Guernsey, 1814-1914 - Migration and Modernisation

In the early nineteenth century, despite 600 years of allegiance to the English Crown, a majority of Guernseymen still spoke a Franco-Norman dialect and retained cultural affinities with France. By the eve of World War I, however, insular society had turned predominantly anglophone and was culturally orientated towards England. In examining this sea-change, the author focuses particularly on the role of migration, since the Island experienced both substantial outflows [to North America and the Antipodes], and substantial inflows [from Dorset, Devon, Somerset, Hampshire and Cornwall; the Irish province of Munster, and the French departements of La Manche and Les Cotes-du-Nord]. The author investigates push- and pull-factors influencing the various migrant cohorts, and evaluates the reception they met from the insular authorities and population at large. Whilst showing that both British and French migrants, in their different ways, advanced the process of anglicisation, she sets their contribution in its proper perspective against the host of less tangible forces which had first initiated anglicisation and were hastening it on irrespective of the migrant presence.