Hi and welcome back to Heimler's History. And welcome to the last topic video of Unit 6 for AP World History. Now, this video is very much a companion to the last video on the causes of worldwide migration. In this video, we're going to look at the effects of all these different people migrating to different parts of the world. So if you're ready to get your brain cows milked, I am at the ready.
Let's get to it. So it's probably self-evident, but I'll say it anyway. Migration always has two parties, the home society and the receiving society, and that's how we're going to organize this video. We're going to look at the effects of migration on the home society.
And then we're going to look at effects of migration on the receiving society. Okay, first, effects of migration on the home society. Now a good deal of the migration going on during this period was men leaving their homes to find work elsewhere.
And when this happened it potentially had an effect on gender roles at home. In some places men left without a replacement man in their family and that means that the woman's role in the family became larger and in the wider society. In other places men waited until there was a male family member who could come in and stay in their place until they returned.
In that case gender roles remained largely the same. Now Once the men who migrated completed their agreed tenure, one of two things happened. One, their families came to join them in whatever place they migrated to, and in that case, gender roles largely remained the same. However, women often had a stronger voice in the family once they were reconstituted than they did before their husbands left.
And it's easy to understand why, because the women carried the whole burden of the family while the husband was gone. The second reality is that men would return to their home countries, and especially in cases where they had a male family member taking their place, Nothing really changed as far as gender roles go. Okay, now let's take a longer look at the effects migration had on the receiving societies. And I hope your passport is current, because we're finna go all over the dang world in this section. Alright, let's look at general effects, and then we're gonna focus on specific societies.
Generally, when people migrated, they brought their culture with them. In many cases, migrants from the same culture found each other in these new places and huddled together in a little ethnic enclave. And in some cases, the culture of these ethnic enclaves influenced the culture of the receiving society, sometimes in terms of food, sometimes in terms of language, or maybe religion.
Alright then, let's get to specifics, and we'll start with Chinese enclaves. As huge amounts of Chinese migrated around the world for work, they brought their culture with them. When they migrated to Southeast Asia, it was a pretty good situation for them under the colonial powers there. Some Chinese even ended up holding government jobs in the Dutch East Indies.
In Indochina, they engaged in commerce with encouragement from the French colonial government. In Malaya, Chinese immigrants ran opium farms and had significant hands in the opium distribution. Okay, Chinese immigrants also made their way to the Americas. They initially came to the Americas during the California Gold Rush, where they worked mining gold. But eventually, they became the most crucial.
labor force in the construction of railroads, especially the Transcontinental Railroad in the United States. Also, large amounts of Chinese people relocated to Peru and Cuba to work as indentured servants on sugar plantations. And they worked on railroads there, mining huge amounts of bat and seabird poop, which is to say, guano.
And wherever the Chinese found themselves, they left their cultural mark, especially in terms of food. Alright, let's talk about Indian cultural enclaves. Many Indian migrants signed on to the British system of indentured servitude and were flung to all parts of the British Empire. In Africa, Indians mostly traveled to the island of Mauritius in the coastal South African province of Natal.
In Mauritius, they worked on sugar plantations, and in Natal, they built railroads. Many were Hindus and brought along with them their religious norms, like the caste system, but eventually they abandoned this idea since it didn't have much currency outside. of a Hindu-dominated culture like India.
On the other hand, they did keep their faith alive through home shrines to personal gods. And Indians also migrated to Southeast Asia. Indians were the major source of labor in Southeast Asia for about a hundred years starting in the 1830s.
They began as indentured servants, but eventually a new system was introduced to replace it called Kangani. And this system sent whole families to work on plantations in Malaya and Ceylon and Banda. Burma. And when they migrated as whole families, they were often given more freedom than the men who entered indentured servitude. And finally, many Indians went to the Caribbean islands, where to this day they still make up a sizable portion of their populations.
Alright, let's talk about Irish immigrant enclaves. As I mentioned in the last video, the vast bulk of Irish immigrants came to America during this time as a result of the Great Potato Famine. Mostly they settled in urban areas and took up low-wage factory work. Also, they bore much of the labor for public works like canal building, and they tended to huddle together in low-cost housing called tenements. And to add to the fun, the Irish were the subjects of strong anti-immigrant sentiments from the Americans.
To these nativist Americans, not only were they immigrants, but they were the worst kind of immigrants, which is to say, Roman Catholics. But the good news is that their kids had it a little bit better as they grew up because they assimilated to American culture. Now for sure, the Irish brought their culture to bear in lasting ways upon the American culture.
Americans embraced Irish music and dance. Americans still celebrate St. Patrick's Day, which came from the Irish. Although to say Americans celebrate St. Patrick's Day is a little generous.
I mean, in my experience, most Americans don't even know who St. Patrick is or why he even has a day. It's really just an excuse to drink quantities of alcohol that would otherwise be socially unacceptable on a weekday. Anyway, the Irish also developed a strong voice in the improvement of labor conditions by forming and joining labor unions.
There was the spread of Catholicism in the US because of their great numbers. Alright, let's talk now about Italian cultural enclaves. Italian immigrants also came in large numbers to the United States, and in general they faced some of the same trials that the Irish did.
However, a significant portion of them found their way to Argentina, and no small part... Part of that decision seems to be that embedded in the Argentinian constitution was an encouragement for European immigration and a guarantee that when they did come, they would enjoy the same civil rights as citizens. And a big effect here was the influence of the Italian language. Argentine Spanish adopted many Italian words and Italian is still spoken as a secondary language in the capital.
Okay, now I've already touched on this last section a little bit here and there, but now it's time to bring it fully into the light. What kind of responses did these immigrants get from the receiving culture? Argentina being a clear exception, most of these countries into which the immigrants come kinda had a love-hate relationship with the immigrants, and when I say love-hate I really mean hate-hate.
And no small part of that distaste was that when immigrants came in they were willing to work for lower wages than the native people were and so the jobs often went to the immigrants. And thankfully we don't have those problems anymore. In the United States, the poster child for anti-Chinese sentiment was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. And this law is exactly what it sounds like. And it was a big deal because it was the first time the American Congress had actually passed a law that banned immigration on a certain people group or nationality.
And the Chinese also suffered a lot of immigration issues. similar fate in Australia. Lots of Chinese immigrants migrated to Australia during the gold rush of the 1850s and the 1860s, and as their numbers swelled, the British government took similar measures to slow the flow of Chinese immigrants that the US government did.
They did this by means of the Chinese Immigration Act of 1855, which set quotas on the number of allowable Chinese immigrants. What's interesting is that by the late 1800s, the number of Chinese folks in Australia was actually on the decline, but they concentrated themselves more in urban centers, where their presence was more visible. And so by 1901, British Parliament passed more laws restricting anyone from immigrating to Australia who wasn't British.
And you're going to think I'm joking when I tell you what this policy is called, but I assure you I am not joking. It was called the White Australia Policy. On the upside, there was no confusion about what they were intending.
As my grandpappy always used to say, say what you mean. and mean what you say. Alright, thanks for watching. Check out my AP World History review packet if you need help getting an A in your class and a 5 on your exam.
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