Ryan Groom
Migration
Imperial and colonial powers encouraged their workers to migrate during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries so that they could take advantage of natural resources and agricultural products from other places. European migrants went to mostly temperate lands and worked as cultivators and industrial laborers. Migrants from Asia, Africa, and Pacific Islands went to tropical and subtropical lands and worked as indentured laborers.
European Migration
Indentured Labor Migration
Empire and Migration
- Majority of Europeans migrants wanted to seize economic opportunities in other countries overseas
- Migrants would come from places with bad agriculture societies of Southern and Eastern Europe (Italy, Russia, Poland, Britain, Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia)
- Most would migrate to United States
- Earlier migrants would settle in west because of cheap land to cultivate
- Later migrants would settle in northeast, which boosted U.S. industrialization
- Most traveled as free agents and some became indentured laborers
Indentured Labor Migration
- Indentured laborers were people who were forced to work for periods of time
- Most migrants from Asia, Africa, and the Pacific Islands usually traveled as indentured laborers
- Owners of agricultural lands looked for large groups of workers when slavery started to decline
- Spike in indentured laborers was between 1820 and 1914
- Conditions for laborers were much better than that of slaves
- Recruiters offered workers free passage to destinations, provided food, shelter, clothing
- Workers would be payed small amounts if they agreed to work for seven years
- Most indentured laborers came from India, as well as China, Japan, Java, Africa, and Pacific Islands
- Came to mostly tropical and sub-tropical areas in Americas, Caribbean, Africa, and Oceania
- Indentured labor trade started in 1820 when French and British made Indian migrants work on sugar plantations in the two Indian Ocean Islands, Reunion and Mauritius
- Indian migrants later worked on rubber and sugar plantations in Malaya, South Africa, Fiji, Guiana, Trinidad, Tobago, and Jamaica
- Large numbers of Chinese and Japanese migrants worked on plantations, mines, and railroad construction sites
- African laborers went to sugar plantations in Reunion, Guinas, and Caribbean
- Pacific Island migrants worked on plantations in other Pacific Islands or in Australia
Empire and Migration
- Large scale migrations effected the global influence of imperial powers
- Migrations influenced societies around the world by importing large groups of people with different ethnic identities and different cultures
- Migrations of indentured laborers was possible because could recruit workers and dispatch them in other places
Resistance To Imperialism
India
- Colonial and Imperial rule caused affected people to create a sense of identity
- Nationalism and organization of anticolonial movements in subject lands was created
- India was the place where these feelings among subject people was most common
- The Indian National Congress was founded in 1885 and was the most important reform group
- Made up of a forum of educated Indians that conversed their opinions on public affairs to colonial officials
- Grief about Indian poverty, transfer of wealth, trade and tariff policies, famine, and British racism was expressed by representatives from all over the country
- Indian self rule was openly sought by the nineteenth century