AMSCO 6.7 Effects of Migration Notes

Overview

AMSCO Topic 6.7, Effects of Migration (p. 429-435), covers what happened after millions of people moved around the world between 1750 and 1900: gender roles shifted back home, ethnic enclaves transplanted cultures into new societies, and receiving countries responded with prejudice and restrictive laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act and the White Australia Policy. This chapter is the follow-up to AMSCO 6.6 on the causes of migration. That one asked why people moved; this one asks what changed because they did.

The big pattern to hold onto: most migrants were male laborers from specific ethnic groups (Indian indentured servants in the Caribbean, Chinese railroad workers in the US). Their absence reshaped home societies, their enclaves reshaped receiving societies, and their presence often triggered racist backlash and government regulation.

Changes in Home Societies

Because migrant laborers were mostly male, the societies they left behind experienced demographic shifts and changing gender roles. How much changed depended on local norms.

• In some societies, men waited to emigrate until a male relative could live with and support the women and children staying behind. There, women's roles stayed largely the same.
• In other places, women gained autonomy and authority by taking on responsibilities their husbands had filled, stepping into society beyond family duties.
• Women who had managed on their own and later joined their husbands abroad tended to participate more in family decision-making (though still far from equally).
• If husbands returned, women who had run things often kept a role outside domestic life; women who had been placed under male relatives' care usually stayed in traditional roles.

Most male migrants sent remittances, money earned abroad, back home. Large remittances let women work fewer hours outside the home while giving them real decision-making power over spending. In some places remittances correlated with girls staying in school longer; in others, boys benefited more from remittance-funded education.

Chinese Enclaves Around the World

Chinese emigrants in the late 19th century formed ethnic enclaves, neighborhoods where people from the same home country kept their language, food, and way of life while also influencing the surrounding culture.

Southeast Asia

Chinese migrants thrived under colonial rule, and by the end of the 19th century they controlled trade throughout Southeast Asia.

• In French Indochina, the French encouraged Chinese migrants to engage in commerce.
• In British Malaya, Chinese migrants managed opium farms and controlled opium distribution for the British.
• In the Dutch East Indies, some Chinese held posts in the colonial government.
• Many became business owners and traders, often founding family businesses; some grew wealthy through moneylending and international trade.

The Americas

Chinese immigrants first arrived in the United States in large numbers during the California gold rush. Many worked in mines, on farms, or in San Francisco's garment industry, and Chinese laborers became indispensable in building the first transcontinental railroad.

Between 1847 and 1874, about 225,000 Chinese laborers were sent to Cuba and Peru on eight-year contracts. Nearly all were male, and 80 percent worked on sugar plantations, alongside enslaved Africans in Cuba and replacing enslaved workers in Peru (where slavery had been abolished). Others worked as servants, in cigarette factories, on the Andean railroad, and in Peru's guano mines. In the 1870s, some Chinese settled in the Peruvian Amazon as merchants and farmers growing rice, beans, and sugar.

Cultural fusion followed: some Peruvian cuisine blends Chinese ingredients and cooking styles with Peruvian ones, and intermarriage added to the region's multicultural diversity.

Indian Enclaves in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean

When Britain abolished slavery in 1833, it replaced enslaved labor with indentured servitude, and Indians were among the first indentured servants sent across the British Empire.

Indians in Africa

• Many Indians went to Mauritius (islands off southeast Africa) and Natal (now part of South Africa) as indentured servants on sugar plantations. Others built railways in Natal and British East Africa.
• Nearly 32,000 indentured Indians worked on railroad construction in Kenya between 1886 and 1901, though only about 7,000 stayed. Indians remain a significant part of these regions' populations today.
• Both Hindus and Muslims emigrated to South Africa. Hindus brought the caste system but soon abandoned it, even as many kept Hindu traditions and home altars to honor deities.
• South Africa's Indian population was divided by class, language, and religion, but united by shared discrimination. That injustice became central to the work of Mohandas Gandhi, who arrived in Pretoria in 1893 to practice law, faced repeated racial discrimination, founded the Natal Indian Congress, and exposed anti-Indian discrimination to the world. In 1914 he returned to India and became a leader of the nationalist movement against British rule.

Indians in Southeast Asia

Between 1834 and 1937, India was the major labor source for the British colonies of Ceylon, Burma, and Malaya. Indentured servitude there was eventually replaced by the kangani system, which recruited entire families to work on tea, coffee, and rubber plantations. Kangani workers had less restricted lives than indentured laborers and kept their families with them. About 6 million Indians migrated to Southeast Asia before the system was abolished, and because the region was close to India, workers often kept strong ties home. Indian traders also followed, settling wherever indentured laborers went and seeking business opportunities across the British Empire.

Indians in the Caribbean

So many Indians were sent to Caribbean sugar plantations that they are now the largest ethnic group in Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, and the second largest in Suriname, Jamaica, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Martinique, and Guadeloupe. Indians blended ethnically with migrants from other parts of the world, shaping national cuisines, film, and music. Many Indians in Trinidad and Tobago practiced Hinduism and contributed to Caribbean musical traditions, and many countries celebrate Indian arrival with annual holidays or festivals.

Irish in North America and Italians in Argentina

Irish enclaves

• Before the American Revolution, most Irish arrivals were Scots-Irish (Protestant descendants of Scots who had migrated to Ireland), and most came as indentured servants.
• By the 1830s, most new Irish immigrants were poorer and Catholic. City dwellers worked in factories, many men helped build the US canal system, and many farmed in both the US and Canada.
• Half of the 3 million Irish who fled the Great Famine came to North America, where they faced anti-immigrant nativist and anti-Catholic hostility. Immigration stayed strong until the 1880s, then slowed.
• Later waves included many single women seeking work and husbands; more than half became domestic servants. Men in this period were mostly unskilled laborers.
• Irish cultural impact: dance music, St. Patrick's Day, the spread of Catholicism, and strong support for labor unions. Second-generation Irish often held white-collar or skilled blue-collar jobs, and some became stars of the new popular culture as boxers, baseball players, and vaudeville performers. Families like the Fitzgeralds and Kennedys became wealthy and powerful.

Italians in Argentina

Only the United States attracted more immigrants than Argentina during the 18th and 19th centuries. The 1853 Argentine Constitution actively encouraged European immigration and guaranteed foreigners the same civil rights as citizens.

Italians made up almost half of European immigrants to Argentina in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and today more than 55 percent of Argentines have Italian ancestry. The draw was economic: agricultural wages were five to ten times higher than in Italy, fertile land was abundant, and the cost of living (even in Buenos Aires) was lower than in many rural Italian provinces. By 1909, Italian immigrants owned nearly 40 percent of Buenos Aires' commercial establishments. Argentine Spanish absorbed many Italian words, and Italian was widely spoken in Buenos Aires.

Prejudice and Regulation of Immigration

Receiving societies didn't always welcome migrants. In the US and Australia, native-born workers resented Chinese immigrants who would work for lower wages, and governments turned that resentment into law.

Regulation in the United States

California's revised 1879 constitution, pushed by nativists, prohibited the state and public works from hiring Chinese workers, blocked Chinese (and anyone not considered white) from citizenship, and encouraged towns to remove or segregate Chinese residents.

In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first major US federal law to suspend immigration of a specific ethnic group. Initially a ten-year ban, it was extended repeatedly, made permanent in 1902, and finally repealed in 1943.

After exclusion, some Chinese moved to Mexico, where President Porfirio Díaz promoted immigration and development, especially near the US border. Most worked as truck farmers, shopkeepers, or manufacturers rather than mine or railroad laborers.

White Australia

• The Chinese population in Australia grew to around 50,000 during the gold rushes of the 1850s-60s. Victoria's Chinese Immigration Act (1855) limited how many Chinese could land per ship; many sidestepped it by landing in South Australia.
• White miners in New South Wales attacked Chinese miners starting in December 1860, killing several. One of the worst attacks came on June 30, 1861, when several thousand white miners plundered Chinese dwellings.
• New South Wales responded with the Chinese Immigration Regulation and Restriction Act (November 1861, repealed 1867), then the Influx of Chinese Restriction Act (1881), which used an entrance tax to limit Chinese immigration.
• After the gold rushes, Chinese Australians turned to gardening, trade, furniture making, fishing, and pearl diving. Chinatowns developed in cities, with the biggest economic contributions in the Northern Territory and north Queensland. Anti-Chinese leagues formed as resentment over lower wages grew.
• When six British self-governing colonies united in 1901, the new parliament moved to limit non-British immigration. The attorney general declared the goal of preserving a "white Australia." The White Australia Policy stayed in effect until the mid-1970s.

Key Terms to Know

Practice and Next Steps

Pair these notes with the 6.7 Effects of Migration course study guide, which frames the same content the way the AP exam tests it. Then finish the unit with AMSCO 6.8 Causation in the Imperial Age, the unit's wrap-up review.

To check yourself, run Unit 6 questions in guided practice and quiz vocab with the AP World key terms glossary. All the Unit 6 chapter notes live on the AMSCO notes hub.