Migration

Former Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon said, "Migration is an expression of the human aspiration for dignity, safety, and a better future. It is part of the social fabric, part of our very make-up as a human family." Migration is a fundamental part of the human experience stretching back 200,000 years to the earliest humans. What is migration, exactly, and why do we do it? What did migration look like in the Middle Ages?

Pilgrims migrating to the holy shrine at Canterbury, featured in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Source: Ezra Winter, Canturbury Tales Mural, 1939. Library of Congress, USA. PD-US, Wikimedia Commons.

Migration Definition

Migration is the relocation of people from one location to another, voluntarily or by force, traveling by sea or land. Migration size can be as small as an individual or as large as an entire community of people. People relocate for various reasons, including the search for a better life or resources, or are displaced by factors such as natural disasters, war, unsustainable demographic growth, or discrimination (persecution). Additionally, not all migrations were permanent. Sometimes migrants would go to a particular place to gather resources or information to return to their communities. For example, merchants or religious pilgrims are migrants of this type.

Types of Migration

According to Patrick Manning's Migration in World History, types of migration include:

• Colonization
• Whole-community migration
• Migration within a community
• Cross-community migration

He defines a community as a group of people who share a language as opposed to the same ethnicity or religion to provide a more inclusive representation of the term.¹

• One should not discount the power of religion or race to form a community in the eyes of human beings. In the Middle Ages, religious differences defined who was a friend and who was a foe.
  • The Crusades erupted as an attempt by Christians to stamp out Muslims.
  • Jews were expelled from realms throughout Europe because of their religion.
  • Race defined who was free and enslaved during the Atlantic Slave Trade period. Enslave communities were formed not by language or cultural heritage but because of the color of their skin–enslaved people represented many languages, cultures, and religions.

Migration within a Community

Migration within a community often occurs to improve the ability to procreate. People, primarily women, migrate from one family to another to marry and produce children, allowing the community to continue to another generation.

Colonization

Colonization involves a group of people migrating from one community to establish a new one in the image of the community they left in a new land. Colonists chose geographical areas similar to their original communities to replicate them better and retain their language.

However, this new land, of course, was not always uninhabited by other communities. An excellent example of this colonization occurred after the Europeans arrived in America. Spanish colonists created Spanish communities in South America and the Caribbean while subjugating the indigenous people. English and French colonists settled similarly in North America.

Whole-Community Migration

Whole-community migration occurs when an entire community becomes displaced from its original location and finds a new home. Sometimes, whole-community migration is voluntary, and sometimes it is forced. Voluntary migration of this type is seen in nomadic communities where the entire population moves together towards new resources. Forced migration includes the expulsion of the Jews from many European regions during the Middle Ages and the infamous Trail of Tears in American history, which displaced entire Native American tribes and forced them onto reservations.

Cross-Community Migration

Cross-community migration involves one or a small group of people leaving their original community to join another. For example, many expelled Jews found new homes in Poland, adapting to the new language and culture.

Manning limits this term to those who join different language groups and provide a shared community experience and cultural exchange with their new community. However, this could also include those who convert from one religion to another.

The migrations described below display a combination of the last three migration types.

• The Vikings both colonized and integrated into existing communities through cross-community migration.
• The Crusaders and the religious intolerance that arose from them led to the whole-community migration of the Jews and Muslims from their homes.
• The Mongols were a community that spread across Asia and parts of Europe, absorbing the territory into their empire as they went.
• The Spanish exploration of the New World brought colonization, whole-community migration of the native peoples, and cross-community migration through intermarriage with the natives.

Viking Migration

From the eighth to the eleventh centuries, the Vikings dominated European seaways.

Vikings invading England from the Miscellany of the Life of St. Edmund, 1130. Source: Morgan Library, USA. PD-Art, Wikimedia Commons.

They were expert sailors, and their innovative longboat design allowed them to navigate both inland rivers and oceans. The Vikings migrated across Europe and even to Constantinople through conquest, commercial trade, and intermarriage. Once there, they assimilated into the larger regional fabric.

Viking migrants were the first group to discover North America. Around 982, Erik Thorvaldsson, better known as Erik the Red, sailed from the Viking settlement in Iceland and discovered Greenland. While there is a dispute about whether he was the first Viking to discover the island, he was the first to colonize it successfully. Erik's son Leif Erikson is credited with being the first European to set foot on continental North America. He named the region Vinland after seeing many grape vines.

Iceland retained much of its Nordic culture throughout the subsequent centuries and celebrates its Viking origins even today. However, the Norse colonies in Greenland died out in the fifteenth century once the Black Death reached its shores. A Danish-Norweigian alliance retook sovereignty of the island in the seventeenth century. Today, Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark.

The Medieval Crusades and Migration

The Crusades arose out of the practice of holy pilgrimage, a type of migration where an individual or group voluntarily travels to a site of religious significance for spiritual guidance, enlightenment, or healing. Pilgrims were not permanent migrants; once they reached the holy place, they returned home to tell the tale. The most important Christian religious site was Jerusalem, part of the Islamic Fatimid Caliphate in the late tenth century.

Battle during the Second Crusade from Estoire d'Eracles manuscript, fourteenth century. Source: CC-PD-Mark, Wikimedia Commons.

Pope Innocent III turned a call for aid by the Byzantine Emperor, whose lands were besieged by Turkish forces, into a Holy War to capture Jerusalem for Christianity. The First Crusade succeeded in its mission, colonizing Jerusalem and several nearby cities for nearly one hundred years before Saladin retook the region for Islam in the late twelfth century.

Cultural Exchange in the Crusades

The cultural face of the Crusader States changed dramatically because European settlers and pilgrims flocked to the area during this period. As a result, cultural exchange between European and Islamic cultures flourished. Notably, many classical texts lost in Europe but preserved in Arabic were discovered and translated into Latin, sparking a renaissance of learning that led to the development of the first universities. On the less savory side, the Crusaders looted many treasures from the Arab and Byzantine worlds, bringing them back to Europe.

Cultural Persecution in the Crusades

An unfortunate product of the Crusades is the development of a culture of persecution against those who were not Christian. For example, while the primary mission of the Crusaders was to root out the "infidel" Muslims in the East, they slaughtered whole communities of Jewish people on the way there. The Crusaders thought they were helping the Christian cause to root out evil heretics at home and abroad.

Other Migrations in Medieval History: Mongols

The Mongol Empire was a considerable force in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Under their leader Genghis Khan, they conquered most of East Asia and half of the Islamic territories in the Middle East. By the end of the thirteenth century, the Empire stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Carpathian mountains, part of Eastern and Central Europe. The Yuan dynasty in Chinese history is part of this Mongol conquest, and the Chinese Emperor descended from Genghis Khan from 1271 to 1368.

Genghis Khan portrait, fourteenth century. Source: National Palace Museum, Taiwan. CC-PD-Mark, Wikimedia Commons

Once the Mongols conquered territory, they imposed their government on it. Genghis Khan unified the Mongol tribes, made himself their universal leader, codified Mongol law, established religious tolerance, and structured the military into highly efficient units of 1,000 men called mingghan. The Mongol migration is often credited with bringing gunpowder from China to Europe. In addition, the conquests opened the East to the West, resulting in cultural exchange and new trade routes.

The Mongol Empire's legacy is significant. Some regions that Genghis Khan and his descendants unified are still unified today. Mongols, like the Vikings, assimilated into their conquered territories by intermarrying, changing the ethnic landscape of the regions. On the other hand, the Mongols were brutal warriors, and their conquests resulted in a devastating loss of life.