ABSTRACT
At the heart of European imperialism throughout its history lies massive population movement – among Europeans, those they enslaved and colonised, and those with whom they traded. Between the start of the sixteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth century, more than 2 million people left Europe bound for a variety of destinations, all of them colonial. In roughly the same period some 12 million Africans also left their homes, and they too, were headed for colonial destinations. 1 A good number of the Europeans left under duress as convicts or indentured labourers. Many more were spurred on by the prospect of a more affluent life. 2 In the case of the African migrants, choice was irrelevant; they left as slaves and those who survived the dangerous crossing arrived in the Atlantic to be sold in the market place. The English, Scots and Irish were the likeliest of Europeans to migrate, although Portuguese, Spanish, German and Dutch settlers were to be found in the Atlantic and in Africa by the middle of the seventeenth century. Over the course of that century, more than 700,000 people left England, of whom half went to the Americas. Between 1700 and 1760, only 23 per cent of trans-Atlantic migrants were not slaves, but most were under some form of indenture. 3
