More people emigrated from England in the Great Age of Migration (1815–1930) than did from Italy, Ireland, or Germany. Most English migrants headed for North America, where they had already been a dominant force for two centuries. They were foundational people, pioneers of mass migration, carriers of law, political ideology, economic and educational systems, religion, culture, and language. Yet, oddly, the English in North America performed a historical disappearing act. In the long perspective they seemed to blend so fully into mainstream America that they became virtually “invisible”; they possessed few distinctive markings, little diasporic identity, and emerged somewhat pale in comparison with more colorful co-migrants from Ireland, Scotland, Germany, and elsewhere. The lost English immigrants need rescuing from such historical anonymity, and now two British-based historians, Tanja Bueltmann and Donald M. MacRaild, have set out to rediscover them. They have already published prolifically on the subject, and here they bring together their findings in an ambitious and heavily documented investigation of the mystery of English invisibility.

The English question was brought to the fore originally by Charlotte Erickson and William Van Vugt in the context of immigrant United States; it was also examined in the Australian setting by James Jupp. In their new study, Bueltmann and MacRaild widen the agenda to ask whether the expatriate English (often folded by other historians into the “British” category) constituted a “functional diaspora” (5), which then connects with matters pertaining to ethnic identity. These themes have recently monopolized debates surrounding migration history and modern nationalism, an introspective turn in historiography. Here Bueltmann and MacRaild trenchantly declare that “Invisible the English diaspora was not” (13). Moreover, they argue, the English were not intrinsically different in their ethnic behavior from the other components in the immigrant populations. They helpfully locate the occupational and regional clusterings of the English in North America and insist that they were not conspicuously advantaged, though on average they did possess higher levels of skill and had high rates of return to their country of origin.

The methods and sources employed by Bueltmann and MacRaild to reach these conclusions are explained at length in their extensive survey of two types of English-based institutions in the United States and Canada over two centuries down to 1950. They focus on the “associational culture” of English people, specifically the fraternal societies that proclaimed their Englishness and served their ethnic needs by means of certain rituals, entertainments, and practical aid to fellow country folk. In common with other ethnicities in North America, the English spawned many localized associations and clubs, but two were prominent and achieved wide coverage and national affiliation. First were the St. George's Societies, which had colonial origins and were essentially paternalistic and philanthropic: they raised assistance for less fortunate English-born compatriots and recent immigrants while also celebrating the homeland, praising the English character, and expressing loyalty to crown and empire. St. George's Societies were active in most American cities. These societies proliferated but retained their elitist manner and style. Second, by the mid-nineteenth century, a more working-class body of associations emerged, called variably the Sons of England or St. George: they were mutual-self-help societies typical of their times and extended their reach on both sides of the Canadian border. This shift represented a transition in the “associational culture” in that working-class groups recruited larger memberships, and, though not secret societies, were “slightly mysterious” (123). They celebrated their “Anglo-Saxon” heritage and their strident Protestantism, but mostly they operated as benefit institutions, offering assistance to the unemployed and for funeral expenses. These associations expanded rapidly in the 1880s and accounted for more than 40,000 members by the end of the century (128).

Bueltmann and MacRaild exhaustively excavate these societies and clubs: they devote much of the book to the minutiae of association prospectuses, rules, fees, finances, fraternal exchanges, eligibility, functions, and protocols, some of which are collected into graphs and tables. These details are drawn mainly from the surviving records and correspondences of the societies, with further recourse to extensive digitized newspaper sources, yet little of the oral record. The result is a dense litany of reportage from dozens of societies, inevitably somewhat repetitive, though brightened by stories of actual English lives and English philanthropy (some of which included assisted return passages on cattle boats back to England). Bueltmann and MacRaild demonstrate that North America was dotted with these local societies, which self-consciously extolled and sustained their particular versions of Englishness. Here they are eulogized as “impressive transoceanic systems of ethnic celebration” (76).

In isolation these findings have limited purchase, but Bueltmann and MacRaild sensibly expose them to comparative analysis, juxtaposing the associational culture of the English with those of other immigrants, namely the Germans, Scots, and Irish. There were differences (and occasional mutual tensions), but mostly all four associations followed similar priorities and trajectories. Thus, the authors conclude persuasively, the English were not much different (though less broadly based and less expressive) from the rest of immigrant America. This reinforces their central contention that the English were just as ethnic, diasporic, and conspicuous as their contemporaries.

Two questions hover over this elaborate and exhaustive investigation of the English presence in North America. The first is whether the quite small and sometimes idiosyncratic membership of the St. George associations represented the authentic voice of the great mass of immigrant English people and their offspring, who numbered many millions by 1900; there is, for instance, no accounting of those who discarded or discounted their Englishness or expressed it in quite different ways. The second is whether these societies were able to shoulder as much diasporic freight as Bueltmann and MacRaild contend: the English societies certainly gloried in royalty, in sports, and in ritual dining and toasting; but they were primarily apolitical, unaggressively patriotic, and careful to avoid alienating their host communities, as were most other immigrant associations. Their durability and good works are properly emphasized in this account, yet little attention is given to the tensions in British-US relations during the two world wars, for example, or to the political transformations after 1945.

Whichever way these questions are answered, it is clear that Bueltmann and MacRaild have lessened the invisibility of English associations in North America: they have provided a model of highly focused investigative research that will not need repeating.