Great Migration (1630–1640)

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GREAT MIGRATION (1630–1640)

Soon after the establishment of the English colonies of Virginia and Massachusetts Bay in the early seventeenth century, floods of immigrants began arriving in both places. Although some of these immigrants (especially those in New England) arrived seeking freedom from religious persecution, many others in Virginia and New England came for economic reasons—looking for easy money from tobacco planting, or escape from a failing cloth market, inflation, and bad harvests. The immigrants, who came from a variety of social classes and occupations, arrived in relatively large numbers, averaging 4,000 each year. This migration strongly influenced the character of the newly established colonies and contributed to the development of long-lasting English institutions.

In the early part of the period, most of the English immigrants to the colonies headed for New England. There were several reasons for this: a sizeable number of them were religious non-conformists who objected to the governmentally enforced rites of the Church of England, and who came to Massachusetts Bay in whole congregations, ministers and all. They hoped to join or establish their own religious settlements as the Pilgrims had done before them. These same immigrants, however, faced economic as well as religious discrimination. They were mostly middle-class and well-educated, but were limited in the occupations they could pursue and were taxed more heavily than their Anglican neighbors. In addition, they faced rising prices and a depression in the cloth trade, which they had hoped to escape in the colonies. At the height of New England immigration in the 1630s, an average of 2000 English men, women, and children arrived in Massachusetts Bay colony each year. The Parliamentary victory in the English Civil War (1642–1649) eased pressure on nonconformists, and immigration to New England virtually stopped after 1640.

In the later part of the period, Virginia was the destination of many new settlers to the country. Before the 1640s, many of the Virginian immigrants were adventurers looking for a quick profit from the New World. After the establishment of tobacco as the colony's major product, however, the need for labor brought people to Virginia as indentured servants. Between 1635 and 1705, about 2000 persons arrived from England each year, most of them contractual laborers bound to serve Virginian planters without wages for a period of years, in exchange for their transportation to the colony. They ranged from lower-middle-class to laborers, but they all arrived with the idea of serving out their contracts and winning land of their own in the colony. Perhaps as much as 75 percent of Virginia's colonists by the end of the seventeenth century had originally arrived as indentured servants. Some of these came unwillingly, practically kidnapped by sea captains and labor contractors.

The other major group of immigrants to the colonies during the seventeenth century were Africans. From 1619—when a Dutch warship brought the first load of African laborers—to 1670, the African population of Virginia grew to more than 2000. At first, Africans were treated about the same as English indentured servants. Some Africans even managed to end their terms of servitude and buy and farm land of their own. But by about 1650 a color bar had risen that kept Blacks from sharing in colonial prosperity. Thus, one of the largest immigrant groups was effectively prevented from sharing the economic benefits of settling in America.

See also: Africans Arrive in Virginia, Indentured Servants