엘리자베스 영국의 외국인 차별 ―1593년 의회 입법 및 논쟁을 중심으로―

Abstract

Over the last three decades, the history of immigration to Britain has received steadily increasing attention from scholars and a great deal of work has been done on various aspects of alien immigrants. However, research on immigrants in early modern England has not produced sufficient materials to generate a series of productive debates that would help us understand its historical meaning in context of wide spectrum and, therefore, there is a genuine need for more detailed research into alien immigration to Elizabethan England, especially those from the Netherlands. Based on recent researches by several historians, this paper attempts to make some progress in this relatively new topic of study ― the perceptions of alien immigrants by the indigenous population and the government policies toward them in Elizabethan England. Focusing on parliamentary debates on anti-alien legislations during the 1580s and the 1590s, this paper analyzes the attitude of members of parliament toward immigrants in religious and economic context. In particular, parliamentary documents of 1593 provided especially useful sources to explore the topic. It may be true that the reception of Dutch immigrants to England was shaped by the very fact of their Protestantism and that it was this religion that helped bind native English and alien communities together. Nevertheless, it is not certain whether the compassion of the indigenous society toward fellow Protestants or the sense of being part of a common cause was still existing in the economic hard times like 1590s when the fear of the threat of competition was widespread. In fact, the attempt to analyze relationship between religious inclination of some parliamentary members and their attitude towards alien immigrants expressed during the debates of the 1593 session failed to produce any meaningful results. The English economy made considerable progress during the early modern period. The Dutch immigrants played a positive role in developing the English economy and their key contribution was the introduction of ‘new draperies’ at some local towns including Norwich and Colchester where they were received relatively well. But their role in London has remained a controversial issue. Also, there existed periodic ‘scapegoating’ during periods of economic distress such as in the 1590s when serious economic difficulties were caused by successive harvest failures. Therefore, the issue needs to be placed within the broader economic, political, religious and social context of rapidly changing society.