What were the causes and consequences of the vast movement of people in the Pacific region?

The nineteenth century was marked by extensive movement of people into, across, and out of Asia and the broad Pacific region. Many of these migrants moved from one Asian country to another, but there was also a growing presence of Europeans in Asia, a consequence of the increasing integration of the world economy (see “The Rise of Global Inequality” in Chapter 25). Families were more likely to join colonial officers in Asia as travel and foreign residences grew more comfortable. Europeans had died at a high rate in tropical zones because of diseases they were not immune to; in the nineteenth century the survival rate improved as doctors found new treatments. (Native peoples who had not yet had extensive contact with outsiders continued to die in large numbers from Eurasian diseases.)

By the end of the century hundreds of thousands of British soldiers and civil servants lived in British colonies from India to Hong Kong and Malaya. In countries not under colonial rule missionaries and traders were the most prominent long-term foreign residents. Missionaries opened schools and hospitals and were active in spreading Western learning. In China by 1905 about 300 fully qualified physicians were doing medical missionary work, and 250 mission hospitals and dispensaries served about 2 million patients. Missionary hospitals in Hong Kong ran a medical school, which trained hundreds of Chinese as physicians.