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| History of the United States | ||||||||||
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The history of immigration to the United States details the movement of people to the United States from the colonial era to the present day. Throughout U.S. history, the country experienced successive waves of immigration, particularly from Europe (see European Americans) and later on from Asia (see Asian Americans) and Latin America (see Hispanic and Latino Americans). Colonial-era immigrants often repaid the cost of transoceanic transportation by becoming indentured servants in which the new employer paid the ship's captain. In the late 19th century, immigration from China and Japan was restricted. In the 1920s, restrictive immigration quotas were imposed but political refugees had special status. Numerical restrictions ended in 1965. In recent years, the largest numbers of immigrants to the United States have come from Asia and Central America (see Central American crisis).
Attitudes towards new immigrants have fluctuated from favorable to hostile since the 1790s. Recent debates have focused on the southern border (see Illegal immigration to the United States and Trump wall) and the status of "dreamers", people who illegally migrated with their families when they were children and have lived in the U.S. for almost their entire lives (see Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals).
Colonial era
In 1607, the first successful English colony settled in Jamestown, Virginia. Once tobacco had been found to be a profitable cash crop, many plantations were established along the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia and Maryland. The colonists were met with hard times including famine, illness, and their relationship with the local Native American tribes. There were several historic events that took place in Jamestown between the settlers and the Native American tribes. When the settler John Rolfe married Pocohontas, there was a moment of peace between the two cultures. Prior to the union, Algonquian tribes battled the settlers. The year 1609 was known as the "Starving Time" since over 100 settlers died from starvation and illness. John Rolfe introduced a new type of tobacco seed from the West Indies, and the Jamestown society began to improve.[1]
Thus began the first and longest era of immigration that lasted until the American Revolution in 1775. Settlements grew from initial English toeholds from the New World to British America. It brought Northern European immigrants, primarily of British, German, and Dutch extraction. The English ruled from the mid-17th century and were by far the largest group of arrivals remaining within the British Empire. Over 90% of those early immigrants became farmers.[2]
Large numbers of young men and women came alone as indentured servants. Their passage was paid by employers in the colonies who needed help on the farms or in shops. Indentured servants were provided food, housing, clothing and training but did not receive wages. At the end of the indenture (usually around age 21, or after a service of seven years), they were free to marry and start their own farms.[3]
New England
Seeking religious freedom in the New World, 100 English Pilgrims established a small settlement near Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620. Tens of thousands of English Puritans arrived, mostly from the East Anglia (Norfolk, Suffolk, East Sussex),[4] and settled in Boston, Massachusetts and the adjacent areas from around 1629 to 1640 to create a land dedicated to their religion. The earliest New English colonies, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, were established along the northeastern coast. Large-scale immigration to this region ended before 1700, but a small but steady trickle of later arrivals continued.[5]
Plymouth Colony was founded by a group of European settlers known as the pilgrims who had left Europe to separate from the Church of England and wanted religious freedom. They sailed from England on the Mayflower and arrived in 1620. Plymouth was part of the New England Confederation, made up of four Puritan colonies: Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Haven. The colonies formed an alliance to protect themselves from attacks from Native American tribes, the Dutch, and the French.[6]
The Pilgrims were a small group of people from Scrooby, England. They originally left England to go to Holland because they wanted separation from the Church of England, and they eventually ended in North America, where they began a new life. In the early 1600s, the Church of England was controlled by King James and the government. When King Henry VIII left the Roman Catholic Church and appointed himself as the head of the Church of England, the church quickly deteriorated. It was against the law to own of copy of the Word of God, but the Puritans could read the Bible in their own languages and so understood how the Church of England was corrupt. If the Puritans were caught worshipping in secret, they could be put in prison. The Netherlands was open to the Puritans and their beliefs but wanted them to adapt to their religious ways. The puritans felt that it was their calling to spread the word of the Gospel to the New World, which led them to America.[7]
The New English colonists were the most urban and educated of all their contemporaries and had had many skilled farmers, tradesmen and craftsmen among them. They started the first university, Harvard, in 1635 to train their ministers. They mostly settled in small villages for mutual support (nearly all of them had their own militias) and common religious activities.
Shipbuilding, commerce, agriculture, and fishing were their main sources of income. New England's healthy climate (the cold winters killed the mosquitoes and other disease-bearing insects), small widespread villages (minimizing the spread of disease), and abundant food supply resulted in the lowest death rate and the highest birth rate of any of the colonies. The eastern and northern frontier around the initial New England settlements was mainly settled by the descendants of the original New Englanders. Immigration to the New England colonies after 1640 and the start of the English Civil War decreased to less than 1% (about equal to the death rate) in nearly all of the years prior to 1845. The rapid growth of the New England colonies (approximately 900,000 by 1790) was almost entirely from the high birth rate (>3%) and the low death rate (<1%) per year.[8]
Dutch
The Dutch colonies, which were organized by the United East Indian Company, were first established along the Hudson River in present-day New York State starting about 1626. Wealthy Dutch patroons set up large landed estates along the Hudson River and brought in farmers, who became renters. Others established rich trading posts to trade with Native Americans and started cities such as New Amsterdam (now New York City) and Albany, New York.[9] After the English seized the colony and renamed it New York, Germans (from the Palatinate) and Yankees (from New England) began arriving.[10]
The Dutch initially settled in territories that we refer now as New York, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and New Jersey. The Dutch controlled New Netherland for forty years, an area now known as New York. In 1664, the Dutch settlement area was taken over by the English. In 1696, almost 30,000 people lived in the Province of New York. There were many farm products because of the woods and grasslands, which provided feed for the animals. The Hudson River was used to ship farm products and furs.[11]
Middle Colonies
Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware formed the Middle Colonies. Pennsylvania was settled by Quakers from England and Wales, followed by Ulster Scots (Northern Ireland) on the frontier and numerous German Protestant sects, including the German Palatines. The earlier colony of New Sweden had small settlements on the lower Delaware River, with immigrants of Swedes and Finns. Those colonies were absorbed by 1676.[12]
The Middle Colonies were scattered west of New York City (established 1626; taken over by the English in 1664) and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (established 1682). New Amsterdam/New York had the most diverse residents from different nations and prospered as a major trading and commercial center after about 1700. From around 1680 to 1725, Pennsylvania was controlled by the Quakers. The commercial center of Philadelphia was run mostly by prosperous Quakers and was supplemented by many small farming and trading communities, with a strong German contingent located in villages in the Delaware River Valley.[13]
Around 1680, when Pennsylvania was founded, many more settlers started to arrive in the Middle Colonies. Many Protestant sects were attracted by freedom of religion and good cheap land. They were about 60% British and 33% German. By 1780, New York's population was around 27% descendants of Dutch settlers, about 6% African, and the remainder mostly English with a wide mixture of other Europeans. New Jersey and Delaware had a British majority, with 7–11% Germans, about 6% Africans, and a small contingent of the Swedish descendants of New Sweden.
Frontier
The fourth major center of settlement was the western frontier, in the inland parts of Pennsylvania and south colonies. It was mainly settled from about 1717 to 1775 by Presbyterian farmers from Northern England border lands, Scotland, and Ulster who were fleeing hard times and religious persecution.[14] Between 250,000 and 400,000 Scots-Irish migrated to America in the 18th century.[14] The Scots-Irish soon became the dominant culture of the Appalachians from Pennsylvania to Georgia. Areas whose 20th-century censuses reported mostly "American" ancestry were the places in which historically, northern English, Scottish and Scots-Irish Protestants settled: in the interior of the South, and the Appalachian region. Scots-Irish American immigrants, were made up of people from the southernmost counties of Scotland who had initially settled in Ireland. They were heavily Presbyterian, and largely self-sufficient. The Scots-Irish arrived in large numbers in the early 18th century and often preferred to settle in the back country and the frontier from Pennsylvania to Georgia, where they mingled with second-generation and later English settlers. They enjoyed the very cheap land and independence from established governments common to frontier settlements.[15]
Southern Colonies
The mostly-agricultural Southern Colonies initially had very high death rates for new settlers because of malaria, yellow fever, and other diseases, as well as skirmishes with Native Americans. However, a steady flow of new immigrants, mostly from Central England and the London area, kept the population growth. As early as 1630, initial areas of settlement had already been largely cleared of Native Americans by major outbreaks of measles, smallpox, and bubonic plague decades before European settlers began arriving in large numbers. The leading killer was smallpox, which arrived in the New World around 1510–1530.[16]
Initially, the plantations established in these colonies were mostly owned by friends (mostly minor aristocrats and gentry) of the British-appointed governors. A group of Gaelic-speaking Scottish Highlanders created a settlement at Cape Fear in North Carolina, which remained culturally distinct until the mid-18th century, when it was swallowed up by the dominant English-origin culture.[17] Many settlers from Europe arrived as indentured servants and had their passage paid for, in return for five to seven years of work, including free room and board, clothing, and training, but without cash wages. After their periods of indenture expired, many of the former servants founded small farms on the frontier.
By the early 18th century, the involuntary migration of African slaves was a significant component of the immigrant population in the Southern colonies. Between 1700 and 1740, a large majority of the net overseas migration to those colonies were Africans. In the third quarter of the 18th century, the population of that region amounted to roughly 55% British, 38% black, and 7% German. In 1790, 42% of the population in South Carolina and in Georgia was of African origin.[18] Before 1800, the growing of tobacco, rice, and indigo in plantations in the Southern colonies had relied heavily on the labor of slaves from Africa.[19] The Atlantic slave trade to mainland North America stopped during the American Revolution and was outlawed in most states by 1800 and the entire nation in the 1808 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, but some slaves continued to be smuggled in illegally.[20]
Characteristics
The Thirteen Colonies differed in how they were settled and by whom, but they had many similarities. Nearly all were settled and financed by privately organized British settlers or families using free enterprise without any significant royal or parliamentary government support. Nearly all commercial activity was carried out by small, privately owned businesses with good credit both in America and in England, which was essential since they were often cash poor. Most settlements were largely independent of British trade since they grew or manufactured nearly everything that they needed. The average cost of imports per household was 5–15 pounds sterling per year. Most settlements consisted of complete family groups with several generations present. The population was rural, with close to 80% owning the land on which they lived and farmed. After 1700, as the Industrial Revolution progressed, more of the population started to move to cities, as had happened in Britain.
Initially, the Dutch and German settlers spoke languages brought over from Europe, but English was the main language of commerce. Governments and laws mainly copied English models. The only major British institution to be abandoned was the aristocracy, which was almost totally absent. The settlers generally established their own law courts and popularly elected governments. The self-ruling pattern became so ingrained that for the next 200 years, almost all new settlements had their own government up and running shortly after the settlers' arrival.
After the colonies were established, their population growth comprised almost entirely organic growth, with foreign-born immigrant populations rarely exceeding 10%. The last significant colonies to be settled primarily by immigrants were Pennsylvania (post-1680s), the Carolinas (post-1663), and Georgia (post-1732). Even there, the immigrants came mostly from England and Scotland, with the exception of Pennsylvania's large Germanic contingent. Elsewhere, internal American migration from other colonies provided nearly all of the settlers for each new colony or state.[21] Populations grew by about 80% over a 20-year period, at a "natural" annual growth rate of 3%.
Over half of all new British immigrants in the South initially arrived as indentured servants,[22] mostly poor young people who could not find work in England or afford passage to America. In addition, about 60,000 British convicts who were guilty of minor offences were transported to the British colonies in the 18th century, with the "serious" criminals generally having been executed. Ironically, those convicts are often the only immigrants with nearly complete immigration records, as other immigrants typically arrived with few or no records.[23]
Other colonies
Spanish
Although Spain set up a few forts in Florida, notably San Agustín (present-day Saint Augustine) in 1565, it sent few settlers to Florida. Colonists moving north from Mexico founded the San Juan on the Rio Grande in 1598 and Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1607–1608. The settlers were forced to leave temporarily for 12 years (1680–1692) by the Pueblo Revolt before returning.
Spanish Texas lasted from 1690 to 1821, when Texas was governed as a colony that was separate from New Spain. In 1731, Canary Islanders (or "Isleños") arrived to establish San Antonio.[24] Very few of the few hundred Texan and New Mexican colonizers in the Spanish colonial period were Spaniards and criollos.[25] California, New Mexico, and Arizona all had settlements. In 1781, Mexican settlers founded Los Angeles.
When the former Spanish colonies joined the United States, Californios in California numbered about 10,000 and Tejanos in Texas about 4,000. New Mexico had 47,000 Mexican settlers in 1842. Arizona was only thinly settled. Only a small minority of those settlers were of European descent. As in the rest of the American colonies, new settlements were based on the casta system. Although all could speak Spanish, it was a melting pot of mostly Native Americans with some Spanish, Portuguese, Basques, Jewish, North African Berbers, and Africans.
Former Mexican territories joined the United States in 1848 in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,[26] which ended war between Mexico and the United States. When the former Mexican territories joined the United States, Californios in California numbered about 10,000 and Tejanos in Texas about 4,000. By 1820, Spanish-speaking immigration to the U.S. probably did not exceed 175,000 people.[27] New Mexico had 47,000 Mexican settlers in 1842; Arizona was only thinly settled.[citation needed]
French
In the late 17th century, French expeditions established a foothold on the Saint Lawrence River, Mississippi River and Gulf Coast. Interior trading posts, forts, and cities were thinly spread. The city of Detroit was the third-largest settlement in New France. New Orleans expanded when several thousand French-speaking refugees from the region of Acadia made their way to Louisiana after the British expulsion, and they settled largely in the Southwest Louisiana region now called Acadiana.[28] Their descendants are now called the Cajuns and still dominate the coastal areas.[29] Additional French-speaking refugees entered the area from Saint-Domangue after the Haitian Revolution.[28] Another cultural identity born from French immigrants is the Creole. About 7,000 French-speaking immigrants settled in Louisiana during the 18th century.
Population in 1790
The following were the countries of origin for new arrivals to the United States before 1790.[30] The regions marked with an asterisk were part of Great Britain. The ancestry of the 3.9 million population in 1790 has been estimated by various sources by sampling last names from the 1790 census and assigning them a country of origin. The Irish in the 1790 census were mostly Scots-Irish. The French were primarily Huguenots. The total U.S. Catholic population in 1790 was probably less than 5%. The Native American population inside territorial U.S. boundaries was less than 100,000.[31]
| U.S. historical populations | ||
|---|---|---|
| Country | Immigrants before 1790 | Population 1790[32] |
| Africa[33] | 360,000 | 757,000 |
| England* | 230,000 | 2,100,000 |
| Ulster Scots-Irish* | 135,000 | 300,000 |
| Germany[34] | 103,000 | 270,000 |
| Scotland* | 48,500 | 150,000 |
| Ireland* | 8,000 | (Incl. in Scot-Irish) |
| Netherlands | 6,000 | 100,000 |
| Wales* | 4,000 | 10,000 |
| France | 3,000 | 15,000 |
| Jewish[35] | 1,000 | 2,000 |
| Sweden | 1,000 | 6,000 |
| Other[36] | 50,000 | 200,000 |
| British Isles total | 425,500 | 2,560,000 |
| Total[37] | 950,000 | 3,900,000 |
The 1790 population reflected the loss of approximately 46,000 Loyalists, or "Tories", who immigrated to Canada at the end of the American Revolution, 10,000 of whom went to England and 6,000 to the Caribbean.
The 1790 census recorded 3.9 million inhabitants (not counting American Indians). Of the total white population of just under 3.2 million in 1790, approximately 86% was of British ancestry (60%, or 1.9 million, English, 4.3% Welsh, 5.4% Scots, 5.8% Irish (South), and 10.5% Scots-Irish. Among those whose ancestry was from outside of British Isles, Germans were 9%, Dutch 3.4%, French 2.1%, and Swedish 0.25%. Blacks made up 19.3% (or 762,000) of the U.S. population.[38] The number of Scots was 200,000; Irish and Scot-Irish 625,000. The overwhelming majority of Southern Irish were Protestant, as there were only 60,000 Catholics in the United States in 1790, 1.6% of the population. Many U.S. Catholics were descendants of English Catholic settlers in the 17th century, and the rest were Irish, German and some Acadians who remained. In that era, the population roughly doubled every 23 years, mostly by natural increase. Relentless population expansion pushed the U.S. frontier to the Pacific by 1848. Most immigrants came long distances to settle in the United States. However, many Irish left Canada for the United States in the 1840s. French Canadians, who moved south from Quebec after 1860, and Mexicans, who came north after 1911, found it easier to move back and forth.[citation needed]
1790 to 1850s
Excluding enslaved Africans (see slave trade in the United States), there was relatively little immigration from 1770 to 1830. There was, however, significant emigration from the U.S. to Canada, including about 75,000 Loyalists as well as Germans and others looking for better farmland in what is now Ontario. Large-scale immigration in the 1830s to the 1850s came from Britain, Ireland and Germany, and most were attracted by the cheap farmland. Some were artisans and skilled factory workers who were attracted by the first stage of industrialization. The Irish Catholics were primarily unskilled workers who built a majority of the canals and railroads and settled in urban areas. Many Irish went to the emerging textile mill towns of the Northeast, but others became longshoremen in the growing Atlantic and Gulf port cities. Half of the Germans headed to farms, especially in the Midwest (with some to Texas), and the other half became craftsmen in urban areas.[39]
Nativism took the form of political anti-Catholicism directed mostly at the Irish, as well as Germans. It became important briefly in the mid-1850s in the guise of the Know Nothing party. Most of the Catholics and German Lutherans became Democrats, and most of the other Protestants joined the new Republican Party. During the Civil War, ethnic communities supported the war and produced large numbers of soldiers on both sides. Riots[40] broke out in New York City and other Irish and German strongholds in 1863 when a draft was instituted,[41] particularly in light of the provision exempting those who could afford payment.[42]
Immigration totaled 8,385 in 1820, with immigration totals gradually increasing to 23,322 by 1830; for the 1820s, immigration more than doubled to 143,000. Between 1831 and 1840, immigration more than quadrupled to a total of 599,000. They included about 207,000 Irish, who started to emigrate in large numbers after Britain's easing of travel restrictions, and about 152,000 Germans, 76,000 British, and 46,000 French, the next-largest immigrant groups of the decade.
Between 1841 and 1850, immigration nearly tripled again and totaled 1,713,000 immigrants, including at least 781,000 Irish, 435,000 Germans, 267,000 British, and 77,000 French. The Irish, driven by the Great Famine (1845–1849), emigrated directly from their homeland to escape poverty and death. The failed revolutions of 1848 brought many intellectuals and activists to exile in the U.S. Bad times and poor conditions in Europe drove people out, and land, relatives, freedom, opportunity, and jobs in the U.S. lured them in.
| Population and foreign born 1790–1849 Census population, immigrants per decade | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Census | Population | Immigrants1 | Foreign born | % |
| 1790 | 3,918,000 | 60,000 | ||
| 1800 | 5,236,000 | 60,000 | ||
| 1810 | 7,036,000 | 60,000 | ||
| 1820 | Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=History_of_immigration_to_the_United_States||||