Immigration was a key element of Australian development in the nineteenth century but Australia is a long way from the European source of migrants—creating what Geoffrey Blainey dubbed The Tyranny of Distance. New estimates show that the average length of the voyage for emigrant ships from the UK to Australia fell from 124 days in 1837-1841 to 46 days in 1909-13. I find that the reduction in time-cost boosted emigration from the UK. The transition from sail to steam accounts for just half of this decrease and it occurred in the early 1880s—nearly two decades after the transition on the emigrant route across the North Atlantic. I revisit the question of why sail proved to be so resilient, even after the opening of the Suez Canal. In particular, I examine the effects of improvements in sailing-ship design, notably the advent of clipper ships. I suggest that there was an element of synergy between bigger, better and faster sailing ships and navigating by the more direct ‘great circle’ route.
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Speaker: Tim Hatton
Tim Hatton is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Essex and at the Australian National University and is co-director of the ANU’s Centre for Economic History. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, of the Academy of Social Sciences UK, a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR, London) and of the Institute for the Study of Labour (IZA, Bonn). He has published extensively on the determinants and the effects of international migration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His recent work focuses on immigration, asylum and policy in recent decades. His books include Global Migration and the World Economy: Two Centuries of Policy and Performance, (MIT Press, 2005) (with Jeffrey G. Williamson) and Seeking Asylum: Trends and Policies in the OECD (CEPR, 2011).