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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Ancient migrations were, moreover, somewhat different from modern immigration and emigration. Ancient migrations were largely those of peoples or tribes, while in modern times migration is more of an individual matter. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Emigration, the movement of individuals or groups from one state or country to a colony or another country, to be distinguished from migration, which describes the movement of peoples or races from one geographical area to another, and from colonization, which implies the foundation of a new state or extension of the sway of the colonists' state of origin. ”

“ Having thus considered some of the essential features of migration as a whole, it will be well to distinguish further between the four great types of migrations to 10which reference has been made. One of the earliest, simplest, and most natural of migratory movements is the invasion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A migration route, therefore, may be anything from a narrow path that adheres closely to some definite geographical feature, such as a river valley or a coast line, to a broad boulevard that leads in the desired direction and which follows only the general trend of the land mass. ”

“ 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 order to grasp the problems of migration it is necessary to get rid of the puerile and insular aspect of the subject, namely that migrants are merely those birds which come to us, like the swallow and cuckoo in the spring, and those, like the fieldfare and brambling, which visit us in winter but are not with us in summer. ”

“ Again, since we have to confess to so very much ignorance on so many points connected with the whole phenomenon of migration, may there not be some condition, hitherto shrouded in mystery, which might place so different a complexion on the corresponding aspect of migrant behaviour as to rid us, in their case also, of the necessity of appealing to an inherited disposition? ”

“ Various considerations tend to favour the idea of such a migration, rather than the maintenance of intercommunication and exchange, among a people of the same race, throughout regions so extensive and so geographically distinct. ”

“ Laws regulating migration in one area, whether it be the great continent of America, the British Islands or the islet of Heligoland, may have little application in other parts of the world; local evidence alone can never solve the great problems. ”

“ Migration is a phenomenon far too regular to be created anew each season merely under stress of circumstances, such as need for food; and it begins before the necessity for a change in latitude becomes at all pressing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hence the stream of migration sets from us to them, not from them to us. Indeed our poor folk would migrate in a body, but for the difficulty of transferring their few goods their poor hovels and their families. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many have insisted that wherever migrants cross the sea they do so along submerged coast-lines or over submerged land-bridges, arguing that the gradual evolution which has made the advantageous adoption of a habit of migration possible was unable to eliminate the hereditary tendency to follow the exact route by which their ancestors passed from place to place. ”

“ It is impossible to approximate the period of the world’s history in which the migration must have taken place. No doubt it was in a remote age, before the old world peoples had developed their present or even historic peculiarities and types of civilization. 512If this be true, the futility of all old world comparisons, and the unceasing search for analogies which has been going on since the discovery of the continent, is at once apparent. ”

“ When we can feel assured that all the individuals of the same species, and all the closely allied species of most genera, have within a not very remote period descended from one parent, and have migrated from some one birthplace; and when we better know the many means of migration, then, by the light which geology now throws, and will continue to throw, on former changes of climate and of the level of the land, we shall surely be enabled to trace in an admirable manner the former migrations of the inhabitants of the whole world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As to migration of inhabitants, it must be provided against either by suitably increasing the areas of experimental legislation, or else by collecting information as to the amount and probable effects of the migration. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Migration is the act of changing an abode or resting place, the wandering or movement from one place to another, but technically the word is applied to the passage or movement of birds, fishes, insects and a few mammals between the localities inhabited at different periods of the year. The wandering of a nomadic tribe of men is migration; the mollusc, Wandering from feeding ground to feeding ground in the bed of the ocean, migrates ”

“ The great migration of the last quarter of a century is the most remarkable in the world's history. It has exercised a controlling power over every important event of our national progress. In that period about seven millions of people have come to our Northern States. I had occasion some years ago to analyze the character of that immigration. ”

“ Migration is unsettling to the mind, which settles down with reluctance after the disturbance of its roots. A mass of papers, inserted at the last moment in this particular bag, turned itself out on the carpet, and an illustrated weekly took my eye. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ A primitive migration—one influenced solely by physical causes affecting his existence, and which must have been in more extended operation in early times when he was unprovided with means of his own invention against a change in his surroundings. Such migrations are operative now among certain of our Indians, who move from place to place with the game upon which they subsist and with the season.
A culture migration—one arising from a certain stage of intellectual advancement when the movements of man are determined by ultimate and not immediate considerations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It may be seen from this that there is but little probability of truth in the analogy drawn between the flowing of rivers from elevations to plains and the migrations of nations and directions in which states expand. History shows that migration and development follow a direction contrary from that in which rivers flow. ”

“ The importance of migration for the isolation of newly-originating species and the prevention of a speedy return to the primary form has been especially pointed out by the philosophic traveller, Moritz Wagner, of Munich. ”

“ This spirit of migration, which grew out of the ancient manners and necessities, and sometimes operated like a blind instinct, such as actuates birds of passage, is very sufficient to account for the early habitation of the remotest parts of the earth, and in some sort also justifies that claim which has been so fondly made by almost all nations to great antiquity. ”

“ We can trace, by unmistakable indications, the gradual western migration of this people, until we find them hemmed in between the younger races and the sea, on the north-west coasts of France, and along the mountainous regions of the west in the British Isles, where the invaders of the more fertile regions of the low countries have not cared to follow them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our life of migration through the inhabited country was intensely interesting, furnishing many peculiar experiences, all flavored to some extent by the character and temper of the persons concerned. As the eagerness of the men to emancipate themselves from the restraints of civilization increased, they began soon to adopt the manners of frontiersmen, and to resort to every possible device within the range of their inventive powers for diversion. ”

“ Looking back to the history of the migration of mankind from the cradle of the human race, we find that colonies, afterwards to become nations and the nuclei of distinct families, thrown off from the centre, presented each a unity of language and affinity of which the originators of our country had not the advantage. ”