Figure 2: An ad to attract settlers to Australia

Between the 1840s and 1940, the people of the world moved around like never before. Fifty million Europeans traveled to the Americas, another fifty million Indians and Chinese moved throughout southeastern Asia and the Pacific world and a final fifty million people settled in Siberia, Manchuria and Central Asia. Areas such as Australia, Kenya, or South Africa that experienced large scale European settlement, became known as settler colonies. These areas generally possessed cool climate, good growing conditions for crops, and cheap, available land. Rather than spending time raising crops and making money with their newly acquired territories, British aristocrats and their families were more interested in recreating their lives’ from back home in Britain. Playing cricket, racing, drinking, and sleeping with each others’ wives trumped overseeing slaves. Additionally fueled by the promise of a feudal style of living, the younger siblings of British aristocrats recreated British life and were generally more interested in playing cricket, racing, drinking and sleeping with each others’ wives than spending time raising crops and making money. Subsidized by low shipping rates and land prices, the upper class settlers and gentleman immigrants bought estates of thousands of acres, getting access to the labor of many of the local natives, thus effectively creating a feudal aristocracy being lost in industrializing Western Europe.

SAUCE GRANDE, living in South America in the 1880s, stated: Sheep are very cheap and plentiful in this country. Thousands are sold at 30$ pr head.I am now living in a house alone with my flock of sheep and it is rather lonesome but as soon as I receive my wool money I intend to get married. My intended wife is a Miss Victoria Smith, who is born in this country but of English parents and speaks very good English.

Certainly, not all immigrants of this time period were wealthy. In addition to greater political and religious freedoms, migration was encouraged by the overblown promise of cheap land and where the sugar, wheat, or sheep could provide European markets with increasingly cheap food. Poor women and children began to get subsidies for moving to these areas from their governments and taxpayers, private organizations, and wealthy individuals intent on expanding their own land-holding in Britain. Much to the local dismay, the undesirable outcasts of European society–political radicals, orphans, criminals, and prostitutes were exiled to places such as Australia. Frontiers, especially in the British colonies of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand needed women to combat Europeans having sexual relations with native women. As a result, the surplus women of Britain were sent to deal with the sexual imbalances in the colonies. In the 1870s there was a huge gender imbalance on the frontier, for example there were 555 adult females per 1000 males for Australia at this time. The simple hope was that the incoming women would become domestic servants and then productive wives and mothers abroad in empire and not remain as British prostitutes or otherwise older single women with limited means of support. The reaction was telling–one women exited off the train in Canada and was offered $2000 in cash on down-payment of “marital bliss.” Other enterprising young women could engage in lucrative prostitution (the crime they were exiled for). In other cases the reaction was quite severe.

One Canadians critic argued against immigration by stating: “the greatest crime is being perpetrated by the dumping of the diseased offscourings of the hotbeds of slumdom England among the rising generation of this country.”

Despite efforts to get abroad and settle in colonies throughout the world, most migrants remained in the nearest European city and did not make it overseas. Additionally, other immigrants often returned home after a period abroad. During economic boom times such migration was encouraged, during economic recessions it was condemned.

Figure 3: A Church in Settlement era-Australia

Figure 4: The settlement of Australia

The interconnected nature of the world and the global circulation of goods created a demand for workers and the global movement of people–especially cheap Indian, Chinese, African or Southern European young men. Millions of Indians moved throughout the world as merchants, colonial workers or indentured laborers (throughout the Indian and Pacific Ocean worlds). Chinese workers and merchants moved into Southeast Asia and throughout the Pacific world. African slaves were imported to the United States in the Civil War and to Brazil until 1888. Hundreds of others fled colonial rule or migrated to work in South African mines for several years. The movement of more than 150 million people reinforced global bonds while also increasing levels of anti-foreign sentiment and racism as new laws were passed to keep out or limit unwanted (mostly non-white) peoples.

Figure 5: An indigenous inhabitant of Canada