19th Century Immigrants: A Case Study

“Dear wife, and familie and friends, . . . We have been greatly deceived by coming to America, for they have been on strike in this country for six weeks, and when they are at work, there are two men for every situation.” European press often printed the most hysterical stories, but it does play on a very important emotion most prospective emigrants had, fear. Fear they would emigrate overseas for lackluster job opportunities and low wages, only to be forced to return to their natural lands of birth. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that stories like this did little to slow the mass exodus from Europe. More than 54 million people emigrated from different parts of Europe to International destinations around the world during the

Why individuals or groups choose to emigrate is specific to the their respective time, place and individual situation, which will be carefully investigated. To understand the mentality of the collective emigrants decisions, it is important to examine the local environment on a small scale before moving to a larger more broad area. I will first examine the port city of Bremen, Germany, before dissecting the emigrant mentality on countries as a whole such as Ireland, Sweden and Germany to see if there are common factors. In the second half of the 19th century, Bremen, Germany deals with many issues that are generally considered to be driving forces of European emigration such as high population growth, trade, manufacturing and production. In 1812 Bremen’s population was 35 thousand people, by 1862 that figure climbed to 66.5 thousand people, a 90% growth. This growth is not only due to new births, but also from the

Beginning with the Great Famine in 1845, the pre-famine population was around 8.5 million people. Famine era emigration saw 2.3 million Irish people leave in the following five years, and nearly 1.1 million people die from starvation. This is an incredibly terrible and disturbing fact. There were other ancillary effects of the Great Famine, such as Irish people becoming reluctant to marry and bare children. Reproduction outside of marriage was severely restricted, and in an effort to ease the strain on agriculture and reduce risk, Ireland began exporting large portions of fertile youth to North America. This sexual revolution reverberated through the rest of the 19th century in Ireland, in the direction of abstinence. Total Emigration from Ireland between 1815 and 1930 was 7.3 million. We can see that the Great Famine was a major component in Irish emigration, comprising of 31.5% of all Irish emigration. With that, the Great Famine played a defining role in shaping Irish