ABSTRACT

The period reviewed here is 1850 to 2000. The first date marks the slow death knell of slavery, the second the end of the last millennium. Europe is at the centre of the global migration history of the period surveyed. The European powers replaced the slave trade with the use of indentured labour in their plantation economies; later Europeans migrated to the ‘colonies of settlement’ and North America. In the period from 1850 to 1945 recruits to the European industrial zones were found from the East; after the Second World War they came from the South and colonies. Now Europe is a common destination area both for refugees from the South and for migrants from the former state socialist countries. Each of these migrations is assessed in turn in both a numerical sense and in terms of the status and condition of the migrating communities.