What Was The Largest Migration In History?

Extremely large migrations are usually called mass migrations. It is a term that describes large groups of people moving from a geographical area to a different one. Other known types of migration are individual and small scale migrations. Another type is the seasonal migration, which occurs regularly.

Throughout human history, there were many mass migrations, and it is not easy to determine which was the biggest one. However, the two that are mentioned the most often are the partition of India and the Italian diaspora. The partition of India is generally considered the largest migration, although the exact numbers are unknown. The Italian diaspora is the biggest documented mass migration.

The Partition Of India

The partition of India happened in 1947, and it was the division of British India into India and Pakistan. The division was set into motion by an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Today, those are three separate countries, the Republic of India, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, and the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. During the partition of India, two provinces were divided, Bengal and Punjab. The division was based on religion, and the people were divided on whether they were Muslim or not.

The cause of this poverty was the fact that people did not have any land, due to the property being subdivided throughout the generations. Life became extremely hard, especially in Southern Italy, and the people started migrating to the United States, as well as to South America.

Millions of Italians migrated in search of work and a better life. It was mostly the younger generations that were migrating, in search of a more fruitful future. After World War II, there was a second Italian diaspora. Together, these two make up the largest ever documented mass migration. The number of Italians that migrated over these two events is somewhere around 15 million. The period in question is from 1880 to 1980, so this mass migration lasted for 100 years.