Departure of a Dignitary from Middelburg, by Adriaen van de Venne, 1615. Rijksmuseum, D. Franken bequest, Le Vésinet.

Migration

Volume XIV, Number 3 | April / May 2022

Miscellany

In 1639 Puritan settlers in Massachusetts authorized the expulsion of “pauper aliens” in what is thought to be the first case of deportation in the country. Soon after, Virginia and Pennsylvania passed laws heavily restricting “the importation of paupers,” which included criminals and “foreigners and Irish servants.”

History in its broadest aspect is a record of man’s migrations from one environment to another.

—Ellsworth Huntington, 1919