Migration (human movement)

“ Migration commenced at a very early period, the facility with which our species becomes habituated to every climate and accommodates itself to variations of temperature, taken in connection with the nomadic character which distinguished primitive populations, explains to us the displacement of the earlier inhabitants of the earth. Soon, means of navigation, although rude, were added to the power of travelling by land, and man passed from the continent to distant islands, and thus peopled the archipelagos as well as the mainland. ”

“ The subject of migration in general is capable of very lengthy treatment, but as this is not our purpose here we shall terminate this discussion at this juncture. In this preliminary survey the aim has been to try to show, though in an exceedingly brief manner, the meaning and significance of migration as a factor in the human struggle for existence; the distinction between migration and the earliest movements of primitive man; the types of forces which figure in any migration; and the various forms in which a migration may occur. ”

“ In analyzing the facts of distribution we shall do well to begin with the causes and effects of migration. Primitive man is in no small degree a wanderer. His small resources often require him to explore large tracts. As population increases the food quest becomes more intense, and thus there come about repeated emigrations which increase the food supply, extend its variety, and draw the pioneers at last into contact with neighboring groups. The farther back we go in the history of the race the clearer it becomes that migrations lie at the root of much of human development. ”

“ Every aggressive historical movement, whether bold migration or forcible extension of the home territory, involves displacement or passive movement of other peoples (except in those rare occupations of vacant lands) , who in turn are forced to encroach upon the lands of others. ”

“ The movement cannot yet be thoroughly studied, but what information is available indicates that the migration has been almost exclusively to the northern and western industrial districts. Whether it is a temporary dislocation of population due to war-time conditions or a persistent drift cannot yet be foreseen. ”

“ We have learnt much in recent years with regard to migration. With one single exception, we know where every one of the summer migrants goes to rear its brood. The haunt of one only—the curlew-sandpiper—still defies discovery. ”

“ Long after this wonderful event in the Earth's history, when the human species was spread over a good deal of Asia, Europe, and Africa, migration to the American continents began in attempts to find new feeding grounds and unoccupied areas for hunting and fishing. ”

“ No space is left for a mysterious agency; migration is purely natural, and acts for the general preservation. Try to put yourself in a bird's place, and you will see that migration is very natural indeed. If at some future period of the world's history men should acquire the art of flying, there can be no doubt that migration would become the custom, and whole nations would change their localities. Man has, indeed, been always a migratory animal. ”

“ In those cases the birthplace may have been the original home, before the migratory habit was acquired, and scarcity of food the reason why it was acquired; and 'the influence of scarcity in causing migration is well shown by the occasional or irregular migrations of certain prolific animals which do not ordinarily leave their birthplaces, although, when these become overstocked, migrations take place, just as human colonists go out from thickly settled countries to find new room for growth in foreign lands. ”

“ Even civilized man, in his highest development, has his seasonal journeyings, from his summer home to his winter home, and back. But none of these comings and goings deserve to be included as true movements of peoples, or to be called migrations in the present sense. Migration involves an actual and permanent change of residence. It thus becomes evident that migrations can occur only in the most rudimentary form among people in the hunting stage ”

“ But I have observed above, that we are justified in assuming that man followed into Europe the great mammals which were driven by the cold into more southern countries. There can, then, be nothing strange in the idea that the race, to which everything points as having been the most ancient upon our soil, should also have been the one to accomplish the migration. ”

“ At the present time problems of migration, such, for example, as those of the Japanese and Chinese to the United States, are settled by the nations primarily interested, without recognition of the fact that migration is essentially a world problem in which all humanity has an interest. The local problems of migration [197] that arise from time to time are but a part of an age-long movement of population which is gradually producing an equilibrium between density of population and natural resources in every part of the world. ”

“ That they would have done so in the time to come is undoubted; but the migration of the Fire People, and the consequent migration of the survivors of the Folk, set back our evolution for centuries.
Indeed, there is no telling how disastrous was to be the outcome of the Fire People’s migration. Personally, I am prone to believe that it brought about the destruction of the Folk; that we, a branch of lower life budding toward the human, were nipped short off and perished down by the roaring surf where the river entered the sea. ”

“ Acceptance of this hypothesis requires abandonment of the belief that the development of migration was the result of useful ends that were served thereby, and in its place, to give approval to the idea that migration was merely "the natural consequence of an inherent behavior pattern responding to the drifting of continental masses." ”

“ It must have been the chief material cause of man's success in the migratory movement, and with the social development accompanying it must have made migration not only possible, but the only true method of meeting the earliest economic difficulties. It also provides us with the elements of a chronological basis. Behind palæolithic times there is an immensity of time when man struggled with his economic difficulties and spread out slowly and painfully. ”

“ Prehistoric migrations. Among savage and nomadic nations the whole tribe often moves into new territory, either occupying it for the first time or exterminating or driving out the indigenous inhabitants. ”

“ All these forms of forced migration are evidently different in principle and in most of their characteristics from the great types of migration which have been mentioned. Their study is a subject by itself. ”

“ As to the way in which these migrations are accomplished, we are apt to be misled by the picture—no doubt a very incorrect 49one—which has remained in our minds from our school-days, in connection with the migration par excellence—the great westward movement of our own forefathers. ”

“ Such, in brief, were the land and the people that furnished one-sixth of our total population and two-fifths of our Southern population. In shifting such a people from the torrid climate of equatorial Africa to the temperate regions of America, and from an environment of savagery to one of civilization, changes more momentous than those of any other migration have occurred. ”

“ Indeed a full bibliography of migration would be a considerable volume. Even workers within the last few years have declared that certain phenomena were beyond human understanding, only to be explained by instinct, a word capable of most varied interpretation. ”

“ This would indicate that the long lines of eastward and westward migration were open and favorable to the arrival in western Europe of new migrants from the far east, including perhaps the most primitive races of man. ”

“ Early in this discussion, we saw how closely the prehistoric areas agreed with the historic, suggesting that a type of culture was in some vague manner firmly fixed in a locality. In some respects, such a conclusion is disconcerting, because the traditions of our subject call for a veritable and constant flux of migrations. While our previous discussions have made it apparent that migration is exceptional rather than universal, still, the logical necessities of the case require some movements of population. ”

“ Dear Sir,—You are, I know, no great friend to migration; and the well-attested accounts from various parts of the kingdom seem to justify you in your suspicions, that at least many of the swallow kind do not leave us in the winter, but lay themselves up like insects and bats in a torpid state, and slumber away the more uncomfortable months till the return of the sun and fine weather awakens them.
But then we must not, I think, deny migration in general; because migration certainly does subsist in some places, as my brother in Andalusia has fully informed me. ”

“ Migrations are almost universal in history, and in the traditions and legends of the new as well as of the old world. We find them among the uncivilised nations of our time, and among tribes which are still lingering in the lowest stage of savage life. With every [180] increase and extension of knowledge, we learn to appreciate better the wandering instincts of man. Human palæontology and prehistoric archæology are daily adding their testimony to that of the historic sciences. ”

“ In the first place, no migration is ever simple; it involves a number of secondary movements, each of which in turn occasions a new combination of tribal or racial elements. The transference of a whole people from its native or adopted seat to a new habitat, as in the Völkerwanderungen, empties the original district, which then becomes a catchment basin for various streams of people about its rim; and in the new territory it dislodges a few or all of the occupants, and thereby starts up a fresh movement as the original one comes to rest. ”

“ At the same time large tracts now occupied by the sea may then have been land, uniting or connecting by a chain of easily accessible islands the regions in which men of the same colour and physical peculiarities are now found. But it will be seen by the map that the lines of distribution of two of the races, the Negroid and the Australioid, cross each other, and this, according to the theory of migration by land, appears to involve a succession of submersions and upheavals during the human period, which it is difficult to account for. ”

“ Subsequently, the migration of the Pilgrim Fathers to North America left an indelible impress in our modern civilization, and finally the migrations of yesterday and to-day, trending still westward to the Pacific, and the offshoots of the current to Australia, to New Zealand and to South America, have opened in the history of mankind a chapter which the Twentieth Century will not complete. ”

“ Cities grow more rapidly now than formerly, because the excess of deaths over births has been turned into an excess of births over deaths. Thereby the cities are becoming less dependent upon immigration for increase of population than formerly, but the migration still goes on. The causes of migration from country to city are mainly economic. In early stages of culture men are scattered over the country, or at most gathered together in hamlets and villages. ”

“ So with those rivers of men which we call migrations. The ethnic stream may start comparatively pure, but it becomes mixed on the way. From time to time it leaves behind laggard elements which in turn make a new racial blend where they stop. Such were the six thousand Aduatici whom Cæsar found in Belgian Gaul. These were a detachment of the migrating Cimbri, left there in charge of surplus cattle and baggage while the main body went on to Italy.142
Complex currents of migration. ”

“ It may seem strange that with all the reference to diffusion in the foregoing pages, there has been so little mention of migration. The reason is that migrations of peoples are a special and not the normal means of culture spread. ”

“ Side by side with the unending struggle of human reason against cold and hunger and disease we can watch the contest against distance, against ocean and mountain and desert, against storms and seasons. There can be few subjects more fascinating for a historian to study than the record of the migrations of the tribes of men. He might begin, if he wished, with the migrations of animals and describe the westward progress of the many species whose course can be traced by experts along the natural highways of Western Europe. ”

“ We have to consider those creatures who are deprived of food by climate, but who are able to pass to other places where food still exists. Travel for this purpose is called migration, and it may be accomplished in two ways, namely, upon the earth by means of feet, or over it by means of wings. We will first take migration on foot.
Again, I put aside man, because his migrations (and we English are the most migratory race on the earth) are the result of reason and not of instinct. Man migrates for a definite purpose. ”

“ We might similarly conceive the migrating (destined, when they reach the sea, to become the emigrating) races as forming a continuous emigrating chain or cable, unbroken from the departure of the first migratory band to the sailing of the last emigrant ship, splitting on this side and that into independent strands, but each containing the ferment of the movement that has carried civilization round the globe. ”

“ Migration by land under the pressure of hunger or of a stronger tribe, or from the mere habit of wandering, calls for no special effort of courage or intelligence on the part of the nomad. Migration by sea does: to go forth on a strange element at all, courage is required ”

“ Both men and animals must have been driven to sore straits for lack of food. Migration to better regions was the only recourse. Thus for hundreds of thousands of years there appears to have been a constantly recurring outward push from the center of the world's greatest land mass. That push, with the consequent overcrowding of other regions, seems to have been one of the chief forces impelling people to migrate and cover the earth. ”