From the 1850s onwards, substantial numbers of pharmacists left Britain in search of adventure and fortune. One such was James Butler Swann; in 1862 he uprooted his family from a settled life in Leicestershire to join a new Anglican community in New Zealand. After five years the family migrated again to Fiji, attracted by the greater prospects of cotton cultivation; but the project failed and Swann bought a pharmacy. Over the following years his first son established a pharmacy on a neighbouring island, his second son established one in Samoa, and his third son took over his father’s business on Fiji. This article describes the rapidly shifting social, economic and political background against which British migrant pharmacists established businesses overseas at this time.