The best introduction to the subject of immigration to North America is M.A. Jones, American Immigration (Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 1960) which has been written for the general reader and is both comprehensive and sound. Marcus Lee Hansen, Atlantic Migration 1607-1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University' Press, 1940) is an outstanding book for breadth of treatment, scholarship, and originality, emphasizing the period 1830 to 1860 and the European and British background. W.S. Shepperson, British Emigration to North America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1957) is a good source for serious students interested in British attitudes toward emigration and the efforts of the government, parishes, humanitarians, and private enterprise to encourage people to emigrate.
On the North American colonies, Helen I. Cowan, British Emigration to British North America, The First Hundred Years (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961) is indispensable, giving particular attention to the role of the imperial government in encouraging and regulating emigration. Miss Cowan's British Immigration before Confederation (C.H.A. Booklet No. 22) is a useful summary. Norman Macdonald, Canada 1763-1841, Immigration and Settlement; the Administration of Imperial Land Regulation (London: Longmans, Green, 1939) is heavy with detail but valuable for the advanced student. Upper Canadian agencies for the care of the most unfortunate immigrants are described in R. Splane, Social Welfare in Ontario, 1791-1893 (Toronto: University' of Toronto Press, 1965).
J. Prebble, Highland Clearances (Harmonsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1969) provides an understanding of the impetus behind Highland emigration. W.F. Adams, Ireland and the Irish Emigration to the New World from 1815 to the Famine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932) is authoritative on the Irish background. The Irish famine emigration is treated in R.D. Edwards and T.D. Williams ed., Great Famine: Studies in Irish History (New York: University' Press, 1957) and in C. Woodham-Smith, The Great Hunger, Ireland 1845-1849 (Toronto: Signet, 1964).
An excellent study of the regulations governing the emigrant trade can be found in Oliver Macdonagh, A Pattern of Government Growth, 1800-60, the Passenger Acts and their Enforcement (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1961). E.C. Guillet, The Great Migration (Toronto: University' of Toronto Press, 1963) is a book designed for the general reader, which makes ample use of contemporary records to describe the emigrant's experience from the time he left home until he reached his destination. T. Coleman, Passage to America, A History of Emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland to America in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1972) succeeds in giving the emigrant a human dimension. 0. Handlin, A Pictorial History of Immigration (New York: Crown Publishers, 1972) gives him a face.
