Printed Page 121-103-0(cont.)

America’s History: Printed Page 121

America: A Concise History: Printed Page 103

Chapter Timeline

AMERICA COMPARED

Transatlantic Migration, 1500–1760

The following graph compares the number of European and African migrants who arrived in the American colonies of Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, and the Netherlands. It also charts change over time: while immigrants in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries went predominantly to the colonies of Spain and Portugal, Britain’s colonies became the principal destination for both Europeans and Africans between 1640 and 1760.

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FIGURE 4.1 Transatlantic Migration
Source of data: Stanley L. Engerman and Kenneth L. Sokoloff, “Factor Endowments, Institutions, and Differential Paths of Growth Among New World Economies: A View from Economic Historians of the United States,” in How Latin America Fell Behind: Economic Histories of Brazil and Mexico, 1800–1914, ed. Stephen Haber (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 264.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS

  1. Question

    What relationship do you see between the number of European emigrants and the importation of African slaves? Which nation’s colonies had the highest percentage of Africans relative to Europeans? Which had the lowest? Which time periods had the highest and lowest percentages of Africans?

  2. Question

    Compare France and the Netherlands to Spain, Portugal, and Britain. Why do you suppose that the ratio of Africans to Europeans is so much higher in French and Dutch colonies than in the other nations? Which type of colony — tribute, plantation, or neo-European — was likely to have been most important to the French and Dutch?