Long-distance migration of peoples have been a central if little understood factor in global integration. The essays in this collection contribute to a new history of world migrations, written by specialists of particular areas of the world. Collectively these essays point towards a shift from the regional migrations of individual seas and oceans of the early modern era toward nineteenth-century labor migrations that connected the Pacific and Indian to the Atlantic Oceans. Detailed case studies demonstrate the importance of human migration in the development, consolidation and critique of empire-building, theories of race, modern capitalism, and large-scale commercial agriculture and industry on every continent.

Contributions by: Adam McKeown, Ulrike Freitag, Claude Markovits, Michael Mann, Amarjit Kaur, Gungwu Wang, Takeshi Hamashita, Carl Trocki, Elizabeth Sinn, Silke Hensel, Lara Putnam, Mary Blewett, Yrjö Kaukiainen, Henry Yu, Christine Skwiot, Pamila Gupta