European Diaspora

European Diaspora

Emigration from Europe began on a large scale during the European colonial empires of the 17th to 19th centuries and continues to the present day. This concerns especially the Spanish Empire in the 16th to 17th centuries (expansion of the Hispanosphere), the British Empire in the 18th to 19th centuries (expansion of the Anglosphere), the Portuguese Empire and the Russian Empire in the 19th century (expansion to Central Asia and the Russian Far East).

From 1815 to 1932, 60 million people left Europe (with many returning home), primarily to "areas of European settlement," in North (United States, Canada, Cuba) and South America (particularly in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Venezuela); Australia, New Zealand and Siberia. These populations also multiplied rapidly in their new habitat; much more so than the populations of Africa and Asia. As a result, on the eve of World War One, 38% of the world’s total population was of European ancestry. Australia and New Zealand, which are consequently considered part of the Western world, have majorities of European-derived populations. Most of the rest of South America has majorities of part-European ancestry, as do Central America and Mexico.

In Asia, European-derived populations (specifically Russians) predominate in Northern Asia, which is part of the Russian Federation. Israel has a significant minority of Ashkenazi Jews of European extraction. Africa has no countries with European-derived majorities, but there is a significant minority, the White South African

The countries in the Americas that received most European immigrants from 1871 to 1940, were: the United States (27 million), Canada (4 million), Brazil (4.6 million), Argentina (1.5 million), Venezuela (more than 1 million), Cuba (610,000), Chile (600,000) and Uruguay (500,000).