A Moving History

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Bibliographic details

• Authors: IAN GOLDIN
• Published: June 2, 2025

Overview

• Thesis: Migration has propelled human progress for hundreds of thousands of years, enabling exchange of goods, ideas, technologies, and skills, while also producing violence and coerced movement.
• Author: IAN GOLDIN, Professor of Globalisation and Development at Oxford University.
• Article context: Draws on the author’s latest book, The Shortest History of Migration.

Deep-time and early human migrations

• Key points:
  • Migration activity dates back at least 300,000 years.
  • About 65,000–70,000 years ago early humans ventured into the Middle East and then into Asia and Europe.
  • Before the end of the last ice age, over 25,000 years ago, humans crossed from Siberia into the Americas.
  • About 6,000 years ago in Eurasia, horses were domesticated; the wheel and cart followed, facilitating longer-distance movement and the transport of plants and animals.
• Consequences:
  • Increasing encounters among distinct groups led to exchange of knowledge and technologies, and also to unequal encounters, conflict, invasion, and subjugation.

Marketplaces, trade networks, and the virtuous spiral

• Dynamics:
  • Marketplaces and ports along trade routes became centers for pooling information, produce, and resources.
  • Expanding trade networks increased wealth and dynamism of anchor communities.
  • Resulting virtuous spiral: growing wealth → increased trade → further migration, exchange, and innovation.

Pre-colonial and colonial encounters in the Americas

• Indigenous exchange:
  • Mesoamerican cultures shared knowledge on crop development, astronomy, and religion before European arrival.
• European arrival impacts:
  • European contact carried guns and deadly pathogens; Indigenous peoples had little immunity, causing catastrophic losses.
  • Example: In 1519, ships with little more than 600 Spaniards landed on the coast of Mexico; within a century the 20 million inhabitants of the Aztec empire were reduced to just over a million, many through violence, but the majority from disease.
  • Extracted resources and riches were sent back to Europe, incentivizing further migration to the Americas.

Columbian Exchange

• Nature: Irreversible cross-pollination of crops, animals, commodities, diseases, technologies, and ideas between the Americas and other continents beginning after 1492.
• Transfers from the Americas included: tobacco, cacao, maize, potatoes, rubber, tomatoes, and vanilla.
• Transfers to the Americas included: sugar, rice, wheat, coffee, onions, mangoes, bananas, apples, and citrus (many originating from Asia or Africa via Europe).
• Animal introductions: Domesticated animals introduced by the Spaniards brought new food and transportation sources, including horseback riding.
• Cultural impacts: Examples of culinary integration—beef and pork central in the Americas; the white “Irish” potato from the Andes became a European staple; modern Italian cuisine heavily influenced by the tomato.

Slavery and coerced migration

• Historical record: Some of the earliest records testify to forced migration as slaves, serfs, or other unfree servitude.
• Drivers: Power, coercion, territorial subjugation, and demand for arduous labor enabled slavery.
• Scale and legacy:
  • European voyages of expansion set the stage for centuries of brutal exploitation of Indigenous African and other populations.
  • Slavery described as the most extreme version of coerced labor; the distinction between free and unfree employment is often blurred, with subtle differences among indentured or bonded labor.

Age of mass migration (mid-19th century to 1914)

• Characteristics:
  • Unprecedented number of migrants and distances covered.
  • Drivers included unrest, pogroms, famines, opportunities in colonies, and advent of steam and rail reducing travel costs.
  • Millions of European migrants crossed the Atlantic to the Americas; comparable numbers moved across southern and central Asia and the Pacific.
  • Host governments often encouraged migration; abolition of slavery in Britain and its colonies in 1836 and in the United States in 1865 led governments and employers to attract voluntary migrants and indentured laborers.
• Internal movements:
  • Until the 1890s, intra-European migration mirrored emigration numbers.
  • Industrial revolution spurred movement to cities and rural areas for mining and agriculture to supply growing urban centers.

Nationalism, protectionism, and World War I

• Shifts:
  • Late-19th to early-20th century saw rising nationalism and economic protectionism; new rules sought to control movement.
  • World War I increased antipathy toward foreigners and ended the age of mass migration; states assumed the role of gatekeepers.
• Policy instruments:
  • Identity cards and passports enabled nation-states to regulate entry, migrants’ access to jobs, and government support.

World War II, decolonization, and mid-20th-century displacements

• Human costs and displacements:
  • World War II: in addition to 40 million civilians killed, at least 11 million refugees were outside their country of origin.
• Postwar territorial changes:
  • 1947 partition of India and Pakistan led to about 18 million people being forced to move between the new territories—the largest and fastest migration in history.
  • In 1947, UN partitioned Palestine; by May 1948 Israel declared independence and its Jewish population had grown to about 1.2 million after hundreds of thousands migrated from Europe and elsewhere; many Palestinian-Arab residents were expelled or fled, creating a persistent refugee crisis.
• Cold War and Soviet collapse:
  • The Soviet Union comprised 15 states and spanned roughly two and a half times the size of the US.
  • In 1991 the USSR collapsed; the 15 former Soviet republics reasserted independence (including Ukraine, the Baltic states, and Central Asian republics). Many ethnic Russians returned to Russia; millions moved between the former republics.

Migration today: scale, shares, and trends

• Aggregate figures:
  • Number of migrants worldwide nearly doubled from 153 million in 1990 to 281 million in 2020 (the most recent year for which the UN has published its global tally).
  • As a share of the total population: 3.6 percent of recorded citizens were born in a different country in 2020; 30 years earlier it was 2.9 percent.
• Demographic context:
  • Global population increases: from 2.5 billion in 1950 to 5.3 billion in 1990, to today’s 8 billion.
  • Projection: The world’s population is expected to approach 9.5 billion in the middle of this century, then fall to below current levels by the end of it.
• Political and territorial changes affecting counts:
  • More than 50 new countries have appeared since World War II, changing internal movers into international migrants.
• Return migration and motives:
  • Anywhere from a fifth to half of migrants return home or move to a third country within five years.
  • Reasons for return include having saved money, gained a qualification, settling to raise a family, or retiring.
• Socioeconomic role:
  • In many poor communities, eldest sons or daughters are encouraged to migrate to support their families.
  • Refugees and forcibly displaced people tend to stay as close to home as possible to enable return when safe.

Economic and cultural impacts

• Intellectual and entrepreneurial contributions:
  • In the United States, immigrants account for a disproportionately large share of intellectual leadership, from Nobel laureates and Oscar-winning directors to founders of unicorn start-ups valued at more than $1 billion.
  • Immigrants to the United Kingdom make up a third of authors awarded the Booker Prize.
• Remittances and development:
  • Migrants send home over $1 trillion a year in remittances, exceeding aid and investment flows combined for many developing economies.
  • Return migrants often bring new skills and investment; entrepreneurs with time abroad have created notable emerging market firms (examples cited include Blue Mahoe Capital and GoTo).

Synthesis and concluding insight

• Enduring role: Migration has been central to human survival, adaptation, and progress—enabling innovation and cultural exchange while also producing conflict, coercion, and lasting inequalities.
• Human element: Migrants’ willingness to take risks and make sacrifices has been crucial to the species’ resilience across history.

Content based on: A Moving History, IAN GOLDIN, F&D Magazine, June 2025.

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