ABSTRACT

The Americas are influenced by migration processes to a wider extent than perhaps any other world region. Societies are the result of numerous and complex migratory flows from all over the world, and internally, and the subsequent formation of new societies. Migration of whole peoples remained a common pattern in Ancient America well into the second millennium. Institutionalized population transfers played an important role in empire building in the Andes from the 9th century onward. The Inca sought to integrate newly conquered peoples into their empire by unifying political, religious, and economic practices. European colonization of the Americas resulted in the need to facilitate migration overseas in order to take possession of the new regions and render them profitable. Unfree migration dominated the British colonial era, when nearly two-thirds of all immigrants arrived as slaves, servants, or convicts in the British mainland colonies. Migrations from Europe and Africa to the Americas contributed in the making of the Atlantic World.