The Atlantic Transport Revolution: 1770s to 1920s

From the 1770s to the 1820s, the Atlantic world was shaken by political revolutions that witnessed the emergence of the independent nations of the United States of America, then Haiti, and later Brazil and the Spanish-speaking parts of Latin America. These important political changes affected the Atlantic economies and societies and were closely connected to revolutions in transport, communication, and fishing. Increasing ship tonnage during the nineteenth century fundamentally changed Atlantic shipping. Not only did it increase the number and size of sailing ships crossing the Atlantic but the introduction of steam and iron made passage more reliable and less dependent on wind and currents.

On longer distances of 500 nautical miles or more, sailing ships remained competitive and more profitable for carrying grain and timber between North America and Europe. With the global increase in ships’ tonnage (by one-third between 1870 and 1990), freight rates declined. Shipping grain from New York and cotton from New Orleans to Europe in 1885 cost only half the price of what it was in 1873.

This transport revolution connected distant regions in North and South America and their agrarian production and natural resources with European consumer demands. Atlantic wheat prices increasingly converged. The communication revolution supported this process by establishing telegraph connections via submarine cables. Information concerning crops and markets could be forwarded by the new telegraph lines such as the North Atlantic cable, which connected London, Ireland, and Newfoundland with New York (1866), and the South Atlantic cable, which connected London via Lisbon, Madeira, and the Cape Verde Islands with Brazil and Argentina.

Passenger shipping also profited from the transport revolution. While a late-eighteenth- century Falmouth packet boat carried passengers as well as mail to New York via Halifax in about fifty days, the Atlantic luxury liners at the end of the nineteenth century crossed the ocean in five or six days. This development emerged because of higher speeds, which were now possible, and steamers could now opt to take shorter routes, ignoring winds and currents. Whereas a packet boat was able to transport only about 100 passengers to North America each year, an ocean liner could transport 20,000 to 30,000 emigrants during the same period. The number of migrants who crossed the Atlantic sharply increased and culminated in the passage of one million people annually at the beginning of the twentieth century.

From the 1850s, European emigration turned into a mass exodus. Fifty-five million Europeans migrated across the Atlantic to the Americas. Although the majority of the migrants remained in the United States, about thirteen million people migrated to Latin America, especially to Argentina and Brazil, and also to Cuba, Uruguay, and Chile. European (especially Southern European) migration contributed to the rise of Latin American cities. The migrants remained connected to their home countries, and their money transfers (remittances) had a major economic impact. For example, remittances from Argentina to Europe amounted to half the value of Argentine meat exports. Furthermore, the abolishment of the slave trade triggered new migration streams. Smaller numbers of former slaves returned from Brazil to the West African coast. More important was the replacement of slaves by an international kuli (contract laborer) trade. Most of the kulies worked on the plantations in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, but Chinese contract laborers also found employment in Trinidad and Cuba in the sugar plantations.

Migration triggered xenophobia in the United States, and limitations on Chinese migration (Chinese Exclusion Act) emerged by 1882. By 1902, it was forbidden altogether. By 1924, general Asian migration was prohibited and European migration was limited to 2 percent of the nationalities living in the United States. This had a dramatic impact on the Jewish refugees seeking asylum during the Nazi persecution. Only Latin America provided a home for 35,000 Jewish migrants during the fateful years of 1939 to 1945.