In 1571, Anneken Hendriks, an Anabaptist, was burned at stake for heresy in Amsterdam. The Anabaptists were one of the many religious groups persecuted in Europe who sought refuge in the New World starting from the 16th century. The European migration to the New World shared several critical elements in the greater context of European colonialism. These elements included the domestic persecution of religious minorities, trade and professional opportunities, territorial expansion, missionary work, and scientific exploration.
Fig. 1 - The Burning of Anneken Hendriks in Amsterdam in 1571 by Jan Lyuken.
Summary of the European Migration to the New World
The two central events that propelled European colonialism to the next level were the exploration of Africa’s southern coastline and Christopher Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas in the late 1400s.
Migration is temporary or permanent relocation from one’s place of origin to another. Unlike immigration, which is typically voluntary and permanent, migration may be forced.
Europe's Age of Discovery and Conquest began with the Renaissance. This was a time of great change. Copernicus proposed the Heliocentric Model of the solar system around 1508. Michelangelo sculpted the naturalistic David in 1501-1504. The 16th-century Protestant Reformation challenged the powerful Catholic Church. Political and economic change, however, arrived more gradually. For instance, institutional feudalism was slower to decline into the era of the French Revolution (1789).
Feudalism was a Medieval European institution in which wealthy landowners exchanged access to their land for military service and other labor.
Period of the European Migration to the New World
The first two European empires to begin radical expansions were Portugal and Spain.
- Christopher Columbus’s emblematic first voyage across the Atlantic in 1492 resulted in the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494). This agreement divided the world outside of Europe between these two powers. For Portugal, this Treaty meant expansion into India and Brazil and commercial influence in Japan. Spain expanded into Central and South America. For the native population of these regions, the European arrival meant the "civilizing" initiatives by the Europeans, the looting of resources and land, and epidemics, among others.
The British expansion into North America began with the first settlement in present-day Virginia in 1587. The French claimed New France in 1534 with the Gulf of St. Lawrence, establishing their first settlements in the Canadian northeast in 1605 and 1608. The Netherlands colonized the Hudson River Valley in 1609-1664. Even the Russians expanded into Alaska in 1799 and briefly had a small settlement, Fort Ross, California, in 1812-1841.
As a result, the British and the French dominated North America for a time, whereas the Spanish and the Portuguese controlled Central and South America. European colonialism generally shared several broad aspects, such as the rivalry over trade and territorial control, the complex relationship between the settlers and the Indigenous populations, and slavery primarily from Africa.
Factors for the European Migration
Europeans settled in the New World for many reasons. These reasons included:
- religious persecution,
- labor opportunities,
- lucrative trade,
- missionary work,
- scientific exploration.
Religious Refugees
Religious refugees played an essential role in European migration to the New World. These groups included:
- Anabaptists,
- Puritans,
- Pilgrims,
- Quackers,
- Huguenots,
- Scots-Irish,
and, in the 19th century, the Jews.
- The Protestant Reformation (1517) sought to reform the Catholic Church and formed many new religious groups. One group deemed radical at that time was the Anabaptists from the German-speaking lands. The latter served as the source for the Amish, Hutterites, and Mennonites. In Europe, mainstream Protestants and the Catholic Church systematically targeted the Anabaptists in the 16th-17th centuries, with punishments as far as execution. As a result, the Anabaptists fled from Europe into North America, settling in such places as Pennsylvania.
Anabaptism – an offshoot of Protestantism, which originated in Switzerland and spread to other German-speaking lands in the context of the Protestant Reformation. Anabaptism was considered radical due to adult baptism and was persecuted.
Other religious groups made similar choices.
In the early 17th century, the Puritans left England in the tens of thousands to settle in places like the Plymouth Colony and the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
In the 1630s, 20,000 Pilgrims arrived in New England, escaping the Church of England. In the middle of the 17th century, the Quackers followed suit, fleeing persecution and engaging in missionary work.
In the late 17th century, the Protestant Huguenots, deemed heretical in Catholic France, fled to North America.
Some Scots-Irish migrated in the early 18th century to places like Boston to escape Anglican discrimination like the Puritans did earlier.
The late 19th century saw a rise in Jewish emigration from Eastern and Central Europe due to antisemitism.
What united these diverse groups was the search for greater religious freedom in the New World.
Fig. 2 - The Puritans Conference with King James I of England by Henry Davenport Northrop, 1901.
Labor Migration
In the 17th century alone, hundreds of thousands of Europeans migrated to North America.
For instance, 8,000-9,000 migrants every ten years in the 1630s rose to 16,000-20,000 in the same period in the 1650s.
Many European settlers entered the labor force in the tobacco industry in places like Maryland and Virginia at this time. Single European men of a lower socio-economic status dominated the migration flow for quite some time. Other professional pursuits of the settlers ranged widely. Fishermen from Spain and the Netherlands operated on the continent's east coast. Due to the harsh climate, the fur trade was a crucial industry in the Canadian northeast and the prairies. Some Protestant refugees engaged in farming—an essential aspect of their lifestyle. In the 19th century, labor migration, which now included the Chinese, also occurred because of the 1849 California gold rush, both inspired by adventurism and employment in the mining industry. Infrastructural development, such as the railroad construction of the mid-19th century, also relied on Chinese migrants, who were often mistreated.
The Relationship Between the Settlers and the Indigenous People
The relationship between the colonial settlers and the different Indigenous groups in the Americas was quite complex. It was defined by:
- changing alliances,
- military conflicts,
- the looting of resources and land,
- religious conversions as part of the European “civilizing” initiatives,
- and epidemics.
For instance, 16th-century Spanish Conquistadors looted burial sites in Peru in search of gold. As a result of the Spanish arrival, the Chincha population of Peru dropped from 30,000 adult males with families to less than a thousand in 1533-1583. This rapid decline was primarily the result of epidemics and famines.
Fig. 3 - New Amsterdam (New York), by Johannes Vingboons, 1664.
Conquistadors were soldiers and explorers in the context of 15th-16th-century colonialism.
Elsewhere in Canada, the founder of Quebec, Samuel de Champlain, fought on the side of the Huron and Algonquin tribes against the Iroquois in 1609. Colonial military conflicts often involved the support of different tribes on each side, such as the French and Indian War (1754–1763). Economic cooperation, such as the fur trade, further developed the relationship between the settlers and the locals. However, the well-known sale of Manhattan (1626) is emblematic of this unequal relationship. The Dutch bought this land for 60 guilders from the Indigenous people, who were completely unfamiliar with European real-estate practices.
The Catholic and Protestant Churches
One of the central factors in the relationship between the settlers and the Indigenous people was the Church.
- The Catholic Church addressed the needs of the settlers and targeted the Indigenous tribes through its missions. For instance, the Franciscans were active among the Maya of present-day Mexico in the 16th century. Their missionary efforts may be an extension of aggressive Spanish colonialism, in which the Indigenous people were subjected to assimilation through language, culture, and religion. The role of the Catholic Church in New France, such as the Jesuits, was less forceful than its Spanish counterpart. However, the Church also engaged in questionable practices, such as forcing the Indigenous children to attend Canadian state-funded Catholic boarding schools in a massive assimilation campaign that began in the late 19th century.
- The Protestants also sent missions to the Indigenous people, such as the mid-17th-century Puritan mission of John Eliot to the Iroquois people in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In general, these missions were part of the broader European assimilation campaigns.
Map of European Migration to the New World
The Age of Discovery and Conquest began with Christopher Columbus's voyage to North America.
Fig. 4 - Christopher Columbus’s travel routes between 1492 to 1504 (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 1.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 1.0)).
As time passed, European colonial powers fought over land in North America. As a result, the locations of their settlements changed.
Fig. 5 - Thirteen Colonies in 1774, Mcconnell Map Co, and James McConnell.
Effects of the European Migration to the New World
One of the most important aspects of migration to the Americas is demographics. The initial settlements in North America comprised:
- explorers,
- adventures,
- missionaries,
- and religious refugees fleeing persecution from Europe.
Catholic and Protestant missionaries attempted to convert the Indigenous people in the Americas. Religious refugees comprised different groups ranging from the English Puritans to the German-speaking Anabaptists. Human trafficking of slaves, primarily from Africa, was also an important component of migration to the New World outside of Europe.
Demographics is the study of population composition.
- In the 19th century, many European working-class migrants sought better economic and professional opportunities in North America in the context of the Industrial Revolution, poor labor conditions, and other excesses of unrestrained capitalism. Some, like the Irish, fled death and destitution during the 1840s famine. Another group of newcomers from China comprised laborers taking advantage of the Gold Rush. At this time, other religious minorities, such as the Jews, also emigrated from Eastern and Central Europe. Further diversification of newcomer demographics occurred throughout the 20th century from all over the world. Reasons for relocation ranged from seeking better professional opportunities to fleeing war-torn countries.
Migration to North America was not without its problems. Some governments engaged in prohibitive measures, such as the radical Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) in the United States, which completely stopped immigration from China for a time. Social, cultural, or political exclusion also affected different groups: from the Catholic Italians and the Irish in the predominantly Anglo-Saxon Protestant communities to the Japanese during the Second World War. Today, the institution of immigration is still evolving.
European Migration to the New World - Key Takeaways
- European migration to the new world began in the late 15th century for many reasons, such as territorial expansion, scientific exploration, trade opportunities, and missionary work.
- The major countries involved in migration and settlement were Portugal, Spain, Britain, France, and the Netherlands.
- European migration ranged from religious refugees (e.g. Anabaptists, Puritans, Quackers, and Pilgrims) to labor migrants.
- As time passed, migration to North America became more ethnically and religiously diverse, including the Jews, the Chinese, and others.
References
- Fig. 4 - Christopher Columbus’s travel routes between 1492 to 1504 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Viajes_de_colon_en.svg), by Phirosiberia (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Phirosiberia), digitized by Wikipedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 1.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 1.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/deed.en).
- Fig. 5 - Thirteen Colonies in 1774, Mcconnell Map Co, and James McConnell. McConnell's Historical maps of the United States. [Chicago, Ill.: McConnell Map Co, 1919] Map. (https://www.loc.gov/item/2009581130/) digitized by the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division), published before 1922 U.S. copyright protection.
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