Colonial Period
Further information: History of colonialism and Greater EuropeThe discovery of the Americas stimulated a steady stream of voluntary migration from Europe. It happened during the colonization of the Americas, starting in the 15th century. About 200,000 Spaniards settled in their American colonies prior to 1600, a small settlement compared to the 3 to 4 million Amerindians who lived in Spanish territory in the Americas. In Brazil, the European emigration remained very small in the first two centuries of colonization: between 1500 and 1700, only 100,000 Portuguese settled there. However, the development of the mining economy in the 18th century raised the wages and employment opportunities in the Portuguese colony and the emigration grew: in the 18th century alone, about 400,000 Portuguese settled in Brazil, a mass emigration given that Portugal had a population of only 2 million people. In North America the immigration was dominated by British, Irish and other Northern Europeans.
Read more about this topic: Emigration From Europe
Famous quotes containing the words colonial and/or period:
“Are you there, Africa with the bulging chest and oblong thigh? Sulking Africa, wrought of iron, in the fire, Africa of the millions of royal slaves, deported Africa, drifting continent, are you there? Slowly you vanish, you withdraw into the past, into the tales of castaways, colonial museums, the works of scholars.”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)
“His singing carried me back to the period of the discovery of America ... when Europeans first encountered the simple faith of the Indian. There was, indeed, a beautiful simplicity about it; nothing of the dark and savage, only the mild and infantile. The sentiments of humility and reverence chiefly were expressed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)