The age of mass migration
Fifty million Europeans cross oceans, and tens of millions move within Asia.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 94 years
- Known to
- ± 5 years
- Era
- Industrial, Holocene
Between 1846 and 1940 roughly 50 to 55 million Europeans emigrate, mostly to the Americas, driven by population growth, agricultural change and cheap steamship passage. Comparable movements carry millions of Indians and Chinese as indentured or contract labourers to plantations and mines across the tropics — a system that replaced slavery and often resembled it. It is the largest voluntary human migration in history to that point.