BRIDGING “THE GREAT DIVIDE”: CORNISH LABOUR MIGRATION TO AMERICA AND THE EVOLUTION OF TRANSNATIONAL IDENTITY By
Sharron P. Schwartz Institute of Cornish Studies, University of Exeter, Hayne Corfe Centre, Truro, Cornwall, TR1 3ND Great Britain
Paper presented at the Race, Ethnicity and Migration: The United States in a Global Context Conference, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis November 16-18, 2000.
BRIDGING ‘THE GREAT DIVIDE’: CORNISH LABOUR MIGRATION TO AMERICA AND THE EVOLUTION OF TRANSNATIONAL IDENTITY
Situated at the extreme south west of the British Isles, Cornwall is a narrow peninsula surrounded on three sides by the Atlantic Ocean and separated from neighbouring Devon by the River Tamar in the east. Formerly, this remote part of Britain, which covers an area no more than 1,365 square miles and at no time during the first half of the nineteenth century could boast a population greater than 375,000, had a Celtic language, and a history, culture and socio-economic past that tha t sets it apart from ‘shire’ England of which it is now a part.1 Shifts in spatial focus exploring uneven patterns of regional industrialisation in Britain have drawn attention to Cornwall’s leading role in the industrial revolution in the field of metal mining and steam engineering.2 But Cornwall was also one of the first regions to de-industrialise following mining mining decline from the 1860s.
During its its
industrialisation and de-industrialisation it witnessed considerable migration, making it “an emigration region comparable with any in Europe”,3 giving rise to a significant global diaspora. For a region with such a small population, the Cornish have exerted a disproportionate influence upon the world in the field of metalliferous mining and engineering. A number of Cornish migrants, known colloquially as ‘Cousin Jacks’,4 went to the USA and were connected to the mining and quarrying industries. industries. These migrants settled in communities that acquired a discernible Cornish identity, one built on mining prowess and pride that had evolved from the industrial experience in the ‘old country’. To be Cornish was synonymous with mining mining skill and excellence. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a dynamic transatlantic migrant circuit developed. Connected on both sides of ‘the great divide’ by a growth of transnational contacts, defined as those relations between two or more social subjects from two or more state-nations when at least one of these subjects is not an agent of a government or intergovernment organisation5, Cornish people came together to debate their common affairs, contest meanings, issues of identity and to negotiate claims in what has been termed a ‘transnational public sphere’6. Here it it is necessary to differentiate between transnational relations and transnational identity. Transnational relations are significant in the making of transnational identity, which can be broadly defined as
binding social groups across international borders in the name of ethnic, racial, religious, linguistic, locality or nation-state of origin, class, gender, or any other factor.7 Yet transnational relations can disintegrate if migrants sever their homeland ties and completely assimilate into their host communities, or they may re-invent themselves to face the challenges of a new set of circumstances. We are increasingly being made aware of the need to look beyond a rigid national perspective, and past the pluralist multinational perspective, to the fluidity and complexity of the transnational.8 Studying transnationalism, the social practices of transmigrants and their organisations, 9 enables us to focus upon the frictions and disjunctions brought about by the slow but inexorable erosion of national formations along with the various reactions and tensions that this process produces.10 The pace of Cornish migration to America slowed after 1930 as mining in the US declined as it had done in Cornwall. What implications did this have for Cornish-American transnational relations and identity? This paper will seek to do three three things. Firstly it will analyse the role labour migration played in the persistence of a popular nineteenth century ‘Cornish’ identity. Secondly, it will explore the development of transnational identity and how this has been re-invented in recent times, and thirdly, it will evaluate the importance of transnational identity to both Cornwall and America in a globalizing world.
LABOUR MIGRATION AND ‘CORNISH’ IDENTITY
By the late eighteenth century Cornwall had emerged as a centre of technological innovation in deep lode mining and steam engineering, and was one of Britain’s earliest industrial regions with a distinct and specialised extra-regional commodity export copper ore. This, together with tin and some lead provided the main output of Cornwall’s mining industry giving rise to a unique industrial society. This has been described by Deacon as “a rural-industrial society of scattered, independent communities linked by a precocious merchant capitalism…and an allegiance to the equally dispersed cottage religion of Methodism.”11 By the mid nineteenth century the Cornish mining industry was highly complex and sophisticated, marshalling large quantities of fixed capital, semi-joint stock forms of organisation, a brisk informal share market, and with a hierarchically structured labour
force12 had established a clear comparative advantage in metal mining in a similar way that Lancashire had in cotton textile manufacture13. At the same time Cornwall was beginning to export both its technology and its skilled labour force, initially to South and Central America, in response to a developing international mining labour market.14 But the Cornish mining industry entered a state of terminal decline after the mid 1860s, heralding the long, drawn out process of de-industrialisation. This occurred at a time when social patterns in Cornwall were beginning to converge with those of the other, more recently established industrial regions of Britain, whilst at the same time manifesting a sense of regional pride and identity based on industrial prowess. 15 Onto an indigenous culture of individualism, independence, thrift, hard work and allegiance to Methodism, was grafted a late-nineteenth century industrial working class culture of brass bands, male voice choirs and rugby football. And it was this hybrid identity, argues Deacon, that proved to be surprisingly resilient, “providing the popular sense of Cornishness through to the end of the twentieth century”.16 Importantly, this popular sense of Cornishness based on industrial pride and prowess was carried abroad and transplanted in vibrant transnational communities that manifested a Cornish way of life with their Methodist chapels and their choirs, brass bands and self-help societies, distinctive foods (pasties and saffron cake)17 and the Cornish dialect. Such traits became powerful and central tenets of Cornishness throughout the diaspora. By the 1830s Cornish labour migration to America had commenced, being well established in the lead mining region of Wisconsin.18 More migrants arrived during the Californian gold rush and after the commencement of deep lode mining in the Sierra Nevada and other western mining fields.19 By the late nineteenth century the collapse of Cornwall’s mining industry and the development of mining fields across America meant that Cornish miners and their families were to be found in virtually every state where there was mining or quarrying activity.20
Dense transatlantic migration networks
between towns and villages in Cornwall and transnational communities across the US developed during the 1800s. So although the mining industry in Cornwall entered a terminal decline from the 1860s which resulted in a loss of the self-confidence and pride that had been the hallmark of the industrial ‘golden age’ in Cornwall, Cornish migrants leaving to seek their futures in mining areas overseas created new Cornwalls, in which
their particular way of life life was transplanted transplanted and their heritage maintained. Attractive aspects of the Cornish identity - sobriety, chapel attendance, thrift and hard work were elevated, while less attractive traits such as heavy drinking, fighting and carousing in brothels were not mentioned as the Cornish sought the moral high ground that would enable them to be accepted as a useful and important immigrant immigrant group. By the turn of the twentieth century Cornish people were so familiar with the United States that it was considered almost the parish next door, with American accents discernible in Cornwall’s mining communities, as well as the tastes and values that revealed contact with the American way of life.
CLANNISH ‘COUSIN JACK’ AND ETHNIC EXCLUSIVITY
Coming as they did from an advanced industrial region, Cornish miners were imbued with a confidence in the fact that they were the undisputed and finest hard rock miners in the world, an attitude that was acknowledged by nineteenth century American commentators: “They recognise their superiority. Some of those who came [to Wisconsin] in the [18]30s say there was no real mining done by the Americans before the Cornish came”21.
Like many other immigrant immigrant groups, the Cornish tended to settle
together, forming distinct communities in which they continued life as they did in the ‘old country’, particularly their strong allegiance to Methodism, as was manifested in Californian mining settlements such as Grass Valley and New Almaden22. They were often accused of being clannish and conceited.
That they were inclined to keep to
themselves is conveyed in the 1879 account of Robert Louis Stephenson, in his narrative Across the Plains, who wrote of:
a knot of Cornish miners who kept grimly to themselves, one reading the New Testament all day long through steel spectacles, the rest discussing privately the secrets of their old-world, mysterious race…a division of races, older and more original than Babel, keeps this close, esoteric family apart from neighbouring Englishmen. Englishmen. Not even a Red Indian seems more foreign in my eyes…23
This account also accentuates the ‘otherness’ often associated and felt by the English sometimes rejected by the the Cornish. The Cornish were frequently ambivalent about being classed as English. Many seemed content to note, on official official forms for for example which
made no distinction between Cornish and English, that they were from Cornwall, England, and therefore implicitly English. At other times they sounded an imperial note declaring themselves as British. But they accentuated their Cornish identity when seeking work. Although many Americans and other ethnic groups in the nineteenth century sensed that the Cornish were different than the English, this ambiguity accounts for the problems encountered in recent years of making the Cornish ethnically visible in the US. Playing on a sense of ethnic difference - Cornish as opposed to English - coupled with their perceived superiority as hard rock miners, was a deliberate ploy to maintain an edge over other ethnic rivals, particularly the Irish, in the expanding US mining labour market. For to be Cornish became synonymous with mining skill and excellence and the best jobs with the highest pay in the mining industry therefore went to ‘Cousin Jacks’.24 “The Cornishman knew better than anyone how to break rock, how to timber bad ground and how to make the other fellow shovel it, tram it, and hoist it”25 The ‘other fellow’ was often an Irishman, one old Cornish miner scathingly noting that, “wheelbarrows were dispensations of Providence, inasmuch as they taught Irishmen to walk upright”.26 Although both stocks were Celtic, the similarity ended there, for the antagonism and mutual dislike each bore the other was the “most explosive and divisive internal threat to the mining labor movement in the West”,27 as was manifested at Butte, Montana.28 And it was not just the Irish who felt the constraint of working under the Cornish. In Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula, the Cornish “hold” in mining militated against the hopes of Finns, Slavs and Italians to rise in the ranks, constant from the 1860s on. “The Cousin Jacks have everything sewn up” was a common expression into the 1930s.29
‘BRIDGING THE GREAT DIVIDE’: THE TRANSNATIONAL PUBLIC SHPERE
By the late nineteenth century dense transatlantic migration networks had developed, binding sending communities in Cornwall with receiving transnational communities, some of them of significant size, size, across America. In 1894 the West Briton reported of the predominance of Cornish people who made up 60 per cent of the 6,000 population of Grass Valley, California, where:
old country traces are plainly traceable…the best known [mine] is the Idaho, which up to the present date…has paid 4,5000,000 dollars in dividends, a goodly portion of which has gone home to Cornwall…the signs over almost all the stores bear Cornish names… newspapers are edited by Old Country men…there is a very comfortable Methodist church… 30
Although living in transmigrant communities thousands of miles from Cornwall, immigrants remained closely connected and involved in the affairs of their sending communities through the media of newspapers and because of the repeated comings and goings of migrants. migrants. This united them in a transterritorial transterritorial social formation. formation.31 One of the ways in which the sending and receiving communities were linked was through financial remittances. In 1909 for example, Hallesveor Chapel in the Cornish town of St Ives received £15 from Cornish expatriates in Mohawk, Michigan, who had raised the money by choir singing at concerts there and in neighbouring Calumet, the funds collected being split between the Methodist Episcopal Chapel in Mohawk and the chapel in St Ives.32 Yet it was not merely financial remittances that traversed migration networks but equally important social remittances remittances also. For transnational relations gave rise to shared ideas and beliefs - the social capital that defined transnational identity 33, thus binding segments of the population of Cornwall and America across international borders, enabling individuals and organisations to come together in a what has been termed a “transnational public sphere”.34
And this was not just used as a forum to mobilise
remittances home, but was an arena for transnational relations, a space to debate common affairs, contest meanings, issues of identity and to negotiate claims.35 This witnessed the formation of Cornish societies in cities such as New York, Chicago, Detroit and Boston and in states like California. Visiting Methodist preachers were common on both sides of the Atlantic and weekly newspaper items from mining camps in America and Cornwall were increasingly swapped in the late nineteenth century. Using the press as a medium for the dissemination of information in the early 1900s was New York hotel owner Sid Blake, a Cornishman whose establishment became something of a gateway to the States for Cornish migrants. Blake wrote a weekly letter to the Cornish Cornubian newspaper that published news of migrants passing through his establishment, but his letters also manifested a degree of political awareness and a welldefined sense of international Cornish identity. It was Blake who was responsible for the
formation of the the New York Cornish Association in 1912. By the early twentieth century a nascent transnational identity was emerging: one that was understood by contemporary participants in the Cornish societies.
The Southern California Cornish Cornish Association
certainly recognised the importance of maintaining an interconnectedness with Cornwall, their homeland, on the occasion of their annual social gathering in 1934 declaring that: “We have joined hands we Cornish folk across the main! Hail One and All, Old Cornwall.”36
AMERICANIZATION?
And yet paradoxically, while those Cornish in California were reaffirming their Cornish heritage and identity, that same identity had been under threat in some states before 1900 as the following example from Wisconsin, one of the earliest Cornish settlements, illustrates:
…while many of the Cornish immigrants in their lifetime keep up a correspondence with Cornwall, the second generation has almost entirely dropped it, although an occasional Cornish newspaper is received in the region. The Cornish descendants are scattering, and have almost lost their identity as a race. They do not hesitate to marry with other nationalities… nationalities… 37
We find that the parameters defining Cornish identity were becoming fuzzier from the late nineteenth century perhaps as a result of “Americanization” - including American American schooling, intermarriage with other ethnic groups and social mobility. This manifested itself at many levels, ranging from a move away from Cornish sports such as wrestling, cricket and football to American sports such as baseball and basketball, epitomised by the ‘Cousin Jack’ basketball team active at Calumet, Michigan, in 1909. It also occurred in speech, with Cornish migrants and their American born children dropping the dialect that had marked them out as different. “I soon dropped my accent when I got to school here [Grass Valley]” stated William T. George, “because everyone made fun of me.”38 Ashamed of their parents’ accents, second generation Cornish made a concerted attempt to become what Thurner has described as “un-hyphenated Americans”.39 But perhaps of greater significance was the decline of mining itself, the industry that had so defined what it meant to be Cornish, as mines across the US closed, particularly in the years after 1930,
as they had done in Cornwall. Communities began to fragment fragment as people moved away in in search of alternative employment, and old customs began to die out as the youth jettisoned their parents’ values and identities in their quest to achieve the American dream.40 Crucially, the numbers of Cornish immigrants to the US slowed considerably after the 1920s and the once dense transatlantic migration networks began to disintegrate. However, a backlash against the homogenising, monocultural effects of Americanization occurred among later generations who had experienced a loss of identity. As Randolph Bourne observed in his essay Trans-National America in 1916, America was becoming not a nationality, but a trans-nationality. 41 This might help to explain the occurrence of an ethnic revival, one that was not exclusive to the Cornish, but shared by numerous ethnic groups that comprise modern America. In the old Cornish settlements, residents, some of them third or fourth generation Cornish, endeavoured to make sure that the Cornish contribution to American society and to the ethnic mosaic of the States was not forgotten: “At Mineral Point the Cornish restoration and the interest in Cornish foods and customs during the 1930s came just in time to preserve an interesting chapter in the history of the lead region”.42 Cornish style cottages that had been constructed in the 1840s and 50s at Mineral Point were restored and given Cornish names.43 A similar response occurred in Grass Valley, where in 1950 at the behest of the National Folklore Society and the Library of Congress, the Grass Valley Choir made a tape recording of the carols and the history of the group as a permanent record of the activities of Cornish Cornish pioneers in America. This was seen as “putting the town on the map”, and gave Grass Valley “national and international publicity”.44 In Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula, argues Thurner, the descendants of the Cornish became more selfconscious of their culture from the mid twentieth century. They saw to it it that their “national” dish - the pasty - became a hallmark of Copper Country cuisine.
RE-INVENTING ‘CORNISHNESS’ IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION
Rather than creating a homogenous society that blurred or eroded cultural distinctions, local places and cultures in the US appear to have re-invented themselves in the face of Americanization or globalizing forces.
The end of the twentieth century witnessed
stretched social relations, the existence of cultural, economic, and political networks of connection across the world, which gave rise to increasing interconnectedness across international boundaries that allowed a re-interpretation and refreshing of traditional cultures and ways of life.45 The Cornish on both sides of the great divide were again united in a transterritorial transterritorial social formation. A dynamic transnational public sphere has once more emerged that is allowing the Cornish in America and in Cornwall to refresh, negotiate, and contest their common heritage. Although there has been a marked decline in mining and extractive industries on both sides of the Atlantic that, as we have seen, underpinned Cornish identity, new interpretations of Cornishness have emerged particularly those that stress its Celtic antecedents. What we appear to be witnessing witnessing according to anthropologist, Amy Hale, is “a kind of cultural feedback resulting from a heightened awareness of ethnicity within the Celtic regions themselves…learning about the often shared experience of emigration has created new opportunities for dialogue within the diaspora”.46 This raises an important point.
Identities are not legacies passively received but representations socially
produced, and - in this sense - matters matters of social dispute.47
Identities can be contested
and they are fluid and complex. The fact that elements of Celticity should be woven into the fabric of Cornish identity within the the diaspora says much about modern Cornwall itself. For in the early twentieth century Cornwall witnessed a Celtic Revival as it attempted to overcome the trauma of de-industrialisation. The Cornish language, which had ceased to be spoken in a vernacular way in the eighteenth century, was revived, along with the use of St Piran’s flag (a white cross against a black background) and the Celtic cross. cross. Other symbols of Celtic Cornwall were invented rather than re-invented, including a Cornish Gorsedd48, established in 1928 complete with bardic ceremony, and the revived use of the kilt in the Cornish national tartan with its its predominant colours of black and gold. This new Celtic iconography, which would have meant little to most Cornish people in the 1900s, was blended with established and accepted industrial icons and notions of Cornishness: brass bands, rugby football, male voice choirs, thrift, independence, sobriety, hard work and allegiance to Methodism. Moreover, the Cornish Celtic revival to many represented an
attempt for Cornwall to be seen as an ethnic region distinct from England, and to be included as a part of the vibrant north-western European ‘Celtic arc’. As identity was redefined and re-invented in Cornwall, this re-definition was echoed in the diaspora. The years from the 1970s have witnessed a renaissance of Cornish identity overseas, aided by an explosion of interest in genealogy and heritage, a process that has been ongoing and accelerated more recently through access to the Internet. This electronic forum, or “virtual community” can be viewed as an “electronic public sphere” that reflects “a hunger for community” in our modern era.49 For constructions of identity inform and legitimise the practises of many organisations and individuals that are important producers and disseminators of public representations as well as producers of certain agendas - social and cultural movements, non-governmental organisations, intellectuals and artists. 50 And this is exactly what has occurred with the revival of the moribund CornishAmerican associations and in the creation of new ones. In 1982 The Cornish American Heritage Society (CAHS) came into being, with the aim of preserving the history and culture of Cornish people and strengthening connections between Cornish communities around the world. This important organisation, with an initial membership of several hundred, held its first “Gathering of Cornish Cousins” in Detroit, the first of a series of biennial meetings across North America. Such gatherings include merchandise stalls, Crowdy Crawn (traditional music and dance), Cornish sports, historical lectures and
films, and workshops devoted to language, cookery, genealogy and folklore. There have even been, in recent years, Gorsedd ceremonies conducted in the Cornish language in which bards from both sides of the Atlantic participate. Through its gatherings and its quarterly newsletter Tam Kernewek 51 the CAHS has been one of the main reasons explaining the renaissance in transnational Cornish identity. In 1999 there were 32 Cornish societies and organisations in North America America and the CAHS has ipso facto become the organ par excellence in the revived public sphere of modern transnational identity. Tam Kernewek helps to co-ordinate the activities of the various Cornish organisations throughout North America and encourages Cornish participation at Celtic festivals in the USA. These popular festivals are often organised by the descendants of immigrants, “to educate others, celebrate their heritage, and promote
and preserve aspects of traditional culture perceived as somehow being under threat”. 52 Cornish participation at such festivals is a more recent feature than that of the Irish, Welsh or Scots, but in 1998 the Cornish were awarded the first prize for the best tent at the Potomac Celtic Fest, an important milestone along the route of ethnic ethn ic visibility for the Cornish in America. “Many were interested, even excited, to know that there is an active Cornish presence in the United States. The educational and public relations value of such festivals cannot be overstated”.53 In the wake of the tragic death at Columbine High School of a young CornishAmerican, Steven R. Curnow, the CAHS has established a Memorial Award. Realising the need to encourage youth to take an interest in their heritage, an essay contest is open to High School Seniors resident in North America, with a first prize of $500, for a paper written on a prescribed topic pertaining to Cornish heritage.54 It is hoped that in future this will lead to a student exchange programme between North America and Cornwall. The spin-offs from from the activities of the CAHS have been encouraging. In 1990 the famous Grass Valley Carol Choir was revived and has toured Cornwall, and Cornish male voice choirs have visited visited America. Recent years have seen town twinning twinning occur Bodmin and Redruth in Cornwall with Grass Valley, California and Mineral Point, Wisconsin respectively. Of a higher profile was the 1999 inception of the Cornish Foundation for North North America (CFNA). (CFNA). The creation of this new society society marks an important turning point in transnational identity and was set up because its founding members “care about Cornwall and our Cornish identity”.55 Recognising that modern Cornwall has socio-economic problems resulting from the demise of mining and related industries, this non-political organisation aims to provide financial assistance for projects in Cornwall related to community regeneration, continuing education opportunities for residents in Cornwall, and the restoration and preservation of Cornwall’s historical sites.56 But Cornwall too, has played an important role in the blossoming of modern transnational identity. The Cornwall Family History Society (CFHS), set up in the 1970s, has vigorously promoted the study of Cornish genealogy and heritage with its world-wide membership. Indeed, it was members of CFHS who were responsible for setting up the CAHS. In 1994 the the influential influential Cornish World magazine commenced. This publication,
often hard-hitting and unashamedly political, attempts to paint a realistic picture of contemporary Cornwall that transcends the utopian 19th century view of Cornwall resplendent in its industrial zenith, or of more recent “Disneyesque” visions of Cornwall as a playground for tourists and the retired.57 Cornish World has done much to alert its readers of the inescapable link with past migration history and has fostered a sense of coethnicity and transnational identity among Cornish people around the world.
THE IMPORTANCE OF CORNISH TRANSNATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE GLOBAL AGE
Such adherence to the “old country” which has claims on the loyalty and emotion of Cornish-Americans has, as Cohen has noted, “implications for the international state system as a number of groups [like the Cornish] evincing a ‘peoplehood’ thorough the retention or expression of separate languages, customs, folkways and religions looks set to grow”.58 Attempts to make the Cornish ethnically visible in America therefore puts transnational identity centre stage. Although not a political organisation, the CAHS is nevertheless making a significant significant contribution to Cornwall’s Cornwall’s claim of difference. Merely by educating its members to acknowledge their ancestry as Cornish and not English strengthens the case for the Cornish to be recognised as a national minority within the United Kingdom. With over one million people of Cornish descent believed to reside in the US alone, and Cornwall’s population of just over half a million with the indigenous Cornish making up less than 50 per cent of this total, the value of a Cornish population worldwide becomes apparent. This is exemplified exemplified by a twelve-point appendix to the Cornish National Minority Report of 2000 stressing the historical importance of Cornish labour migration by Phil Hosken, one time Editor of Cornish World magazine.59 The CAHS also promoted, through Tam Kernewek , the celebrations to mark Keskerdh Kernow , a reenactment of the Cornish Rebellion of 1497, ‘Cornwall’s Colloden’ when thousands of aggrieved Cornishmen marched on London to be defeated by the English at Blackheath. Marches of solidarity in some US states complimented that planned back in Britain, which for many served as a reminder of age-old English oppression and perceived tyranny against the Cornish nation.
CONCLUSION
This paper has shown how important transnational identity has been, and continues to be, for Cornwall and the Cornish. Cornish. The Cornish on both sides of the Atlantic were originally originally united by a common common transnational identity based on mining pride and prowess. But this came under threat of extinction with the demise of mining, causing the once dense transatlantic migration networks to ebb and wane. Yet far from being subsumed within a cultural “melting pot”, Cornish identity has proved remarkably resilient and adaptable, re-inventing itself to face a new set of circumstances circumstances in the modern modern global era. Once again the Cornish on both sides of the ‘great divide’ are united by the re-emergence of a transnational public sphere and transnational identity has been refashioned into an arguably more complex phenomenon, as new tenets of identity have been grafted onto older ones. For Cornish-Americans, transnational identity provides them with a sense of heritage and roots in an increasingly mobile and changing world. Moreover, CornishAmericans have ensured that the Cornish - thrifty, sober, hard-working, of good moral character, in short, archetypal nation builders, have their place among the many threads that constitute the rich rich ethnic tapestry of the United States. Crucially, they have rendered the Cornish ethnically visible in the USA that has important implications for Cornwall itself and places transnational identity centre-stage. As ‘reservoirs of Cornishness’, the Cornish overseas manifest an awareness of their heritage and identity - and a will to keep this alive. This has a great relevance relevance for Cornwall as its people seek to be recognised as an ethnic minority within the British Isles. And more importantly, it has wide ramifications for the concept of the homogenous ho mogenous nation-state.
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3
D. Baines, Migration in a Mature Economy: Emigration and Internal Migration in England and Wales, 1861-1900 , (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 159. 4 There is no clear consensus on how the Cornish miners acquired this name, but evidence seems to point to the mines of Devonshire in the eighteenth century, where migrant Cornish miners sought work. The term “Cousin Jack” is also thought to have been used to express an “otherness”, the Cornish considering themselves a distinct people with specific mining skills that they jealously gua rded. 5 D. Mato, “On Global and Local agents and the Social Making of Transnational Identities and Related Agendas in ‘Latin’ America”, Identities Vol. 4:2, (1997), 167-212. 6 Y. Soysal, “Changing parameters p arameters of citizenship and claims making: organised Islam in European public spheres”, Theory and Society , 26 (1987): 509-527. 7 Mato, 1997. 8 W. Kaufman and H. Macpherson, “Transatlantic Studies: A New Paradigm” Transatlantic Studies: New Perspectives, (Lanham: University Press of America, 2000). 9 L. Basch, N. Glick Schiller and C. Szanton Blanc, Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments and Deterritorialized Nation-States , (Langhorne: Gordon and Breach, 1994). 10 P. Giles, “Forward” in Transatlantic Studies: New Perspectives, (Lanham: University Press of America, 2000). 11 B. Deacon, “‘Wags’ or ‘Nuts’? Contemporary representations of the Cornish and their identity”, paper presented at the Relocating Britishness Conference, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, (22-24 June, 2000). 12 R.Burt, “The transformation of the non-ferrous metals industries in the sev enteenth and eighteenth centuries”, Economic History Review, XLVIII (1): 23-45 (1995). 13 B.Deacon, “Proto-industrialisation and Potatoes: A Revised Narrative for NineteenthCentury Cornwall”. Cornish Studies Five , (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1997). 14 S. Schwartz, “Exporting the Industrial Revolution: The Migration of Cornish Mining Technology to Latin America, 1812-1848”, paper presented at the Transatlantic Studies: New Perspectives Conference, Maastricht Center for Transatlantic Studies, Teikyo University, Maastricht, The Netherlands, (12-14 October, 2000). 15 B.Deacon, 1997, 2000. 16 B.Deacon, 2000. 17 The pasty - a semi-circular pie containing diced beef, potatoes, white turnip and onions - was one of the most popular foods carried to work at the mines and, like yellow, fragrant saffron cake, is considered to be b e quintessentially Cornish. 18 L.A. Copeland, “The Cornish in Southwest Wisconsin”, Wisconsin Historical Collection , Vol. XIV, (1898). 19 See F.D. Calhoon, Coolies, Kanakas and Cousin Jacks: And Eleven Other Ethnic Groups Who Populated the West During the Gold Rush Years , (Sacramento, 1995); S. Ewart, Cornish Mining Families of Grass Valley, CA , (New York: AMS Press, 1989); Highly Respectable Families: The Cornish of Grass Valley California 1854 -1954 , (Grass Valley: Comstock Bonanza Press, 1998). 20 See A.L. Rowse, The Cornish in America , (Redruth: Dyllansow Truran, 1967); J. Rowe, The Hard-Rock Men: Cornish Immigrants and the North American Mining Frontier , (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1974); A.C. Todd, The Cornish Miner
in America, (Spokane: Arthur H. Clarke, 1995); P. Payton, The Cornish Overseas ,
(Fowey: Alexander Press, 1998). Copeland 1898, 319. 22 G. McKinney, A High and Holy Place: A Mining Camp Church at New Almaden , (Sunnyvale: Pine Press,1997). 23 Cited in Rowse, 255-256. 24 R. Wallace, The Miners, (New York: Time Inc., 1976), 104-109. 25 O. Young, Black Powder and Hand Steel , (Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 1976). 26 R. Lescohier, Gold Giants of Grass Valley: History of the Empire and North Star Mines 1850-1956 , (Grass Valley: Empire Mine Park Association,1995), 43. 27 Lescohier, 1995, 42. 28 See Todd, 1995, 241-244. 29 A.W. Thurner, Strangers and Sojourners: A History of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula , (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994), 155. 30 West Briton, 13 September 1894. 31 L.E. Guarnizo, “The emergence of a transnational social formation and the mirage of return migration among Dominican transmigrants”, Identities-Global Identities-Global Studies in Culture and Power , Vol. 4:2 (1997), 281-322. 32 Cornish Post and Mining News , 28 January 1909. 33 P. Levitt, “Social Remittances: migration driven local-level forms of cultural diffusion”, International Migration Review , Vol. 32:4 (1998), 926-984. 34 Y. Soysal, 1987. 35 J. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action , Vol. 1:2, (Boston: Beacon Press,1984). 36 West Briton, 21 January 1935. “One and All” is the Cornish motto, appearing on the Cornish Coat of Arms. 37 Copeland, 1898, 330. 38 Ewart, 1998, 45. 39 Thurner, 1994, 311. 40 See M. C. Waters, Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America , (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990) for more on this subject. 41 R. Bourne “Trans-National America”, Atlantic Monthly , 111:1 (1916), 86-87. 42 G. Fiedler, Mineral Point: A History , 3rd Edition, (Mineral Point, 1986), 169. 43 They are Polperro, Pendarvis and Trelawny. 44 Ewart, 1998, 61. 45 See G. Mulgan, Connexity: Responsiblility, Freedom, Business and Power in the New Century . (London: Vintage, 1998); A. Cochrane and K. Pain, “A Globalizing Society?” A Globalizing World? Culture, Economics and Politics , in David Held, ed., A Globalizing World? Culture, Economics and Politics (London: Routledge, 2000); H. McKay, “The Globalization of Culture?” in David Held, ed., A Globalizing World? Culture, Economics and Politics (London: Routledge, 2000). 46 A. Hale and P. Payton, “The Celtic Diaspora”, in New Directions in Celtic Studies , (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2000), 95. 47 Mato, 1998, 598. 21
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The Gorseth Bryth Kernow (Gorsedd of Cornish Bards) meets annually. Although independent, it is allied to those of Wales and Brittany. It exists to maintain maintain “the National Celtic Spirit of Cornwall” and entry to the Gorsedd as a bard is by invitation to those who have encouraged and promoted this, or by examination in the Cornish language. 49 H. Rheingold, The Virtual Community , (London: Mandarin Paperbacks, 1995), 6. 50 Mato, 1999, 611. 51 the Cornish, means, ‘a bit of Cornish’. It is Tam Kernewek , roughly translated from the interesting to note the use of the Cornish language for many of the societies and their publications in America, echoing what is occurring in Cornwall. 52 A. Hale and S. Thornton, “Pagans, Pipers and Politicos: Constructing ‘Celtic’ in a Festival Context”, in New Directions in Celtic Studies , (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2000), 97-107. 53 N. O. Heydt, “Oatlands Celtic Fest”, Tam Kernewek , 14:2 (1996), 15. 54 J. Jolliffe, “President’s Message”, Tam Kernewek , 18:2 (2000); Cornish American Heritage Society, “Remembering Stephen R. Curnow”, Fact Sheet Memorial Award Essay Contest (2000). 55 Cornish Foundation For North America Leaflet, (1999). 56 J. Jolliffe, “The price of success?” Tam Kernewek , 17: (1999), 2-3. 57 P. Hosken, “Cornwall - not what it seems”, Cornish World , 11 (1996). 58 R. Cohen, Global Diasporas , (London: UCL Press, 1997), ix-x. 59 P. Hosken, “The Overseas Cornish”, in B. Deacon, The Cornish and the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities , (Redruth: 2000).
