AP World History Unit 6 - Lesson 6.6

Causes of Migration in an Interconnected World

Migration Through Labor Systems

• With slavery abolished in more imperial territories, agricultural workers migrated to colonies to fill that production void.
• Indentured Servants: Those who worked for a set number of years before becoming free, often people who were from poor communities or in debt.
• Many indentured workers stayed in their new countries and brought their culture with them.
• European Imperialist powers used Asian contact workers as a substitute for slave labors. They were unskilled and were exploited with subsistence wages and very poor treatment. Asian worker contracts were terminated in mid to late 19th century.
• Penal Colony: Settlements established for the punishment of criminals.
• Convicts in Britain’s Australia penal colony preformed forced labor rather than imprisonment.
• French convicts in the Africa penal colony Devil’s Island were notoriously treated harshly and did hard labor.

Migration in the Face of Challenges

• Diaspora: movement/migration of people from an established homeland.
• African slave trade was biggest diaspora in history, but often diaspora are due to poverty, famine, or family conditions.
• Many Indians were driven out of India by poverty and British sent them to Mauritius where they signed labor contracts.
• Kangani system: labor recruitment system in Ceylon and Malaya with a foreman who oversees workers and recruited from extended family.
• Emigrate: to leave one’s country in order to permanently settle in another.
• Many Chinese emigrated due to famine and poverty due to the Taiping Rebellion and the Opium Wars.
• Great Famine: period of mass starvation, disease, and emigration due to massive destruction of potato crop in Ireland between 1845 and 1849.
• Irish people emigrated to the U.S and Great Britain where they worked on railroads and canals.
• Massive wave of emigration from Italy in 1861 when the country became unified (political).
• Italian emigrants whether due to poverty or economic reasons (organized crime), often sent money back to encourage more emigration.

Migration to Settler Colonies

• British citizens moved to other colonies for political service, military service, or economic potential.
• Colonial Service: British government services.
• British engineers migrated to South Asian and African colonies where they collaborated with the colonies to work on industrial projects.
• British businessmen moved to Argentina where their products, banks, and industrial projects appealed to the Argentina middle class.
• Japanese colonization society aimed to export surplus population to the Americas which wasn’t successful through contract workers.
• Gentlemen’s Agreement: 1907-1908 agreement between the US and Japanese governments to limit Japanese immigration to the United States as well as end anti-immigration beliefs.

Migration, Transportation, and Urbanization

• Agricultural contract workers went to Hawaii and other South Pacific locations to work on sugar plantations (1885-1894)
• Italians moved to Argentina for better wages in factories where they expanded cities’ size and influence

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