen being called to serve in the armed forces during World War One and World War Two. Others included West African stowaways on cargo ships.
After World War Two, a mass immigration of people coming to work in Britain began. Many of the early arrivals were from the West Indies, South Asia and Cyprus. The most famous arrival was of people from the Caribbean, mainly Jamaica and Trinidad, on the ship Empire Windrush in 1948. This is sometimes mistakenly referred to as the first arrival of black people in Britain.
As the UK economy picked up and then boomed in the late 1950s and 1960s, migrants from India, East and West Pakistan, Nigeria, Ghana and many other Commonwealth countries came to work in the textile factories of the North of England and the engineering factories of the Midlands.  
    
During the 1980s and 1990s many people from countries outside the Commonwealth or the European Union, such as Colombia, Morocco and the Philippines, came to fill low-paid jobs as waiters, cleaners and chambermaids.
Under the European Union’s ‘free movement of workers’, hundreds of thousands of women and men from EU countries came to the UK in the 21st century. The largest number of immigrants came from Poland and they worked mainly in the service sector.

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Immigration was usually due to a search for work or safety. Numbers grew in the late 20th and early 21st centuries because of the EU’s free movement policies and humanitarian crises in many countries.
Although the 1905 ‘Aliens Act’ restricted immigration, it still allowed entry to refugees.
During World War One, about 250,000 Belgian refugees came to Britain to escape German invasion. In general they were warmly received, although there were some tensions because some British people suffering hardship felt the refugees were living in better conditions than them. Resettlement centres were set up in places such as Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre and Alexandra Palace in London. Some went to live with families, while others went to live in specially built camps. There was even a purpose-built Belgian village in Tyne and Wear with its own school, shops and churches. Most returned to Belgium after the war.
During the Spanish Civil War in 1937, about 4,000 children came as refugees. The Salvation Army and the Catholic Church were amongst others who volunteered to look after the children.
When Jews were being persecuted in Nazi Germany and Austria following the rise of Hitler in 1933, human rights groups argued that the UK should take refugees and about 40,000 were accepted, although many more were refused. In 1938 and 1939, thanks to the work of campaigners, around 10,000 Jewish children came to safety in Britain from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia in what is known as the Kindertransport. Their parents, however, were not allowed to come with them and many died in the Holocaust.
Jack Adler's Kindertransport story 
After the Nazi invasion of Poland and during World War Two, some 160,000 Polish refugees arrived in Britain and many Poles served in the Allied armed forces. After the war, the 1947 Polish Resettlement Act allowed them to stay and be joined by their families.
Since World War Two, refugees from many conflicts have come looking for safety in the UK.

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Immigration was usually due to a search for work or safety. Numbers grew in the late 20th and early 21st centuries because of the EU’s free movement policies and humanitarian crises in many countries.
Immigration controls in the early 20th century made it difficult for people to settle in Britain. One group which did manage to put down roots were immigrant seamen hired to work on merchant ships. This was a result of many white seamen being called to serve in the armed forces during World War One and World War Two. Others included West African stowaways on cargo ships.
After World War Two, a mass immigration of people coming to work in Britain began. Many of the early arrivals were from the West Indies, South Asia and Cyprus. The most famous arrival was of people from the Caribbean, mainly Jamaica and Trinidad, on the ship Empire Windrush in 1948. This is sometimes mistakenly referred to as the first arrival of black people in Britain.
As the UK economy picked up and then boomed in the late 1950s and 1960s, migrants from India, East and West Pakistan, Nigeria, Ghana and many other Commonwealth countries came to work in the textile factories of the North of England and the engineering factories of the Midlands.  
    
During the 1980s and 1990s many people from countries outside the Commonwealth or the European Union, such as Colombia, Morocco and the Philippines, came to fill low-paid jobs as waiters, cleaners and chambermaids.
Under the European Union’s ‘free movement of workers’, hundreds of thousands of women and men from EU countries came to the UK in the 21st century. The largest number of immigrants came from Poland and they worked mainly in the service sector.

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Migrants experienced immigration controls, discrimination and organised racism and had to struggle for acceptance. Nevertheless, the UK has become increasingly at ease with its cultural diversity.
During World War One, 32,000 Germans and Austrians, seen as ‘enemy aliens,’ were interned in camps and had their wealth seized by the government. Germans and Italians received similar treatment in World War Two and some were sent by ship to Canada and Australia. In July 1940, a German submarine sank one of the ships, the Arandora Star, resulting in 805 deaths. The sinking of the Arandora Star and the ill treatment of internees on another ship, the Dunera, a week later led to an outcry in Parliament which resulted in the first releases of internees in August 1940. By 1942 fewer than 5,000 remained interned. 
    
Throughout most of this period there were ever tighter controls on immigration.
All the above laws restricted immigration, except for the 1948 Act which opened doors because the UK needed more workers after World War Two. The 1962 Act, which aimed to restrict numbers, backfired. Many men who were working here at the time were eventually intending to return to their families; however they realised that they may not be readmitted if they went home to visit so they brought their families to join them and decided to settle permanently.
After the 1970s, immigration from EU member states had to be allowed by European law, so most legislation was aimed at refugees and asylum seekers.
By 2007, however, the immigration system was out of control, with a massive backlog of people claiming asylum whose cases had not yet been dealt with. The UK Border Agency was set up to try and deal with the problem.
During the same period laws were passed to promote better community relations, and prevent racial discrimination and racist hate crimes.

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Migrants experienced immigration controls, discrimination and organised racism and had to struggle for acceptance. Nevertheless, the UK has become increasingly at ease with its cultural diversity.
Immigrants often found themselves under attack, especially at times of general hardship. Sometimes the attacks were from British workers who saw immigration as a threat to their own jobs. At the end of World War One, soldiers returning to the port cities from the horrors of war were in conflict with Asian, Arab, West Indian and African seamen who had also been in the thick of war, bringing convoys of supplies across the Atlantic. Violent riots broke out in 1919 in Liverpool, Cardiff, Glasgow and South Shields which resulted in some deaths. In some cases, mobs stirred up with racist taunts attacked the seamen’s lodging houses, and they fought back.
At times, groups directly targeted immigrants. The British Union of Fascists (‘Blackshirts’) in the 1930s focussed on Jews; the National Front in the 1970s and 1980s targeted black and Asian people; and the British National Party and the English Defence League in the early 2000s campaigned against British Muslims. Where these groups were active, incidents of hate crime rose.
Experiences of daily racism were a common experience in the 1950s and 1960s when black people could be refused jobs and accommodation (some signs read ‘No dogs, No blacks, No Irish’). While such racial discrimination became illegal, the number of reported racist incidents remains high.
From the 1960s onwards, relations between the police and many black people, especially youth, deteriorated. It was felt by some black British people that they were unfairly picked out and harassed, that racist murders were not properly investigated, and that police were directly responsible for some deaths in police custody but were not called to account.
Two speeches criticising levels of immigration by leading politicians - Enoch Powell in 1968 and Margaret Thatcher in 1978 - had the effect of polarising public opinion, with a rise in the numbers expressing anti-immigrant views.
   In the years following the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and terrorist attacks in New York in 2001 and London in 2005, hate crimes directed against Muslims increased.

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Migrants experienced immigration controls, discrimination and organised racism and had to struggle for acceptance. Nevertheless, the UK has become increasingly at ease with its cultural diversity.
During World War One, 32,000 Germans and Austrians, seen as ‘enemy aliens,’ were interned in camps and had their wealth seized by the government. Germans and Italians received similar treatment in World War Two and some were sent by ship to Canada and Australia. In July 1940, a German submarine sank one of the ships, the Arandora Star, resulting in 805 deaths. The sinking of the Arandora Star and the ill treatment of internees on another ship, the Dunera, a week later led to an outcry in Parliament which resulted in the first releases of internees in August 1940. By 1942 fewer than 5,000 remained interned. 
    
Throughout most of this period there were ever tighter controls on immigration.
All the above laws restricted immigration, except for the 1948 Act which opened doors because the UK needed more workers after World War Two. The 1962 Act, which aimed to restrict numbers, backfired. Many men who were working here at the time were eventually intending to return to their families; however they realised that they may not be readmitted if they went home to visit so they brought their families to join them and decided to settle permanently.
After the 1970s, immigration from EU member states had to be allowed by European law, so most legislation was aimed at refugees and asylum seekers.
By 2007, however, the immigration system was out of control, with a massive backlog of people claiming asylum whose cases had not yet been dealt with. The UK Border Agency was set up to try and deal with the problem.
During the same period laws were passed to promote better community relations, and prevent racial discrimination and racist hate crimes.

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Migrants experienced immigration controls, discrimination and organised racism and had to struggle for acceptance. Nevertheless, the UK has become increasingly at ease with its cultural diversity.
Responses to the challenges of life in the UK took many forms over this period. They included:

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Migrants experienced immigration controls, discrimination and organised racism and had to struggle for acceptance. Nevertheless, the UK has become increasingly at ease with its cultural diversity.
Since the 1940s, immigrants and their descendants have integrated into communities across the UK. In so doing they have helped to shape the identity of Britain and changed the concept of 'Britishness' in today's society.
Net migration has continued to rise, reaching 300,000 in 2015. However less than 25 per cent of the workforce were immigrants and in 2011 just over 12 per cent of the population of the UK were foreign born.  Just as previous migrant groups - Flemish, Huguenot, Jewish, Irish, Italian – have mixed over time into the wider population, a similar process has happened with more recent migrants in many parts of the UK, especially London.
Although inequalities in employment still exist today and disproportionately large numbers of adults from ethnic minorities are unemployed or in low paid jobs, most occupations are far more culturally diverse than they have been in the past. Whilst black children were underachieving the most in schools at the end of the 20th century, by 2013 white working-class children were the lowest achievers according to Ofsted annual reports.
The 2000 and 2001 riots between white and Asian young people in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford indicated how segregated parts of Britain were. Negative stories about immigrants regularly appeared in the popular press, frequently leading many to believe that numbers were higher than they actually were. Nevertheless, a 2014 report by the Economical and Social Research Council concluded that most people are positive about British society and their own cultural identity.

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While there are contrary views about how immigration has affected British society, the impact has clearly been considerable in all areas of UK life.
Immigration has had a huge impact on the UK’s economy. Migrant labour from the Commonwealth helped reconstruct the country after World War Two and maintain the transport and health services. Bus conductors and drivers and hospital nurses and doctors from many parts of the world were crucial to these services, and remain so today.  Migrant factory workers were essential to many businesses in the 1960s and 1970s. The catering and hotel businesses - a major earner for the British economy - continue to be heavily staffed by immigrant workers.
The topic of immigration has always divided opinion, especially when it comes to the economy. Supporters of immigration argue that it creates more jobs, helps boost the economy and keeps inflation down. Opponents argue that immigration causes unemployment, reduces wages overall and puts too much pressure on public services such as health and education.  Recent studies, however, are inconclusive: 
Supporters of the European Union (EU) free movement of people argue that the economic boom of the early 2000s was partly thanks to migrant workers taking lower paid jobs in the service sector and paying taxes to support care for an ageing population. Opponents argue that, especially since the 2008 financial market crash, too many people are coming into the UK and our housing stock, schools and hospitals cannot cope. All sides of the argument, including those who argue for much stricter immigration controls, agree that some immigration is needed to keep the economy going.

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While there are contrary views about how immigration has affected British society, the impact has clearly been considerable in all areas of UK life.
The social and cultural impact of 20th and 21st century immigration has been great in many aspects of our lives. Here are a few examples:

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While there are contrary views about how immigration has affected British society, the impact has clearly been considerable in all areas of UK life.
Immigration has had a huge impact on the UK’s economy. Migrant labour from the Commonwealth helped reconstruct the country after World War Two and maintain the transport and health services. Bus conductors and drivers and hospital nurses and doctors from many parts of the world were crucial to these services, and remain so today.  Migrant factory workers were essential to many businesses in the 1960s and 1970s. The catering and hotel businesses - a major earner for the British economy - continue to be heavily staffed by immigrant workers.
The topic of immigration has always divided opinion, especially when it comes to the economy. Supporters of immigration argue that it creates more jobs, helps boost the economy and keeps inflation down. Opponents argue that immigration causes unemployment, reduces wages overall and puts too much pressure on public services such as health and education.  Recent studies, however, are inconclusive: 
Supporters of the European Union (EU) free movement of people argue that the economic boom of the early 2000s was partly thanks to migrant workers taking lower paid jobs in the service sector and paying taxes to support care for an ageing population. Opponents argue that, especially since the 2008 financial market crash, too many people are coming into the UK and our housing stock, schools and hospitals cannot cope. All sides of the argument, including those who argue for much stricter immigration controls, agree that some immigration is needed to keep the economy going.

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While there are contrary views about how immigration has affected British society, the impact has clearly been considerable in all areas of UK life.
An argument used against immigration is that a large influx can cause a rise in racism from settled people who feel threatened by new arrivals. Evidence suggests, however, that racial tension is highest in very segregated communities and lowest where there is a mix of people from many different cultural backgrounds growing up together and making friends.
A major impact of the high levels of immigration since the 1950s has been increased understanding across cultures. Many negative attitudes and expressions that were common a generation ago are now completely unacceptable, and most people are in friendly contact with people with different cultural heritages. However, economic insecurity and fear of terrorism, among other factors, have recently created a harsher climate for community relations and a rise in anti-immigrant feeling.
Look back at the ‘Impact’ sections for the Medieval, Early Modern and Industrial periods.
In what way has the recent impact of immigration been similar to previous periods, and in what ways has it been different?

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In your History GCSE, it is important that you not only have good subject knowledge, but have the skills to apply this knowledge to exam questions.
There are four types of question on this paper:

The paper carries 50 marks and you have one hour to complete it, so aim to spend around the same number of minutes as marks for each question.

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In your History GCSE, it is important that you not only have good subject knowledge, but have the skills to apply this knowledge to exam questions.
This question is asking you to show your factual knowledge.
Examples:
Tips:

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In your History GCSE, it is important that you not only have good subject knowledge, but have the skills to apply this knowledge to exam questions.
There are four types of question on this paper:

The paper carries 50 marks and you have one hour to complete it, so aim to spend around the same number of minutes as marks for each question.

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In your History GCSE, it is important that you not only have good subject knowledge, but have the skills to apply this knowledge to exam questions.
This type of question focuses on your ability to use your knowledge and understanding to explain how or why something happened. You will need to write clearly, using relevant detailed examples while staying focused on the overall question. 
Examples:
Tips:

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In your History GCSE, it is important that you not only have good subject knowledge, but have the skills to apply this knowledge to exam questions.
This question goes into a deeper historical concept. It may ask how much changed or stayed the same, or why something happened, or what the impact was, or how significant it was. It might ask you to compare two migration stories, or two periods, for similarity or difference.
Examples:
Tips:

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In your History GCSE, it is important that you not only have good subject knowledge, but have the skills to apply this knowledge to exam questions.
This question asks you to make a judgement supported by well chosen evidence. The question may be about one period, or go across more than one period.
Examples:
Tips:

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In your History GCSE, it is important that you not only have good subject knowledge, but have the skills to apply this knowledge to exam questions.
Consider using a PEEL structure for your paragraphs:
P = Point
The first sentence of each paragraph should clearly state the point of the paragraph which in turn should be directly connected to the overall theme of the question. Be precise and clear about what you will be discussing.
E = Evidence
Provide evidence to support your point and the theme of the answer. Make the evidence specific, eg use key terms, dates and names. Be precise with the facts – don’t generalise.
E = Explain
Interpret the evidence and show how it agrees or disagrees with the question theme.
L = Link
When providing the link sentence at the end of your paragraph you are not only linking back to the rest of the paragraph and the main idea but you are also allowing for a transition to the next topic or paragraph.

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Migration has played an important part in Britain's history from c1000 to the present day. It has influenced Britain’s economy, politics, culture and relationship with the wider world. 
Every single person living in Britain today is descended from immigrants. From the first settlers about 25,000 years ago, people have come here, settled and mixed with each other. Throughout our history, moving here has changed the people who came and they have changed Britain. Our changing population has been an unchanging fact. The story of migration is the story of our nation seen through the lives of all of us.
As you study migration you will encounter the major events and changes in the history of Britain.  These include the Norman Conquest, the Hundred Years' War, the Reformation, enslavement, the British Empire, the Industrial Revolution, the two World Wars, the Cold War, the European Union and the modern conflicts causing mass movement of people seeking safety. You will also see how Britain’s economy and its relationship with the wider world changed and developed over 1000 years. Immigrants to Britain played a part in all of these, sometimes a key role.
Immigration is a controversial political topic in our own time. Many of today’s issues and debates are the same as those in the past, while others are very different. Studying the history of migration will help you think about today’s arguments in context, with evidence, so that you can make informed judgements that learn from history.