My mom entered the room just as you said "... the streets are paved with..." And my mom yelled "Gold!" at the same time I yelled out "CHEESE!" She said, "No, it's gold." I rewound the video and proved to her that I am not the only person who placed high value on the Don Bluth classic animated film An American Tail. Thank you, John, for vindication my sentimentality.
Indeed! Such a good movie. The film was my first introduction to how some folks struggled with coming to America, making me interested in reading more: literally making history MEAN something to me for the first time.
(Somewhat) Interesting fact: Many historians argue that the great migration from Sweden was an important factor in "restarting" the Swedish economy. Setting us on the route to becoming one of the most prosperous countries in the world during the 1900s. Well that and selling steel during two world wars without being bombed.
I'VE NEVER BEEN VERY SURE ABOUT WHAT IS RIGHT, said Bill Door. I AM NOT SURE THERE IS SUCH A THING AS RIGHT. OR WRONG. JUST PLACES TO STAND. Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man (Discworld, #11; Death, #2)
Great video, I just wish you had at least mentioned how profoundly this mass migration changed South America! The thousands and even millions of non-Spaniard Europeans that came here in the 19th and early 20th century had a great effect in our societies: Argentina and Uruguay wouldn't be as they are without the massive Italian migration they had; same with Croats and Germans in Chile, etc. I'm sad that even in this channel, we see that Americans ignore their neighbours to the south 😖 PD: I'm Chilean of Italian descent from two sets of great-grandparents!
This, read somewhere that, for every two inmigrants that went to the US, one was going to Argentina. Mostly spaniards and italians but also germans, russians and others. No wonder 50% of the population here is from italian descent at some degree.
@@unreasonablyagreeable1081 yes this vídeo is about european immigration but they immigrate to other places besides the USA that are the only one he mentions
"They have nobody to blame for their poverty but themselves" Ah, you live long enough, you see the same things happen again. Blaming the poor for their own poverty, the cycle never ends.
@Ordinary Sessel Utilitarianism is it? A few must suffer great poverty so that most will be relatively okay and a few will live in decadence. I'm sorry but such a system cannot be morally justified from my perspective. If capitalism has generated this much wealth, then we need to also do a better job of distributing it so that nobody has to be poor. There is no excuse for poverty when evidently the wealth is there, it exists, it just has been concentrated in a few places.
@commiesarentpeople Perhaps, perhaps not. That does not erase the fact those who are poor through no fault of their own, are still being unjustly blamed and made accountable for a situation they had no hand in.
@@henrik4630 Capitalism has only done great things when it a) Served the interests of those who have (such as education for all children, in order to grow a crop of adults with the required skills for the emerging jobs) or b) Came as a consequence of people demanding that regulations and measures be put in place to ensure that those in need have more support. I don't deny that capitalism has had some positive influences, but we should not become complacent and accept that there is no better way forward.
Eu acho que as vezes ele esquece do fato que seus videos chegam a muitos outros paises, alem dos Estados Unidos da America... (I think he forgets the fact that his videos do reach many countries other than the USA...)
Cara desiste eles nunca comentam sobre a gente nem quando somos parte importante da história que eles tão contando, eles simplesmente não sabem ou não ligam, se alguém vai contar nossa história tem que ser nos mesmos
Ok so we know that poor woman never heard from her husband again, but do you know what happened to him? Did he die in the voyage? Remarry and start a new family in his new country?
Interesting fact: the US censos says the most common ancestry in the US is not of English American or Scottish American, but of German American (14%). Irish is second (10%). Many German American changed their surename due to WW I and WW II. Anglicising their names was an strategy to avoid persecution during the national fevor of both wars.
There was also already a large population of German immigrants in the U.S before the WWs the town I live in was founded by Germans the towns sigil looks like Berlin's coat of arms
@@Pecisk yep. A friend of mine is Italo-American and his last name is Saintcorss instead of the Italian Santa Cruce. Or how the Bekers became Baker etc.
It's not true. English Americans are the largest group but they're most likely to refer to themselves as just Americans which makes the German population seem like the biggest one. Make no mistake, the majority of Americans are in fact English.
I was once offered a good job in Saudi Arabia at _triple pay._ The only hitch was that I had to sign a contract to work there for a full seven years. What a deal, I thought. But, _it's a whole other country!_ How will I get along? What if I don't like it? What's the food like, the housing, the city life? I cringed and stayed with what I knew.. The fact that millions of people at this time, with even less information about the new home they'd chosen that I, willingly emigrated, makes them way more brave than I will ever be. Even to this day, their vitality helps make my country great.
I second what faultty said! Migration in the past was never a voluntary process. People before global capitalism just didn't move out and start a new life far away of their traditional safety nets. Think of why poor people from Africa migrate to Europe today, and ask yourself if you would consider them just brave, or also desperate?!
@@babymode6985 Which immigrants? What's the west? Do catholic immigrants make the United States worse? Or do you just think that black immigrants to europe make it bad? Why do those people speak french again?
@@babymode6985 Fart. That is my answer, you silly USA droneling. You are so butts. All the butts. You do not understand your own economy. I bet you erase slave labour in your calculations about old timey US economy too. Fart on your ignorance.
@@li6706 Please take your crazy conspiracy theories with no basis in reality to a place that doesn't value facts, reason, and evidence. Such as a Steven Crowder video.
Being in any religious minority is unpopular. This whole video, all I could think of was the migration of members of my church (Latter-day Saints) do to massive persecution. We're also probably disliked because we really like the Jews, and believe that their restoration is essential to God's plan.
@@partlycurrent The Jewish people isn't a collective in which all people supported the same thing. However, a part of the community is active in bring the states to support Israel with hundreds millions of donation to U.S political figure in exchange for billions of foreign aid to Israel. It's not a secret. I love Jewish people,but something had be put into bluntness to point out it is wrong for them to not support their country but their ethic group.
Good content as usual, but I’m sort of disappointed you took such an American centrist view of European migration and didn’t discuss in more detail the mass exodus of Southern Europeans to places like Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.
Sam Aronow at least Australia and New Zealand got mentioned by name. Argentina received the second largest number of European migrants after the US. Uruguay’s population is around 95% of European descent. Brazil houses around 100 million people of European descent and has a long history of migration dating back to the early 1500s. But American historians tend to completely overlook this
Also, the overwhelming majority of migrants came to the USA. While emigration to South America was culturally decisive for some of these countries, it happened in much smaller numbers, generally speaking.
My great grandparents were Swedes, and the others were Irish. If not for immigration,I’d be somewhere in the North Sea. Glad I’m a good swimmer. Thanks John
You are NOT the only one who remembers American Tale. As soon as you said the "streets are paved with cheese" line, the song started running through my head... if it doesn't stop, then I may need to look it up and have it play on repeat for a while.
That Ulysses quote was in reference to Jewish people. For context, Bloom is having an argument with a drunk, fervent Irish Nationalist in a bar who refuses to admit Bloom is Irish due to his Jewishness
Okay. This entire series has been pretty excellent so far. But this has got to be the best episode yet. Which really says a lot about how good this episode was. Heck... It might be one of the best vids on your entire channel. And that's saying even more. Important stuff that still, sadly, affects us all to this day.
7:12 Funny enough most of that plot was reused from a previous "German plot" and before that "French plot", originally created by the British propaganda machine during the Napoleonic wars. it should also be noted that In British 19th century propaganda Jew and German was used interchangeably, how's that for irony.
Dear Crash Course team! I love your history courses! I know so little about the history of South American, East Asia, and Africa. Please, consider doing history courses about those parts of the world! P.S. Don't forget that you're awesome!
I love how this channel puts historical situations into perspective. Not just sighting the wealthy but also more of the poor and marginalized perspectives.
Fun fact: one of the people in the plot to kill Tsar Alexander III was Lenin's brother. [EDIT] My initial post said Alexander II (the one mentioned in the video), that was actually wrong: Lenin's brother attempted to killed the successor Alexander III.
Good video! But really disappointed about the fact that "America is the promise Land" means only US. South America welcomed a massive wave of European migrants that you don't mention, and I think that's not correct for a channel that talk about universal history and not only the one from their country (also taking into account you are talking about Europe history, and not US) America is a continent. US is a country inside America. America IS NOT the same that US.
The great famine is widely considered a genocide here in Ireland! England could have easily saved millions but actively choose not to because of political motivations. It also decimated the Irish language, which still hasn't fully recovered.
@mm kk it is taught in schools, but unlike Israel, Ireland is sandwiched between two big English speaking countries (Britain and America) where entertainment and business are English spoken so there's no drive to learn Irish other than ideology.
10:31 Should be noted not all jews went to America, a lot of Rusisan jews went to Germany and Austria-Hungary where they had more rights, the poor went just across the border into German and Austrian Poland while the richer travelled fruther west, to Westphalen where a liberal constitution written by napoleon was still in effect and granted much greater rights to religious minorities than elsehwere. The influx of capital and competence helped make Westphalen a haven of scholars and industry and would be the wheel that turned the German economy. It is also why so many modern jews have Polish or German surnames, Germany and Austria required these migrants to create surnames for themselves and the ones who ended up in German and Austrian Poland created Polish surnames while the ones who ended up in Germany created German sounding surnames.
Could you highlight that and put a reply to me please cuz I want to copy and research it? I can't highlight it I'm trying to so that I can know re-read it later I'm using my phone
@@mikenuzzo3323 Should be noted not all jews went to America, a lot of Rusisan jews went to Germany and Austria-Hungary where they had more rights, the poor went just across the border into German and Austrian Poland while the richer travelled fruther west, to Westphalen where a liberal constitution written by napoleon was still in effect and granted much greater rights to religious minorities than elsehwere. The influx of capital and competence helped make Westphalen a haven of scholars and industry and would be the wheel that turned the German economy. It is also why so many modern jews have Polish or German surnames, Germany and Austria required these migrants to create surnames for themselves and the ones who ended up in German and Austrian Poland created Polish surnames while the ones who ended up in Germany created German sounding surnames. (?)
Is that why nearly half of all the world's jews currently live in the US... Because lots of them migrated elsewhere. If that were true then there'd be a lot more jews living elsewhere.
@@nasdan5000 First of the US were still the single most common country for jews to migrate too, secondly we're talking prior to ww1 here. So yes a lot of jews migrated to Germany and Austria-Hungary prior to ww1, but you will recall that there was an event in that region later which led to a lot of them ending up dead and the vast majority of the survivors leaving Europe.
South America does not exist in their books about European migration? only North America? I thought this was European history, not "European history - until we get started on US involvment"
I love these videos! I just wish you hadn't focused too much on the US (as you usually do, even though it's not a series about the US at all) and had mentioned how migration affected the WHOLE continent, because - shockingly - the American continent isn't made up of only the USA. Migration affected Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and the whole of South America profoundly and it was worth a mention - to say the least.
John, not only do I remember An American Tail, I did not need to be told where the reference was from, to know the reference. A couple of years ago, my niece was watching An American Tail, and Fievel was asked his name, and I said, "He's Fievel, Fievel Mousekewitz." My niece, utterly shocked, turned and asked, "How did you know that?" I laughed and said, "This movie came out when I was your age." Which it had, down to the month lol.
@@lessofyou aaaactually while most humans are one of two sexes, some people are born intersex. In the past, intersex people were sometimes called hermaphrodites. Sex, by the way, is biological unlike gender. Gender is all the stuff people often assign to sex i.e. boy vs girl haircuts, clothing, toys, and vocations. So I'm assuming you are referring to sex, not gender. Your statement is either indeed nonpolitical (albeit incorrect or at best incomplete) or, ironically, political.
Around 25% of those immigrants went to South America, particularly to Argentina and Brazil, but also, on a lesser extent, to Uruguai, Chile and other countries. They were mostly italians, spanish, portuguese and german, but there were imigrants from all over, including the middle est and east asia (mostly japanese and chinese). Imigration to South America was significantly bigger than to Australia and New Zeland, to a extent that some cities(Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Buenos Aires) had, at the begining of the 20th century, more foregners than natives, in some cases more than 70%.
The way they demonized Irish and Jews is kinda like how south Americans are demonized in the US and how Muslims and middle easterners are demonized everywhere
My Great x 4 grandfather came out on a boat from Germany to Australia to work on a mine.. I never realised just quite how wide spread this Europe exodus was. Thanks for the video
My British ancestors left in the 1850s as part of the migration of tens of thousands of British Latter-day Saints to Utah. They traveled by ship across the Atlantic, took a train to Iowa, then pulled handcarts 1300 miles. When they got there, they got to a barren wasteland. Yet, over the course of fifty years, they made the desert bloom. Because of the massive migration, if you look at an ethnicity map, Utah is completely British. I doubt it would be a stretch to say that Utah wouldn't exist as it does without their sacrifice, and Arizona, Idaho, and Nevada would also be vastly different.
First and foremost, as a historian and archeologist, I must say that I consider myself a fan of your History videos. Your videos help disseminate historiographic knowledge to the wider population, something that must be undoubtedly celebrated. Anyhow, I believe this video should be renamed "Migration to the United States: Crash Course European History #29". Simply no words about european migration to Central and South America, which constituted a major part of this demographic flow. To put things in perspective, Brazil and Argentina alone received almost twice as many italians than the United States throughout the period you mention in the video. No words about Iberian migration as well, though millions of portuguese and spanish immigrants reached the Americas between 1840 and 1914. It saddens me in particular because this radically american centrist perspective deforms the very historical process you were trying to speak about. At the same time, your video follows a wider and unfortunetly traditional trend of turning Latin American history invisible when it comes to World History. It seems this modus operandi won't fade out easily, giving the fact that even well educated and well meaning north americans seem to comprehend History through colonialist lens. In any case, I hope my commentary didn't cross the fine line between criticism and offense, another common internet trend. As I've said in the beginning, I really enjoy and admire your work and sincerely wish that you keep doing good videos about History and other subjects.
I think what you forgot in your discussion of migration is the numerous European Wars of this era. My maternal and fraternal grandparents fled conscription in the Alsace and Prussia (what is now Poland), respectively, to come to America. Am unsure to what extent this occurred but it must have been a factor.
"Magyar" is pronounced /mædjɔ:r/, like "mad your" rather than "mag-yar", though, I'm not sure pronouncing it correctly would have been the right thing to do as it might cause more confusion than just pronouncing it the way it's written.
Mispronouncing things is kind of John's thing, as he has told us in several previous Crash Course videos. I do think you have a point that pronouncing it as the Magyars would might cause confusion.
Just want to say a big big thank you to John and the team for their superbly done crash course series! Things just keep getting better from the History team!
3:50 I want to cry out of anger ... just thinking how would history describe 50% of all Syrian displaced between 2011 and 2019 by Assad and his genocidal regime (supported by Russia and Iran)
My coworker came from Syria to germany. I like him and he is a great engineer, but he could have helped his own country so much more if he didn't have to flee.
My maternal grandparents were the children of families that left an area that was Polish, Austrian, or Russian mattering by the decade. They moved to West Virginia, and got jobs in the mines. Grandpa was born in 1910. He skipped two grades, and then dropped out of high school when his father died in a mining accident, making him the eldest breadwinner. He worked from age 15 to 40 in those coal mines, and then moved to the factory city of Cleveland after WWII with many other miners (it was said that your accent alone could get you a job in Youngstown or Cleveland, it meant you knew how to work and anything was a step up from the mines.) He made a better life for his kids, they all could go to college and prosper, and he could retire to a pension and a small house. He pulled off the American Dream, but he never forgot how hard it was and how easy it was for bad luck to stop you from that path.
Great summary and way to understand the European migrations that shaped many societies like the modern American one. The greatest effort of empathy for today’s migrants and their circumstances would be to watch this video.
My Grandmother left Sicily when she was still little because her father didn't like the look of the rise in fascism. They landed in New York and while they had family their, it was decided that that the move west to Chicago instead of staying in the cramp tenements of New York. She later met a nice Irish boy and married, they had five kids, their youngest was my mom. (On a pointless side note I remember American Tale, we use to watch over and over again as a kid).
I know it's more of a US history thing but I was a little surprised the gold rushes and other mining activity didn't get a mention as a driver of emigration. Although I suppose it might have been more a draw for people already in the US than it was drawing people to the US in the first place, I do know that were significant immigrant populations in gold rush areas. I'm most familiar with the Black Hills Gold Rush of 1876.
Another interesting story of migration is those from southern Italy who migrated in huge numbers around this time (from where Italian-Americans come including the Sicilian mafia). In Italy there was great neglect from aristocratic leaders (the country was a sham democracy at the time) in Turin and Rome who favoured those in the north, which was more industrialised before unification. Those in the south where thus neglected and sometimes discriminated against, turning away from the state instead favouring local forms of protection and community, which lead to institutions like the Ndrangheta, camorra, cosa nostra and mafia. When going to the US became an option, they jumped at the chance and brought these institutions with them. Surprising that John and his writers didn't mention this, it fits their ideology and Italians are one of the biggest migrant groups to the USA.
I suspect he put Sweden and Norway together into "Sweden" in respect to some of the numbers and statistics in this video. The fact that they had a political union at the time doesn't mean that they were one country.
american tail with the mice or whatever they were? yeah, i remember it. i had the little baby girl mouse as a child - the one with the bow in her hair.
Dude... I was literally singing that exact song from American Tail in my head just seconds before John said, "... where the streets are paved with cheese!" Great minds think alike?
My mother family is entirely descended from migrants - her fathers grandparents came from Ireland around the famine (though that would’ve been internal migration from Ireland to London) and her mother’s family is Spanish. Networks is how my mother’s Irish family ended up in London. Their local priest in Ireland had a sister who was a nun in London.
I know this is an American channel and the views tends to be a bit biased towards Anglo-American history, but... No mention of Argentina? Seriously? You go out of your way even to mention tiny little New Zealand, but the country that received the second largest number of European migrants in human history (6 millions) doesn't get mentioned? I'm frankly disappointed
I have to make a report by midnight on New Zealand migration policy/multiculturalism and I was boutta offer to personally pay hank green thru his TikTok comments and pray for a reply. IDK if this is gonna be helpful, but I love hank and John green xoxoxo thank u. sincerely, uc berkeley undergrad
I wonder if this Crash Course will highlight the post WW2 European migration to Australia. Or even better .... do a Crash Course Series on Australian History! 🇦🇺 including Aboriginal ❤️🖤💛 and Torres Strait Islanders
