Chapter 9 Empire and Migration, 1850-1920 Migrants and armies abroad

The resulting changes were demographic, political, and cultural. The distribution of world population changed, as Europeans filled many spaces in the Americas. The political map of the planet changed, as a small number of great powers took control of large territories. The patterns of the world’s languages changed, as migrating families and conquering generals each took their languages to new lands.

This stream of migrants from Europe was not the only great migration of the era. Large numbers of Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and other Asian workers and settlers moved across the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. Similarly, there was large-scale labor migration within Africa and Latin America in the same period. However, the European migrations were the biggest, and overall, 1850 to 1920 was the most intensive era of migration in human history.

The British Empire, the dominant world power at this time, reflected the patterns of empire and emigration. Britain controlled areas known as “settler colonies” to which large numbers of migrants went from the home country: Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as the West Indies. Britain also consolidated its hold on India and gained control of great new territories in the Middle East, in Southeast Asia, and in West, East, and South Africa. Furthermore, millions of migrants moved from Britain beyond the boundaries of the empire, especially to the United States.

The cultural impact of empire and migration was manifested in, among other things, the languages of the world. English became the language of government for as much as one-fourth of the world’s population. It was the native language in settler colonies and the language of government in conquest colonies. French became the official language in much of Africa, Southeast Asia, Syria, and Lebanon, and in several Pacific islands. Russian became the official language in newly conquered areas of Central Asia.

This was the European era. Empire-building and migration were two major processes through which European societies — and societies based on European models — came to dominate the world of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

First, let us emphasize the empires of land, capital, and culture. Empires had risen and fallen for millennia, but this “new imperialism” brought the idea of empire to a new height. By 1920, a larger portion of the world was governed by empires than at any previous time in history. In each case, it is useful to think of the empire as consisting of a homeland and its colonies.

Empires of land were the immense new territories ruled by great powers. The German Empire came into existence in 1870 after the military defeat of France. It comprised a combination of many states in Europe. By 1885, Germany had added some overseas colonies to the empire. The British Empire, created in earlier centuries, expanded significantly from 1870 to 1905. The Second French Empire, created in 1852, was replaced in 1870 by the Third French Republic, but the term French Empire continued to be used for overseas territories. The Russian Empire conquered territories in Central Asia in the 1870s. Similarly, the United States conquered and annexed territories across North America and later took overseas territories. These were sometimes called the American Empire, but when territories were accepted into the union as states, as with California in 1850, they were no longer referred to as part of the empire.

Empires of capital consisted of home-country control of markets and productive resources in other countries. Numerous critics chose to explain territorial empire through what the English analyst John Hobson called (in 1903) its “economic taproot.” According to this view, the essence of imperialism was not political conquest but the establishment of overseas economic control through export of investment funds and domination of commerce. According to this view, Latin America was part of the British Empire in the nineteenth century. By the same logic, Latin America became part of the American Empire in the twentieth century. In another example of this reasoning, Russia, with its great empire of land, was within the orbit of France, which controlled much Russian capital.

The interplay of industry and labor had much to do with the growth of empire. Debates on slavery and on economic freedom accompanied this era of rapid industrial change. Industrial growth generated a demand for labor and for migration. Industry provided improved steamships, telegraphs, and repeating rifles to imperial states. The increased advantage of the great powers in military and other technologies had much to do with the expansion of empire, and may also have had much to do with migration.

Empires of culture developed in association with the empires of land and capital. Those in the imperial heartland took on a sense of cultural superiority. They argued that the “West” and the “civilized world” were superior in accomplishment and in intellectual capacity to people of non-European countries or non-white races. In this case, culture referred not to the specifics of material or expressive culture but to an overall “way of life.” The era of “new imperialism” was filled with comparisons of cultures categorized by race, religion, nationality, and language. The French spoke of their “civilizing mission” and gave great emphasis to the extension of the French language. Britain and the U.S., while at odds in many ways, gradually cooperated in extending the idea of “Anglo-Saxon” culture.

The task for this unit is to connect the patterns in empire with those in migration. To prepare for these connections, let us now turn to an emphasis on individuals — as they stayed at home, migrated to the empires, or migrated away from the empires. We will classify the decisions of migrants according to those who sought to build their family or escape it, and those who sought to build an empire or escape it.

Emigration
Most European emigration or out-migration was voluntary, though some of it was impelled by harsh conditions at home. The crushing of European worker rebellions in 1848 and the pogroms in Russian villages in 1880-1881 each caused large streams of migration. Under these circumstances, migrants were probably motivated by a desire for political freedom, safety, and social and economic opportunity.

Migrants in mid-nineteenth-century Europe went first to nearby cities and then to areas beyond their borders. In the British Isles, migrants moved from rural Scotland to centers such as Edinburgh and especially Glasgow. Irish workers went in some numbers to Belfast and Dublin and in larger numbers to the growing industrial and commercial centers of Liverpool and Manchester. These were movements to build the family in part, but also (for those unhappy at home) movements to escape the family. When English-speaking migrants moved to Australia and Canada, they were in part migrating to build the empire. Those who moved to the United States might be seen as having left to escape the empire.

A simulation of the demography of European migration shows the age and sex composition of those who migrated and those who stayed at home. The results are presented in age pyramids, and you can compare the numbers of males and females in each age group by counting the boxes. Based on the migration patterns for late-nineteenth-century Britain, the simulation shows that rural populations were still able to grow despite the large number of people who left for the cities and went overseas. Since most of the overseas migrants were male, the model projects that the European cities had more females than males.

The rural population of France was comparatively slow to move, either to cities in France or to areas beyond the homeland. Perhaps the gains of the French peasantry during the revolution of the 1790s made them more content to remain on their lands. The French government was anxious to create a new empire, however: to that end, it invaded Algeria in 1830 and supported a move by Austrian Prince Maximilian to gain control of Mexico at the end of the 1850s. French settlers did move by the thousands to Algeria after 1850, but they migrated in relatively small numbers to other lands.

In 1850, what became the kingdom of Italy consisted of two major kingdoms (Sicily and Piedmont), a major republic (Venice), the Papal States, and some smaller units. An Italian consciousness had existed for centuries, but only in the mid-nineteenth century did the movement toward national unity gain real momentum. Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi led in the early stages; King Victor Emmanuel of Piedmont was there to lead at the end, becoming King of Italy in 1861.

The movement toward national unity paralleled the industrialization and urbanization of Italy. Peasants streamed into Italian cities. At the same time, many moved beyond the newly unified Italy, to areas of North Africa conquered by France, then to Brazil, to Argentina, and later to the United States. Most of these migrants sought to build the family, in the sense that a very large proportion of the men going overseas were sojourners, who returned home once they had built up an income. Others sought to build new families as settlers in North Africa or the Americas. All of these could be said to have moved to escape the empire. In later years, a smaller number of migrants sought to build the empire, moving to Italian colonies established in Eritrea, Somalia, and later Libya. Spanish migrants, following similar patterns, traveled to the Caribbean and South America in numbers half as large as the Italians. In a different fashion, Migration of Russians echoed the complexity of the migratory patterns of Italians. The emancipation of Russian serfs in 1861 gave peasants the right to move, though they had to apply for passports. Russians went first in largest numbers from their homes to other rural areas, from the Ukraine to Central Asia. Second, they moved to Russian cities, and third overseas, especially Jewish migrants to the U.S.

For the Europeans, these conquests brought stories of exploration, annexation, and settlement. In part, Europeans conquered new lands in the hope of gaining control of economic resources. Sometimes it worked out — diamonds in South Africa, uranium in Congo, oil in Kuwait, tin and rubber in Malaya, and rice in Burma. In many other cases, no great wealth resulted.

For the African and Asian peoples concerned, the conquests brought episodes of resistance, assimilation, and expulsion. The conquerors seized the best lands and used taxation to force the inhabitants to work on their enterprises. As the French conquered the upper Niger Valley of West Africa in 1883, they required the slaves of the previous regime to stay in place and produce grain to supply the French army. In 1904, the slaves rose up and left, returning to their previous homes.

When the Ottoman Empire was defeated in World War I, its Arabic-speaking territories were divided among Britain and France. Britain established monarchies in Jordan and Iraq, while France ruled Syria and Lebanon directly. The establishment of British rule over Palestine, to which Jewish settlers had been coming from Russia and western Europe for decades, helped set the stage for a new conflict. In the Balfour Declaration of 1920, the British prime minister encouraged the flow of Eastern European Jews intending to settle in Palestine.

In the case of the Japanese Empire, conquest and migration went in different directions. Japanese migrants moved to Pacific islands, notably Hawaii, as agricultural laborers, and then moved on to the United States, Brazil, and Peru. Meanwhile, Japan sought treaty rights in China, gained control of Taiwan in 1890, and seized control of Korea in 1910, five years after defeating Russia in a war for dominance in the western Pacific Ocean. After World War I, Japan was awarded control of some Pacific islands that had been under German rule.

For the United States, the path of migration and empire was longer and more complex. With purchases and treaties from other imperial powers, the U.S. gained control of Louisiana, Florida, Oregon, and Alaska. Then through allying with settlers who sought to build the empire by rebellion and warfare, the U.S. gained Texas and California from Mexico. The U.S. also annexed Hawaii in 1893 and five years later launched its conquest of the Spanish territories of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. Of these, only Hawaii gained a large number of settlers from the U.S., and only Cuba was able to gain rapid independence.

But the full pattern of causation may be too complex to summarize in a simple statement. If that is the case, you may find it easier to discuss the connections with regard to the results of migration and empire building. One set of patterns is that of the movement of migrants to and from empire. People of Europe migrated, mostly, away from the empire of their own country. Migrants from Italy, Austria, Scandinavia, and Germany migrated overwhelmingly away from their empires, Migrants from Britain and Spain moved in large numbers to their colonies, but in larger numbers away from their empire. People of Asia, meanwhile, migrated mainly to empires of great powers: in particular across the Pacific or to British territories in the Indian Ocean.

The expansion of empires usually involved gaining control of lands overseas. But sometimes, as with the U.S. conquests and the Russian conquests, the new lands adjoined the homeland. (Canada and Argentina had similar experiences.) In these cases, most settlers came from the national homeland. For example, even while Russian Jews moved away from the empire, most other Russians moved within the empire.

A second way to explore connections created by migration and empire building is through culture. You will find some interesting connections in the specifics of culture, such as in language, a form of expressive culture. However, you may also be interested in the generalities of culture. We wish to focus here on the aggregates of cultural practices that we call a “way of life,” including such holistic perspectives as “Western culture” or “Islamic culture.”