Mass transatlantic migration peaks; Ellis Island opens
- Date
- 1892–1914 (peak of the great wave)
- Category
- Social & demographic
- Region
- Europe to the Americas (especially the United States)
- Era
- Modern
- Significance
On 1 January 1892 the federal immigration station at Ellis Island, in New York Harbor, opened its doors, becoming the principal gateway for the climax of the greatest voluntary human migration in history.
Cheap, fast steamship passage, the spread of railways, and the pull of industrial and agricultural opportunity in the Americas combined with population pressure, poverty and persecution in Europe to send tens of millions across the Atlantic. About seventeen million people emigrated from Europe to the United States between 1880 and 1910, and over twelve million passed through Ellis Island before it closed in 1954. The years 1905–1914 saw an average of roughly a million arrivals annually, with a record 1.25 million in 1907. The composition shifted markedly: where earlier flows came chiefly from north-western Europe, by 1907 some four-fifths of newcomers originated in southern and eastern Europe—Italians, Poles, Jews fleeing the Russian Empire, and many others. Parallel streams carried millions more to Argentina, Brazil and Canada. This vast movement transformed the demography, labour markets and cultures of the receiving societies, knitted together an Atlantic economy of remittances and return migration, and eventually provoked the immigration restrictions of the 1920s. It remains a defining feature of the first age of globalisation.
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Empires active in 1892–1914 (peak of the great wave)
- German Empire1871 CE – 1918 CE
- French Colonial Empire (Second)1830 CE – 1962 CE
- Empire of Japan1868 CE – 1947 CE
- Russian Empire1721 CE – 1917 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Qing Dynasty1636 CE – 1912 CE
Related social & demographic events
- Influenza pandemic of 1918–19201918–1920
- Emancipation of the serfs in Russia3 March 1861 (19 February O.S.)
- The Great Irish Famine1845–1852
- The Holocaust and the 'Final Solution'1941–1945
- Bengal Famine of 19431943–1944
- Atrocities of the Congo Free State1885–1908
Further reading
The wider story
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Global best-seller on how our species, its populations and societies remade the world.
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