Migration of European Groups to America Describe

Migration of European Groups to America

Describe the motives that prompted various European groups to migrate to America.

Migration today is as commonplace as ever. Globalization and the conception of the global village alongside the creation of free trade areas and regional blocs have made it a ubiquitous phenomenon that is taken for granted. The world today cannot be imagined without immigrants. However this was not the case in the early 19th century where travel was difficult and there were limited means of transportation.

There were various reasons why European groups migrated to America and these varied with the time period. In the early 19th century to its middle, people from the United Kingdom went to the U.S. In small family groups. However when the famine hit, the years 1845-1853 saw a mass exodus where people were running away from hunger and poverty.

Among the Scottish groups were highlanders, belonging to the mountainous regions of Scotland, who had lost their vessels and were now, looking for new means of trade. German groups on the other hand, were looking for freedom from being forced into peasantry and were looking to become farmers on their own in a new land, which for them offered hope for a new life. A lot of the Dutch immigrants had a different reason for wanting to migrate to an unknown land, and this included the hope that they would be able to practice their religion freely, as most of these immigrants belonged to the Protestant 'Seceded' sect of Christianity.

In so far as the Nordic countries are concerned, the Scandinavians at the time were relatively well-off and were literate. However in being intellectually enlightened ahead of others in the region, they were dissatisfied with the way the state church was involved in their personal affairs and sought relief from this intervention by looking to the U.S. As a means of escape that would enable them to live their lives in the manner they chose.

Of the groups migrating from Southern Europe, their lack of financial resources was what prompted them to move to another land where they cold hunt their own fortune. The Portuguese were a homogenous group where a large proportion was illiterate. Russian Jews were also escaping from the area into the U.S.A. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Other practical reasons that prompted the migration of people from Europe to America was the fact that there was increased population pressure in the U.K. along with the fact that land was fragmented and people were not able to take control of enough land and resources to increase their wealth. Here with the development of railroads and steamers, people in abject poverty and those in the look-out for increasing their wealth thought that a vast new continent would enable them to amass wealth that was not possible in the U.K.

Among the groups that migrated to America were also the slaves. This is because in the 19th century, Europe abolished slavery, which means that slaves were left on their own to fend for themselves. In such a scenario, they thought best to start a new life in a new land away from the categorization of slaves that was imposed on them by birth. (Schrover, 2008)

How did newcomers take advantage of their physical environments to produce different economic systems in the North and the South?

To understand how the economic systems in the North and the South of America came to be different, it is important to look at which immigrant groups settled where. This is important in order to understand the cultural background that each of these groups was coming from.

Germans generally settled in North America, as did people from the Netherlands, and Nordic countries typically located in places that were rich in land.

People from Eastern Europe tended to settle in the North as well as the south. However, the physical environment in both the regions was different. In the north there were more plain lands and were more accessible to sea ports which meant that trade here was easier to develop. Moreover, as most of the early immigrants were concentrated here, which meant that they were already trading for some time, and in that respect other aspects of commerce had developed in its wake.

On the other hand, those people who went on to the South, took advantage of the favorable climate and the fertile soil along with the fact that not many immigrants had ventured further into the south in order to establish themselves. This meant that they could take over vast lands for their farming needs and plantations in the South came into being. (Schrover, 2008)

This initial difference led to a lot of dissimilarities in the two areas of the same country, and culminated in the civil war where Northern America won and Southerners had to be subservient to the laws passed by those in North America.

Because North America was constantly being flooded with immigrants it made it impossible for one particular group to impose their will on others, this is the reason why it was easy to abolish slavery and give the African-American their rights to freedom.

As the southern immigrants had taken over plantations and had developed estates they needed a lot of free labor in order to maintain their lands and to grow the produce. In the north, this was not the case as there were no such plantations and people were involved in trade and commerce, which implied an inherent battle where the South fought tooth and nail not to have slavery abolished in their region as this would have meant an increase in costs for their plantations.

What were the differences between indentured servitude and slavery?