Conclusion

Summary

This book, incorporating letters spanning the years 1840 to 1937, records the diverse thoughts, feelings, and experiences of individual Irish correspondents who endeavoured to maintain intimate connexions with their separated kinfolk. Their alternating euphoric and restrained reflections, studied in conjunction with biographical details, illuminate the critical importance of family involvement at origin and destination in directing and sustaining Irish migration to New Zealand. These migrants, however, were not passive followers in established migration chains, but were active and deliberate movers, selecting their destination based on a range of information derived from their ‘global networks of communication’. These connexions supplied significant advice and encouragement in response to queries about selecting New Zealand as a destination. They also provided descriptions about preparing for the voyage, and related what to expect during the journey at sea. Comparisons between the two countries also contained implicit encouragement to emigrate and rapturous depictions of New Zealand propelled many to the country's distant shores. Indeed, letters constituted a reliable and immediate source of information about prospects and conditions abroad and together with the availability of assisted and nominated passages were more influential in directing migration to New Zealand than propaganda campaigns.

Arising out of this ongoing networking, extensive kin and neighbourhood ties, based on Irish birth, emerged in New Zealand. Such associations present an additional challenge to claims that feeble kin and community ties characterised New Zealand's nineteenth-century society and that mobility diminished kinship bonds. The considerable attachments documented in the letters were generally harmonious, with many examples existing of powerful alliances. Yet the extent and intensity of these ties at home and abroad could occasionally spark dissension, prompting conflict in and between families and friends. Such bonds became particularly vulnerable when migrants asserted their individual interests at the expense of collective strategies. As a result these tenuous relationships grew increasingly fraught or ceased altogether. Such strains provide strong support for arguing that discordant relationships were a motive for migration. Likewise, the disruption to households arising from the death of one or both parents may also have hastened departure.

Quite apart from the widespread companionship supplied by friends and family in New Zealand, the correspondence also reveals the presence of associates at other destinations within the Irish diaspora. North America and Australia, in particular, were major areas of settlement and some migrants spent time in these countries before arriving in New Zealand.