Moving Europeans: Migration in Western Europe Since 1650.

Leslie Page Moch's book is a step toward recognizing migration as a topic as significant in population history as mortality or fertility. Focusing on geographical population movement in western Europe since the end of the Thirty Years' War, Moch outlines four different periods of this population movement, relating them to large-scale changes in landholding patterns, employment demands, demographic patterns, and the location of capital.

The book examines each of these periods separately, mixing general statements with analyses of specific regions and distinguishing between local mobility, circular migration, chain migration systems, and career migration. In the first period, from 1650 to 1750, Moch's principal concern is to debunk the notion of "sedentary" Europe. She shows the frequency of all kinds of population movement and how migration was integrated into the lives of individuals, with movement occasioned by domestic service and marriage significant aspects of the system.

The second period, from the middle of the eighteenth century until after the French Revolution, was marked by population increase, the expansion of rural industry, and changes in the distribution of capital and landownership. These brought about changes in migration that evolved into two distinct patterns. The intrusion of capital and manufacturing into the countryside attracted workers into some regions which then experienced a growth of both rural and urban populations. In other areas, without significant manufacturing development, older patterns of circular migration expanded and in some instances developed into chain migration systems: male migration for harvest and urban labor quickened, while women from the outskirts moved into cities in increasing numbers. These different patterns of migration reflected the needs of unprecedented numbers of people to somehow earn their livings within the still largely rural economy of Europe.

In the next period, encompassing the years from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the outbreak of the first World War, migration patterns were dominated by industrialization and urbanization, the decline of rural society, and the migrations across the Atlantic Ocean. Migration in this period to some extent built on earlier patterns. Circular migration patterns, for example, grew in intensity and peaked around mid-century, and chain migration from small village to growing cities became more important. The growth of bureaucracies associated with the development of centralized nation-states also fostered career migration. All of these developments were marked by a growing visibility of women in the migration streams. By 1914 the European population was "free, urbanized, and proletarian" (160) and, Moch argues, formed an international labor force that easily crossed national boundaries. The first World War ended this system of free movement. After an initial period from 1914 to 1945 in whic war and depression limited population movement, the twentieth century has been marked by resumption of the European tradition of migration. This revival is notable for the origins of the migrants--southern Europe, the Mediterranean basin, and the colonies of Europe--and the active role European states take as regulators of these movements.

Moch draws primarily on the secondary literature to describe variations in migration over time in broadly schematic terms. By focusing on migration as population movements to be counted, characterized, and patterned, this book reflects the approaches of that literature and only marginally addresses other aspects of the topic such as the meaning of migration for those who traveled. But Moch has written a valuable survey that allows historians to move on to thi next step.

James R. Lehning University of Utah