Transplanted Networks

Abstract

This chapter points out that by the early 19th century, evolving capitalist economic and property relations—notably the spread of wage labor, the separation of households from the means of production, and the rising productivity of commercial agriculture—had combined with diminishing land resources and an expanding demand for labor in urban-industrial areas to make long-distance migration a logical choice for many Europeans. Recent scholars of European emigration generally agree that local conditions, including land-tenure patterns, agricultural requirements, and resource management, profoundly influenced rates of emigration and return as well as the kinds of people who emigrated. Those from regions, such as certain parts of southern Italy, where land ownership was still possible hoped to use American wages to purchase land upon their return. The sons of west Norwegian cattle farmers, shut out from ownership, along with fairly-well-off farmers seeking larger farms, also left Europe.

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