What influenced the direction and volume of migrational movements in

the 19th century world? Why did the numbers of migrants from Europe
exceed those from other continents? What determined the success of
migrant populations in creating durable communities?

As well as asking why people moved in such numbers within and between
continents it is worth asking how. In terms of the financing migrants passage
there were five principle supporters: (in order of most to fewest financed) the
migrants themselves or self-sponsors, governmental organisations or
departments, charity, destination countries and trade unions.1 This list suggests
that to examine the movements of migrants, one must look not only at their own
personal reasons and ability for moving, but also at the capacity of states (both
‘home’ and ‘destination’) to influence the flow of their people abroad and the
ideological justification for the exertion of such interference in the labour market.
As well as considering how and why migrants made the decision to move it is
worth putting their choices in a global context of increasing ‘connectedness’ in
terms of increasingly freer and heavier flows of goods, information, ideas and,
vitally, people. Finally, the success of migrant communities depended to a large
extent on the answers to the previous questions – the terms on which they
immigrated were the key determining factor in their prosperity.

In understanding migration one must evaluate the global economic context,

especially demographic, agricultural and market changes. A combination of
falling infant mortality and agricultural intensification led to a rapidly increasing
population, especially in Europe – even in the east growth occurred at 1 percent
per year by the 1880s.2 Overall, European population rose by 34 percent
between 1800 and 1850 and then by a further 76 percent by 1914 – almost
every country (with France as a notable exception) increased their populations
by over a factor of two in the 19th century.3 The Asian empires’ populations were
hardly stagnant at this time, but their growth could not match the levels of most
European countries, particularly western European such as Britain, Holland,
Germany, Denmark and Finland. Population growth is not a contributing factor to
migration in itself, but when combined with increased market integration after
the 1840s which standardized global food prices and fostered industrial
specialization in conjunction with the crop failures such as the Irish Potato
Famine the pressure on the agricultural economy was great.

There are a number of possible responses to population growth in rural areas –

one common solution was can subdivide land (Ireland, Polish Galacia, Northern
Portugal, Southern Germany and Italy4) but the domestic industries that might
have supplemented family incomes from smaller plots were being strangled by
the more efficient industrial textile and metal production in towns.5 Thus
migration to towns became increasingly common across the world, though it was
most common in those areas of highest population and agricultural sector
pressure, namely Europe. By 1900 over half the population of England and Wales
lived in towns larger than 20,000.6 Other solutions included the imposition of
tariffs to protect the price of domestic produce (Germany, France and Sweden),
the expulsion of labourers from their land (Highland ‘clearances’, Polish

1
R. Cohen, Global Diasporas. An introduction, p71
2
D.Baines, Emigration from Europe 1815-1930 (1991), p21
3
R. Cohen (ed.), The Cambridge Survey of World Migration, p127
4
D.Baines, Emigration from Europe 1815-1930 (1991), p22
5
R. Cohen (ed.), The Cambridge Survey of World Migration, p127
6
Ibid, p128
Provinces and Hungary7) or the exploitation of low grain prices to feed larger
herds of livestock for meat and dairy industries (Britain, Netherland, Denmark
and Switzerland).8 Whatever approach was taken, population growth and the
commercialisation of agriculture, namely the shift to wage-paid temporary
workers and larger holdings, led to a more mobile workforce forced to gravitate
to the new centres of employment, both in larger towns in their home country or
even further afield. China had had hit the pre-industrial ‘wall’ at this time and
was in a ‘high level equilibrium trap’ – while population growth occurred, its rate
was determined only by the rate of improvements in domestic agricultural
efficiency. There was little pressure to mechanize as labour was so abundant, no
significant breakthrough in labour-saving technology, and so no corresponding
agricultural dispossession.

But this economic context alone does not explain inter-continental migration,
only the domestic growth of towns. For emigration to occur, people need a viable
‘way out’ including the means to travel, the transport to do so safely and quickly
and, most importantly, the incentive of better economic conditions in their
destination countries. Before one could thing where to emigrant, the means to
pay for a safe passage had to be found. In 1850 the cheapest passage from
London to New York was the equivalent of a month’s wages for a skilled, or two
for an unskilled worker and lasted roughly two months – a considerable period to
support oneself for a wage-earner not in work.9 In the 1860s North Atlantic
shipping was made considerably cheaper, more reliable and faster with the
introduction of steam-powered ships and companies such as Cunard to operate
them. The growth of railways and the introduction of ‘through’ tickets in Britain
also made transport simpler and more rapid. But it is worth noting that the
expense was still great – working class families in Britain would commonly
require support from their friends and local community to finance their trips. If
British wages, some of the highest in the world, were barely enough to cover the
passage it illustrates why far fewer Indian or Chinese emigrants were ‘self-
sponsored’ – without some form of external support they could simply not afford
to travel.

Here we come to a crucial difference between Europeans and other parts of the
world – as wage labour was already high in Europe, the conditions in the
destination country necessary to entice European labour also had to be that
much higher. Typically, this meant a great resource to labour and capital ratio,10
a situation best found in the United States. Between 1814 and 1914 the appeal
of America was borne out by the fact that 80 percent on the 17 million British
emigrants made a home there. In most of the ‘colonies of settlement’ (New
Zealand, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and also Brazil and Argentina) such
conditions were present – the various ‘gold rushes’ in California, Transvaal and
Australia helped boost the public conception of the potential economic rewards
from emigration. In general, it was only Europeans who actually determined the
direction of their travel as they were the only group who could, en masse, afford
their passage – naturally they chose those places that would be most profitable
and least physically demanding. On independence, Ghana toasted the mosquito
for keeping white settlers out, revealing the common European reluctance to live
in tropical climates.11 For those who did tackle other climates there were serious

7
D.Baines, Emigration from Europe 1815-1930 (1991), p23
8
Ibid, p25
9
Ibid, p44
10
Ibid, p24
11
R. Cohen, Global Diasporas. An introduction, p66
risks – half a million Dutch settlers and their allies died in the Dutch East Indies
over the course of the century, largely due to tropical diseases.12 Most Europeans
could and did avoid such climes and headed to the more temperate areas such
as America.

The direction of the ‘trade diaspora’ of the Chinese was largely determined by
European powers – they can be referred to as ‘auxiliary’ diasporas since they
required an imperial presence to foster commercial stability. For example, Sir
Stamford Raffles directly invited Chinese traders to Singapore.13 British military
strength was therefore great enough to determine the location of the entrepot of
East Asian trade and all migration to the area occurred on their terms. This
ability of Europeans to choose one’s destination was fundamental for the success
of migrant communities and will be discussed in more detail below. As well as
the financial power to chose where to go, Europeans had the economic incentive
to leave – they had the resource-rich ‘colonies of settlement’ to exploit that
offered them better wages and living conditions than their rapidly expanding
homeland.

Overall, around a quarter of all European migrants were ‘self-sponsored’ and

chose those areas in which they thought they would be both most economically
successful and culturally accepted.14 But ten percent of migrants were sponsored
by governments or political and religious organisations such as the Catholic
Emigration Committee, the Salvation Army and Dr Barnardo’s Homes.15 There
was a strong ideological backing behind such groups. Thomas Carlyle wrote in
support for the Emigration Service in 1843 and described an ideal where ‘every
willing worker that proved superfluous, finding a bridge ready for him.’16 It was
not just the view of idle workers being put to use that motivated government and
religious support for emigration – Lord Northcliffe argued that it was vital that
Australia was ethnically captured for Britain.17 The idea of the importance of
imperial spread through British colonisation was a powerful one – colonies with a
high British population would be more loyal to their ‘mother country’ (although
the United States provided a stark reminder of a failure of this policy) and would
further a kind of civilizing ‘imperial crusade’. But destination countries often tried
to attract Europeans as well – the railway companies in North Minnesota brought
Swedish immigrants for construction in the 1860s and 1870s and the Canadian
government partly covered the immigration of 200,000 Ukrainians between 1896
and 1914.18 Overall around 339,000 people emigrated with government support
from Britain between 1846 and 1869, not a huge number compared to the total
of just fewer than five million but a significant number none the less.

Perhaps the biggest impact of European imperial policy and private organisations
may have been not their direct sponsorship of emigrants; rather they started
‘chain migration’.19 One interesting feature of most emigration is that is tends to
be region-specific both from the ‘homeland’ and to the new country – half of all
emigrants from Austro-Hungary between 1881 and 1910 were from Galacia, the
same area where agricultural subdivision occurred rather than specialization and

12
R. Cohen (ed.), The Cambridge Survey of World Migration, p11
13
R. Cohen, Global Diasporas. An introduction,p86
14
D.Baines, Emigration from Europe 1815-1930 (1991), p50
15
R. Cohen, Global Diasporas. An introduction, p71
16
Ibid, p69
17
Ibid, p71
18
D.Baines, Emigration from Europe 1815-1930 (1991), p50
19
Ibid, p34
Bukovia.20 The theory behind this tendency is that, through a combination of
letters and return migrants, areas for potential emigration become demystified
and more appealing – information about jobs and wages can be sent back
(perhaps one of the single most important aspects of increased connectedness
was this free exchange of information) encouraging more people to leave their
‘homeland’. Moreover, the second wave of emigrants would know that they had
a community of people who shared their language, customs and beliefs waiting
for them when they arrived. Therefore while the direct sponsorship by states and
private bodies was fairly limited in the 19th century, their earlier intervention
may have encouraged more ‘self-sponsored’ migrants to leave by offering them
the security of an existing community.

It has been mentioned that few non-Europeans could afford to be self-sponsored

intercontinental migrants in the 19th century other than the trading Chinese,
who still relied on imperial power. But this did not prevent a large number of
Indians emigrating as indentured labourers. The origins of the demand for
indentured labour rest with the understandable reluctance of apprenticed or
freed slaves to stay on and work in plantations for wages after the abolition of
slavery in the 1830s. In Jamaica only two months after the end of the
apprenticeships (four to six years indentured labour) most plantations had only a
quarter of their original labour force. In 1838 the sugar crop rotted and in 1839
the planting was very limited.21 Thus European plantation-owners needed a new
source of cheap labour – Europeans or Africans were said to have been ideal
though the former could generally avoid such gruelling labour22 and the freed
slaves in America were unwilling to migrate for the sake of more plantation work.
The answer was indentured Indian labour on five to seven year contracts.23 For
many Indians, the opportunity to have one’s voyage paid, free food and
accommodation and wages higher than those offered domestically was a
temptation they could not ignore. However, unlike European migration, the
Indian ‘labour diaspora’ was heavily regulated by private bodies, namely the
plantation owners (though the Indian government did attempt to impose
standards of living). The direction and number of Indian migrants was
determined by European businessmen. Of course, like the European migrants
they needed to be ‘pushed’ away from India – this time by overpopulation, low
wages and the collapse of cloth production. Moreover transport had to be
inexpensive and reliable enough for it to be cost effective to actually transport
the workers. Even more broadly, indentures labour could not have functioned
without the growth in demand for sugar and cotton – in 1790 around 300,000
tons were produced globally but by 1914 the total tonnage had shot up to 10
million with a fivefold increase in demand in Britain alone as the working classes
began to be able to afford coffee, tea, chocolate, and sweet pastries.24 Thus a
combination of the need for cheap labour to replace slaves on plantations and
the globalising economy that created demand for sugar, cotton and cheap
transport shaped the direction of the millions of Indian indentured emigrants.

The terms under which the Indians arrives in Natal, Mauritius, Reunion, Burma
and Fiji were, needless to say, very different from those Europeans encountered
as they were dictated by the companies for which they were employed making
forming sustainable communities harder. There was a serious lack of women

20
Ibid, p31
21
David Northrup, Indentured Labor in the Age of Imperialism, 1834-1922, p19
22
Ibid, p22
23
R. Cohen, Global Diasporas. An introduction, p60
24
Ibid, p30
since the physical nature of the work and being forced to reside in barracks
previously occupied by slaves were not appealing. The ratios varied between
around one in four and one in ten and frequently led to sexual jealousy, abuse,
beating and even murder – in Trinidad between 1859 and 1863 enraged
husbands murdered 27 wives.25 Even so, the old patriarchal family system did
reassert itself and, despite the offer from missionaries of free education to
children whose families converted to Christianity, the religious text of Ramayana
was keenly adopted for its themes of suffering, exile and a triumphant return.26

To a large extent the Indians’ future economic success depended on the locals –
in Mauritius the former African slaves scattered to small fishing villages allowing
the Indians to extend their ownership of land (one of their key ambitions) and
eventually form an elite capable of seizing political power after independence.27
However, on Fiji in 1916 83 percent of all the land was indigenously owned and
viewed as sacred – it was very difficult for the Indians to be seen as anything
other than outsiders. In Burma the Indians were always regarded as kala or
foreigners and were more hated than the British because of their larger
numbers28 while in Malaysia Indians were the ‘small people’ and could trade
successfully without suspicion.29 The Chinese auxiliary migrants faced similar
problems – while they were often commercially successful and fostered a sense
of Chinese cultural inheritance through a rigorous study of genealogy but their
presence was ultimately irreconcilable with emerging ethnic nationalisms.30 They
relied for defence on the imperial powers and so the Chineses’ fate would be
bound with theirs.

Establishing stable migrant communities in the ‘colonies of settlement’ was

comparatively easy – British migrants shared language, culture, political and
religious institutions with most of them. Indeed, other than America most can be
seen as ‘little Englands’ making settling extremely easy for the English, but also
Europeans in general. One theory behind this ease is the aggressive colonisation
model that the British were said to follow, namely conquest, removal of the
locals and then aggressive settlement. There certainly was a contrast with the
Spanish colonisation of South American where intermarriage was far more
common and the number of deaths of the Aborigines, the Maori and the natives
in Canada strongly support such a theory. Europeans did face problems - the
‘new’ European immigrants from south and south east Europe in America were
not regarded as favourably as the ‘old’ immigrants from Britain and Ireland31 but
integration was easier than it was for indentured workers who had few cultural
similarities with the locals. The Italians did find life in New York comparatively
harder than that in Buenos Aries but this was probably a result of being in a
community with so many other minorities and of being perceived as a ‘new’
group – in Buenos Aries they were the dominant minority and so could fashion a
clear community for themselves.32 Therefore Europeans paid to go to
comparatively welcoming communities with many economic opportunities and
possibilities for second and third generation mobility while the indentured labour
had no such control.

25
R. Cohen, Global Diasporas. An introduction, p62
26
Ibid, p63
27
Ibid, p65
28
Colin Clarke, Ceri Peach & Steven Vertovec (eds), South Asians Overseas, p39
29
Ibid, p45
30
R. Cohen, Global Diasporas. An introduction, p89
31
D.Baines, Emigration from Europe 1815-1930 (1991), p48
32
Ibid, p68
The 19th century was a period in which the labour market began to become
integrated or ‘global’. The construction force started travelling between London
and New York as early as the 1860s and Europeans could, for the first time,
move en masse to locations that offered them opportunities of work. They were
encouraged to do this by the population pressures felt in most European
countries and the agricultural commercialisation and industrialisation that
compelled labour to become freer and divided from the land. The market
provided the information necessary to consider emigration competitive and
reasonably safe transport necessary for their transport and the trade links to
export the resources from the new colonies. The market also priced out all but
the wealthiest non-Europeans and Chinese traders. But to see the movement of
people in purely free market terms is to ignore the influence of empires – they
channelled European emigrants to areas they deemed strategically important,
their planters exported million of indentured labourers, a process only possible
through territorial conquest and the Chinese traders could only operate with
imperial stability. Success of migrants was largely dependent on ones ethnicity
and destination – for a European in America settling would be relatively easy. For
an Indian in Burma, one would have been vilified as a foreigner and made to feel
an alien. Thus, the effect of the ‘great divergence’ was felt in terms of migration
too – superior economic and military might enabled Europe’s people far greater
freedom of movement than the people of the Asian Empires.

Bibliography

N.Canny, Europeans on the Move (Oxford, 1994)

D.Baines, Emigration from Europe 1815-1930 (1991)
K.Jeffery, An Irish Empire? Aspects of Ireland and the British Empire (1996)
P.Curtin, Death by Migration: Europe’s Encounter with the Tropical World in 19c
(1989)
R. Cohen, Global Diasporas. An introduction
R. Cohen (ed.), The Cambridge Survey of World Migration
David Northrup, Indentured Labor in the Age of Imperialism, 1834-1922
Colin Clarke, Ceri Peach & Steven Vertovec (eds), South Asians Overseas
B. Freund, Insiders and Outsiders. The Indian Working Class of Durban,
19101990