Immigrants, European
Immigrants, European
Humans migrated to European regions from Africa approximately 40, 000 years ago and have been moving ever since. Europeans seem to be highly related to the same northeastern Africans who settled much of Asia and the Middle East, or Eurasia. Thus, it is hypothesized that there were numerous movements of tribes and peoples both eastward and westward across Eurasia in the years before the early middle ages. Knowledge of their movements is more accurate around 2000 BCE, once Europeans started keeping track of their history through books and oral traditions. As archaeologists and geneticists complete more studies, more precise details of migration patterns from more than 2, 000 years ago may come to light.
EUROPEAN MIGRATION, 1000–1800
Some historians believe that migration movements were common in the early middle ages, but solitary migrations were rare and people tended to move in midsize groups. Later this reversed, and migrations of solitary individuals or small groups became more common. Still, voluntary immigration movements were rarer in the few centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire than they are today. Travel around Europe was difficult, slow, and dangerous, and mostly restricted to merchants, ambassadors and envoys, and pilgrims. Before 1000 CE, traveling from Italy to Constantinople, for instance, could take at least seven months, although travel times gradually became shorter over the centuries. A few people migrated to parts outside of Europe, but this was rare and involved mostly people engaged in embassy work or associated with religious institutions. A notable exception, however, was the settlement Vikings established in Newfoundland around the year 1000, although it was abandoned after only a few years.
What was more common was involuntary migration in the form of the transportation of slaves. Slaves, with no choice in the matter, could walk long distances and even carry things for their owners. Most individuals became slaves through a slave raid on their community or as a result of military action. In the early middle ages, many slaves came from towns along the Mediterranean coast and in the eastern “Slavic” parts of central Europe. Arab raiders liked to find their potential slaves in southern European coastal villages, and Frankish tribes found many of their slaves first in England and later in the East. Slaves could be sold at many organized markets, most of which were located in the European and Arab parts of the Mediterranean world.
Several main immigrations to places outside of Europe occurred between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. Victorious armies or raiders continued to capture and enslave people, who ended up typically in the Mediterranean area where slaves were extensively used, which included northern Africa and the Ottoman and Arab/Muslim world. Secondly, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, under Mongol protection, some Italian missionaries made it to Asia on the heels of Venetian traders such as Marco Polo. In addition, crusaders from Europe invaded the Holy Land in 1099; some integrated into society or settled in other places such as Constantinople, but many of their descendants moved back to Europe once Turkish and Kurdish rulers claimed Jerusalem in 1187. Thereafter, pilgrims still visited but did not usually settle in the Holy Land.
As in the early middle ages, merchants, traders, sailors, and government and religious officials all were more likely to venture beyond the borders of Europe. Significant group migrations also took place in this time period. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Jews were expelled from many parts of Europe, and some ventured to eastern parts of the continent. Others, including many of the Sephardic Jews of Iberia, left in 1492 for parts of the Ottoman Empire, including Palestine, Syria, Tunis, Egypt, Morocco, and Constantinople. During the same period, the Spanish and Portuguese also placed restrictions on the commercial and religious practices of Muslims, who were eventually completely expelled from the Iberian Peninsula by the mid-seventeenth century. Many of them left for communities in the Ottoman Empire.
By the 1400s Europeans were using better ships and navigational technology and were sailing farther away from their continent. Portuguese explorers made inroads in sailing around Africa and eventually all the way to parts of Asia, while the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, funded with Spanish money, made it to Central America. Thereafter, it was a race for European nations to settle and claim different parts of North, Central, and South America, Africa, parts of Asia, and Australia and New Zealand. The search for colonial possessions lasted until the twentieth century.
The Portuguese were prodigious in establishing trading stations on the coastlines of Africa and Asia along with the settlements in Brazil, and all of this required a lot of manpower. From the sixteenth until the eighteenth centuries large numbers of Portuguese left their homeland to serve in various roles, as soldiers, settlers, and missionaries. Even though Spain was colonizing large parts of the Americas, during this period more people left Portugal than Spain.
Nations that created settlements or colonies provided destinations for their countrymen who wanted to leave Europe; trading networks that emerged between Europe and new settlements provided the necessary transportation for migrants. Before 1800, for example, Britain at different points in time had claim to Australia, New Zealand, the American colonies, Canada, some Caribbean islands, and British Guyana, among others; later, for periods of time it controlled various African areas including Egypt, Rhodesia, Nigeria, and South Africa. France at one point claimed parts of present-day Canada, various Caribbean islands, French Guiana, Cambodia, Vietnam, and a host of African countries. In addition, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain also exercised their imperial ambitions and operated various colonies at some point.
Most of these colonies no longer exist, but their existence influenced the patterns of European settlement from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. As British colonies, Australia and New Zealand, for instance, became a major settlement for British and Irish emigrants. In Africa, many British emigrants settled where the British had set up colonies, including South Africa and Rhodesia. French emigrants settled in French colonies such as Quebec; likewise, many Portuguese emigrants settled in Brazil, and numerous Spaniards in Spanish settlements throughout the Americas. The various Dutch colonies attracted thousands of Dutch emigrants, particularly to the East Indies. Those with ambition but no financial assets could sign on as soldiers or for work with companies such as the Dutch East India Company. Colonies needed laborers and thus provided ways for impoverished individuals to emigrate from Europe. Until the 1830s a very common way to migrate to the British colonies in North America was by way of indentured servant contracts, which provided prepaid passage in exchange for future years of labor services.
1800 TO THE PRESENT
Emigration from Europe increased remarkably in the nineteenth century, partly as a result of increases in population growth along with changes in emigration policies. Before the nineteenth century Europe’s population doubled approximately every 1, 000 years, but by the nineteenth century population growth had increased tremendously, such that Europe’s population doubled in less than 100 years during the nineteenth century. In addition, the Vienna Congress in 1815 extended the right to emigrate to many more Europeans. The period after 1815 thus saw a tremendous increase in the numbers of people who left Europe permanently and voluntarily. Between 1815 and 1930 more than 52 million Europeans left Europe for overseas destinations. About two-thirds went to the United States, and most of the rest to South America: Approximately 12 percent went to Argentina, 8 percent to Brazil, and 7 percent to Australia. Over this period, 11 and 10 million of these European emigrants left from Britain and Italy, respectively. Other countries that lost more than 2 million individuals include (in order of largest to smallest) Austria-Hungary, Germany, Spain, Russia, and Portugal.
Emigration rates—the percent of the population at home that leaves—differed tremendously across different countries. If a country had a small population overall, it could lose a small number of individuals to emigration movements but still have a high emigration rate. This was the case for Ireland: Until 1900, Irish emigration rates were the highest by far of all European nations. During several decades annual Irish emigration rates reached 14 per 1, 000 of the home population; the next highest annual rates occurred in the 1880s with Norway losing 10 per 1, 000 and Scotland 7 per 1, 000. In the years after 1900 emigration rates were still high for Scotland, but also very high for Italy and Spain. Although a high emigration rate often reflected poor economic conditions within certain regions of a country, it also could signify a late or slow demographic transition, or an arduous adjustment from an agricultural economy to an industrial one that left many without viable livings as farmers or craftsmen. Some areas suffered terrible exogenous events such as the potato famine of the 1840s, which occurred throughout much of Europe but hit Ireland especially hard.
In the nineteenth century it was not always the case that European emigrants were the very poorest. The fact that moving overseas was an expensive proposition meant that many potential emigrants without a remittance of some sort did not leave Europe because they could not afford to do so. In many regions both the richest and the poorest stayed home, the former because they had no interest in leaving and the latter because they could not afford to do so. That many emigrants ended up depending on family or friends who had moved before them for financial assistance or advice to achieve their goals meant that many emigrants left from the same European villages or regions; in other regions such chain migration connections did not evolve, and these areas experienced much less emigration.
Improvement of one’s standard of living was of primary concern for many European emigrants over the centuries, but many moved for religious or political reasons. Various Christian groups settled in North America, including Pietists, Calvinists, Mennonites, Amish, and others. Jews from various parts of Europe, but especially those who suffered the nineteenth-century pogroms of Russia, sought new homes overseas. Political uprisings in Europe such as the Revolutions of 1848 encouraged at least a few individuals to leave Europe permanently. Colonial powers also found their new territorial possessions convenient as dumping grounds for the convicts they wanted to get rid of in the home country.
Traveling by sailing ship was the norm until the latter half of the 1850s, when steamships were introduced, dramatically changing the nature of migration. Whereas a voyage from England to New York could take six to eight weeks by sailing ship, steamships cut the time down to less than two weeks. This meant less time out of work while en route and a smaller probability of contracting a disease on board. The less arduous traveling conditions and the gradual drop in passage fares (in real terms) over time made both seasonal and return migration more possible. Emigrating from Europe to overseas destinations in the era of the sailing ship had mostly involved permanent moves, but this new technology and lower passage prices changed that.
The years before the 1920s were the golden age for European immigrants as most destination countries granted them access without much reservation. During the 1920s many of the popular destination countries passed legislative measures establishing restrictions on the number of annual immigrants. Today, most countries practice immigration regulations based on national-origin quotas and limits on the total numbers of annual immigrants.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Simone A. Wegge