European immigration to the Americas was one of the largest migratory movements in human history. Between the years 1492 and 1930, more than 60 million Europeans immigrated to the American continent. Between 1492 and 1820, approximately 2.6 million Europeans immigrated to the Americas, of whom just under 50% were British, 40% were Spanish or Portuguese, 6% were Swiss or German, and 5% were French.
But it was in the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century that European immigration to the Americas reached its historic peak. Never before in human history have so many people immigrated to another continent. Between 1815 and 1930, 60 million Europeans emigrated, of which 71% went to North America, 21% to Latin America, and 7% to Australia. This mass immigration had as a backdrop economic and social problems in the Old World, allied to structural changes that facilitated the migratory movement between the two continents. British people and Iberians continued to immigrate, but influxes from other parts of Europe, particularly Germany, Italy, Ireland, Austria-Hungary, the Russian Empire and Scandinavian countries also became numerous.
Immigration history
Between 1492 and 1640
Between 1492 and 1640, approximately 446,000 Europeans immigrated to the Americas. At that stage, immigration was dominated by Portuguese and Spaniards, who accounted for 87% of the settlers who left Europe. In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, the decision by Spanish and Portuguese monarchs to take possession of the New World and establish crown-governed colonies required the transfer of large numbers of colonists. The plundering of Native American societies and the Spanish discoveries of silver mines in Potosí, in Upper Peru, and Zacatecas, in Mexico, in the 1540s, provided a significant stimulus to immigration. In the long run, however, the most important development that encouraged large-scale immigration of settlers from Europe was the production of consumer goods in high demand in Europe, most notably sugar and, to a lesser extent, tobacco.
In the Americas, Portuguese Brazil (specifically the northeastern captaincies of Pernambuco and Bahia) emerged as the epicenter of world sugar production around 1600. Brazil was followed half a century later by a new sugar plantation complex founded by the British and French (supported by Dutch merchants) on the islands of Barbados, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Martinique and Guadeloupe, in the West Indies. Meanwhile, in Chesapeake, the English colonies of Virginia and Maryland began to rapidly expand tobacco production during the 1620s and 1630s. At that time, plantation-based colonies absorbed the vast majority of European immigrants (and enslaved Africans).
During the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century, the origins of Spanish immigrants were strongly drawn from the Spanish southwest, with the majority of settlers coming from Andalusia, Extremadura and Castile. Andalusia alone contributed a third to a half of all immigrants from Spain. However, in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the character of Spanish emigration changed dramatically, with much greater numbers moving from the poorer north coast provinces (Galicia, Cantabria and the Basque Country), from the east (Catalonia) and the Balearic and Canary Islands. In the case of Brazil, in the first century of colonization, settlers came mainly from the Lisbon region, but later they came mainly from Northern Portugal (Trás-os-Montes and Entre Douro e Minho).
Between 1640 and 1760
In the second phase, from 1640 to 1760, European immigration to the Americas tripled and British immigration surpassed the Spanish and Portuguese one. During this period, close to 1.3 million colonists left Europe for the New World. Most of the 350,000 English immigrants who crossed the Atlantic, during the 17th century, went to the West Indies (180,000) and to the Chesapeake Colonies, in the southern United States (120,000). Only about 23,000 went to the North American-Central colonies and 21,000 to New England.