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: European Diaspora
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)
“When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss. It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)