Nineteenth-Century Passenger Agents within the Local and Global Commerce of Maritime Mobility

The acceleration in maritime mobility that was afforded by the Atlantic steamship is difficult to overstate, and it was an acceleration not linked solely to direct capacity and speed of ships. It was an acceleration also in the vast hinterland of commercial activity that took place to get people on board those vessels, whose carrying capacity in turn spurred networked migration and further expanded the commerce and competition for filling migrant berths. In examining the distinct nature of passenger agents in Europe and in the United States, their twin connectivity to migrant communities and steamship lines, and their role in international mobility, a picture emerges of commercial nodes within migrant networks, amplifying network effects and underwriting the maritime technology of Atlantic migration.