Past mobility and its legacy
Masters and slaves, Brazil early 19th century
Crédit: Wikimedia Commons / Jean-Baptiste Debret
Summary
The history of humanity is one of permanent mobility. Some of its movements remain obscure. The types of mobility were varied—voluntary or forced—with different spatial and time scales, and with a greater or lesser capacity to transform societies and regions. But all of them demote the myths of purity in the face of the evidence of mixed-race humanity.
The gradual division of the world’s territory into nation-states and the great narratives that it spawned have masked that part of human history which involved permanent movement over very long distances. The development of interdisciplinary research (archaeology, anthropology, geohistory, climatology, genetics, and biology) and of scientific tools (genome dating and sequencing) have enabled us to refine hypotheses and start to draw a picture of human movement in the past. Whether migrations were voluntary or forced, small- or large-scale, over extremely variable distances, sudden or gradual, involving profound technical, geographical, and social changes or simply hybridization through contact, there is a wide variety of configurations, many of them waiting to be discovered.
From Antiquity onward, the world of geographical spaces that were roughly divided became better known. They were crisscrossed by sea and land routes and punctuated by network hubs that were trading posts and market towns. Humans moved around conveying merchandise (salt, spices, silks, gold, ivory, amber, furs, and porcelain), as well as immaterial goods (knowledge, skills, and social practices), languages, and religions, which constantly sustained hybridization, the mixing of races and cultures. Depending on the country and period, this migratory heritage has been more or less valued or concealed in the construction of national identity, as is shown by its place in research programs, its inclusion in the national narrative and its portrayal in sites of history and memory.
Slave trade
For more than thirteen centuries, forced migrations of extreme violence drained the lifeblood of Africa. From the seventh to the twentieth century, the Eastern slave trade, controlled by Muslim slave traders, is thought to have deported 17 million African slaves to North Africa and the Middle-East.
Western and Eastern slave trades, 7th-19th centuries
Comment: The map is based on many sources and summarizes the forcible displacement of Africans who were reduced to slavery over a long period. Both the Atlantic trade toward the Americas (which was intense for three centuries, and better studied and understood) and the Eastern trade (toward the Maghreb and the Middle East, of much longer duration but less well known) are shown on this map: the way the network of ports was organized, the main capture zones and the areas of destination. However, neither the numbers of slaves nor the way they evolved over time are represented.
The Atlantic slave trade, organized by European slave traders, deported 12 million men and, to a lesser extent, women to the Americas between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. In addition to these two slave trades there was substantial trading within Africa itself.
The Eastern slave trade has been much less researched than the trade triangle (due to sparse records and the absence of an abolitionist movement), but it played an important role in the mining of valuable products (salt and gold) as well as in plantation agriculture and irrigation works. The Spanish and Portuguese colonial slave trade in the Americas was organized to import labor to meet the considerable needs of producing and marketing commodities demanded by Europeans (wood, sugar, coffee, cocoa, tobacco, silver, and gold). The large number of records show how it was organized, the roles of the different actors (shipowners, merchants, planters, countries – Portugal, Spain, England, France), and the substantial part it played in the enrichment of Europe. Brazil, the West Indies and the southern United States bear the marks of this heritage in their social, spatial and cultural structure, with its mix of races, segregation, and Creolization.
During the second half of the nineteenth century and until 1914, Europe experienced strong demographic growth, great poverty, economic crises, famines (1846-1848 in Ireland), political crises and outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence in Central Europe and Russia.
Great transatlantic migration, late 19th-early 20th century
Comment: Based on a compilation from several sources, the map examines one of the great global migrations. Between the late 19th century and the early 20th, millions of Europeans from different countries migrated to the Americas. The size of the arrows shows the relative importance of the countries of origin. The primary destination was the United States, whose point of entry was Ellis Island, but migrants to southern Brazil and northern Argentina were also numerous. The diagram shows what proportion of the population they occupied in the host countries, which varied considerably.
Over 60 million Europeans in total emigrated, the majority to the Americas, drawn by incentives on the part of states with manpower shortages. Other enticements were lower transport times and costs, hopes of Eldorado, and the myth of the self-made man.
The federal state organized and controlled arrivals from the immigration center on Ellis Island in New York. Here, candidates were sorted, examined, interrogated and registered (the public database shows 51 million) then sent to urban and rural jobs all over the country (1 to 2% were refused entry).
Europe, land of immigration
The reconstruction of Europe, which had been devastated by war, was followed by growth during the Trente Glorieuses, giving rise to an urgent appeal for foreign labor. In France, admission of “good immigration elements” was decreed by the 1945 ordinances and by the National Immigration Office, which recruited and checked individuals, contracts, and onward progress of immigrants toward their destination. The complexity of these rigid procedures led to employers recruiting directly, especially Muslims from Algeria (who were full French nationals, with freedom of movement after 1947), but from the start of the Algerian war (1954), recruitment was redirected toward Spain and Portugal. Enormous numbers of immigrant workers, without any job security, were assimilated into relatively fluid communities but not into society at large. It was they who bore the brunt of industrial growth, doing the most badly paid jobs in mines, the metallurgical, chemical, and automobile industries, and the building trade, and living at the mercy of slum landlords in furnished rooms and shantytowns, then in worker hostels and housing projects. By 1973, there were 3 million foreigners in France and 2.8 in the German Federal Republic, while the United Kingdom had 1.6 million people of color, but the oil crisis and the economic crisis marked the end of the free flow of workers.
Migrations to France, 1931-2012
Comment: This set of maps was drawn up by going through censuses of the French population (during the colonial period and after independence of the countries involved). It shows precisely how migrants’ places of origin gradually changed: first they were European, then they came from the ex-empire and finally from all over the world. The size of the dots is of the same scale on all three maps, enabling a comparison over time; they also reveal the numerical importance of each nationality.
- geohistory > Geography
- Geography: social science devoted to studying the production and organization of space. This space, which is differentiated and organized, serves social reproduction. Political geography: study of the spatial dimension of political organization, generally within states. Geohistory: geographic study of historical processes (diachronic).
- hybridization > Hybridization
- The act of mixing two varieties of a single species, which can, by extension, be applied to the formation of any political, religious, institutional, economic, cultural (etc.) system synthesizing different influences.
- spaces > Space
- A term with multiple meanings and uses and a category given far less consideration by philosophers than the concept of time. Space as a concept has long been a theoretical difficulty (lack of consensus) for geographers – for whom it should be the primary object of study. Contrary to the common representation of space as a natural expanse filled by societies, space is a social product that is constantly reconstructed by social interactions. It constitutes one of the dimensions of our social life, at once material and cultural. To speak of social space does not in itself tell us what form this space takes – whether it is territorial, or networked, or both at once.
- network > Network
- Classical geography tended to place too much importance on surface areas, territories, countries and soil, but network analysis has now become central to its approach. Networks are defined as spaces in which distance is discontinuous and consists of nodes linked by lines. Some are physical (networks for the transportation of people, goods and energy, IT cables and information super highways), others not. When they are partly virtual (such as the internet), they also involve individuals and organizations. Philosophers (Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari), sociologists (Manuel Castells), political scientists (James Rosenau), and economists use this concept to analyze the interconnected functioning of individuals.
- immaterial goods > Immaterial goods
- Used in the fields of economics, commercial law, and sociology, the notion of immaterial or intangible goods (services, knowledge, skills, education) contrasts with material or tangible goods (raw materials, manufactured and agricultural products). Since the 1980s, we have witnessed the commercialization of immaterial goods, which continues to grow with the development of information technologies. In 2003, UNESCO extended the idea of cultural heritage (monuments and objects) to include immaterial heritage (knowledge and know-how) to protect it from disappearing or becoming commercialized, because it plays a part in social cohesion, individual responsibility and cultural diversity.
- religions > Religious
- There is no universal understanding of the notion of religion, nor is there any clear distinction between a religion and a sect. Generally speaking, a religion is a system of beliefs that makes a distinction between the sacred and the profane, manifested in a set of ritual actions that give reality to this distinction. Individuals may be described as religious if they practice or claim to belong to a religion, or if they have made religion their profession and devoted their lives to it.
- hybridization > Hybridization
- The act of mixing two varieties of a single species, which can, by extension, be applied to the formation of any political, religious, institutional, economic, cultural (etc.) system synthesizing different influences.
- migratory > Migration
- Movement of people leaving their country of origin permanently (emigration) to relocate to another country (immigration), which might be voluntary or forced (war, poverty, unemployment, human rights violations, climate factors, etc.), and which often involves temporary stays of varying duration in several transit countries. Migratory flows, which are an integral component of humanity’s history, give rise to a range of public policy measures linked to specific political, economic and cultural contexts and understandings of nationality. Host states seek to organize immigration, sometimes to attract it (need for labor, exploitation of specific territories, naturalizations, etc.), and most often to restrict it (border controls, quotas, residence permits, etc.). In most cases the states of origin seek to maintain relations with their nationals and diaspora communities living abroad.
- national identity > Identity
- The concept of identity is ambiguous, multifaceted, subjective, and frequently exploited and manipulated. No identity is foreordained or natural – so it is better to talk of identity construction, or of the processes of constructing self-representations developed by an individual or group. These constructions are neither stable nor permanent, defining the individual or group from multiple perspectives: on its own terms, in relation or opposition to others, and by others. The way individuals and groups use identity varies according to their interests and the constraints inherent in their specific situation: identity, therefore, is a construct based on interaction. This combination of affiliations, allegiances and internal and external recognition is a complex process, involving various degrees of awareness and contradiction, constantly being amalgamated and reconfigured.
- slave trade > Slave Trade
- In the 7th century Muslim Arab merchants began trading African slaves across the Sahara and into the Arabian Peninsula. The Europeans established the third major market in slaves between Africa and the Americas from the mid-16th century. In this triangular trade, slaves were exchanged with African traffickers in return for weapons, manufactured items, textiles, etc. Those who survived the voyage were taken to the American colonies (from northern Brazil to the southern United States), and the ships returned to Europe with tropical products. Criticized by the French Encyclopedists in the second half of the 18th century, then by abolitionist societies in France and Britain, the trade and then slavery were not ended in the Americas until the second half of the 19th century.
- actors > Actor
- An individual, group, or organization whose actions affect the distribution of assets and resources on a global scale. The state has long been considered as the main actor on the international scene, but the number of non-state actors has increased and diversified (businesses, non-governmental organizations, special interest groups, mafias, religious actors, etc.) over the past few decades. Contemporary globalization has made the relationships between these actors more complex.
- cultural > Culture
- Culture is what distinguishes human existence from the natural state, that is to say it denotes the processes through which humans use and develop their intellectual capacities. According to Clifford Geertz (1973), culture is a system of significations commonly shared by the members of a social community, who use them in their interactions. Cultures are therefore not immutable but change according to social practices, incorporating processes of both inclusion and exclusion. Culturalism is a concept which considers that supposed collective beliefs and membership of a particular culture predetermine social behavior.
- Creolization
- This notion was first used in linguistics and social and cultural anthropology, and then in social sciences and literature. It is the opposite of the idea of exclusive identity. Originating in the West Indies to describe a composite society, it was largely developed by Edouard Glissant who extended it to the entire world. Similar to the concepts of mixed race, hybridization, or the melting pot, creolization describes how the mixing of different peoples produces a new language and society – one that is different from the sum of societies of origin – and new ways of life to be adopted that are free from inherited traditions and identities assigned by geography.
- poverty > Poverty
- Initially referring to a lack of economic resources, the notion of poverty has broadened in recent decades to include its different components, such as appalling sanitary conditions, a low level of education, social and gender inequalities, human rights violations, environmental damage, and increased vulnerability to so-called “natural” disasters. The Human Development Index (HDI) developed by the United Nations Development Program in the mid-1990s (and its gendered variant, Gender Development Index or GDI) and the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) devised by researchers at the University of Oxford in 2010, use Amartya Sen’s work on capabilities to identify the deprivation suffered by the poor in terms of health, education, and living standards.
- federal > Federalism
- At national level, federalism is a mode of government that grants a high level of autonomy to the political communities federated within it. The allocation of responsibilities between federal and regional levels of government, in principle strictly defined, often remains flexible in practice (e.g. the paradiplomacy conducted by the province of Quebec, the German Länder, the Swiss cantons and the states of Brazil). Internationally the federal model is defended within the European Union by advocates of greater political integration, opposed by defenders of the sovereignist model which is more intergovernmental, inter-state in its approach.
- growth > Growth
- A long-term, sustained increase in a country’s production of economic wealth, in other words, its GDP. Economic growth is not synonymous with development. Measuring it with purely economic and monetary tools is becoming increasingly unsatisfactory because of the deterritorialization and internationalization of economic activities, as well as the failure to take account of any wealth creation that cannot be monetized (elimination of illiteracy, gains in scientific or cultural knowledge, etc.). This implies special emphasis on high productivity despite the potential destruction (especially ecological) caused by growth that is seen exclusively from the angle of economics and financial profitability.
- Trente Glorieuses
- This French phrase coined by economist Jean Fourastié refers to the thirty “glorious” years of strong economic growth experienced by the industrialized countries between the end of World War II and the oil crises of 1973 and 1979.