ABSTRACT
Even before the beginning of the Modern English period population movement was considerable in England and was eventually to affect Scotland, Wales, and Ireland as well. The motor behind this lay in the gradual move from a subsistence and barter economy to a supra-regional and international market on a monetary basis. This was characterized by the improved, expanding, and increasingly specialized production of goods. At first slowly and then more and more rapidly the rural population left the countryside for goals in the cities, in the case of England, especially London. A trickle of people emigrating from Britain had already begun in the seventeenth century and before, and soon gained in momentum. The first of many goals abroad was Ireland under the Tudors, the Stewarts, and Oliver Cromwell (see chapter 8). This emigration was extended to the Caribbean, especially Barbados (chapter 9), and then to North America (chapter 10).
