Connecting Seas and Connected Ocean Rims: Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans and China Seas Migrations from the 1830s to the 1930s

Long-distance migration of peoples have been a central if little understood factor in global integration. The essays in this collection contribute to a new history of world migrations, written by specialists of particular areas of the world. Collectively these essays point towards a shift from the regional migrations of individual seas and oceans of the early modern era toward nineteenth-century labor migrations that connected the Pacific and Indian to the Atlantic Oceans. Detailed case studies demonstrate the importance of human migration in the development, consolidation and critique of empire-building, theories of race, modern capitalism, and large-scale commercial agriculture and industry on every continent.

Donna R. Gabaccia is the Rudolph J. Vecoli Chair in Immigration History and Director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of many books and articles on U.S. immigration and Italian migration around the world.

Dirk Hoerder teaches global migration history at Arizona State University. His newest research is on North American migrations since the mid-19th-century. On leave from the University of Bremen, he has also taught in Canada and Paris.