A. INTRODUCTION

1. Numbers

1. Chronology of emigration:

• early (pre-1865) - small-scale, mainly religious motivation
• post-1865 (after famine) - peak period - mainly farmers to rural mid-West
• post-1890 - more urban, mainly younger, single people, to cities
• post-1900 and esp. post-1914 - reduction in numbers - better life at home plus impact of WW1

3. Problems of interpretation

B. INTERPRETATIONS

Basic concept: 'push' and 'pull' factors

1. 'Push-factors': (a) economic (b) religious (c) class differences (d) military service (e) news from America - letters, newspapers

2. 'Pull-factors': (a) land (Homestead Act 1862) (b) wages, jobs (c) gold (d) assisted passage (e) organised promotion

More general interpretations

A. Economic and social change - or lack of it

1. Response to disruption of old economic and social order
2. Product of demographic change
3. 'Migration begets migration' (Semmingsen): (a) 'stage' or 'chain' migration (b) other colonizing movements
4. Rural-urban barrier
5. Areas of 'typical emigration'
6. Links with districts in America

B. Deliberate promotion of emigration

1. Contacts with emigrants
2. Shipping lines
3. Emigration agents
4. 'Yankee system'

C. Emigration as protest - religious and political

Marcus Thrane

D. Opposition to emigration

Gustav Sundbärg, Adrian Molin, Rudolf Kjellén