
WORK IN PROGRESS
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The motives for emigration - the act of leaving a home country for good - can be multiple:
- Economic: people seek good fortune or a better quality of life elsewhere.
- Social: people flee political or religious repression and persecution.
- Forced: communities are displaced or people are enslaved. Whatever the motive, from a genealogical perspective, we're talking about families being split and often assuming new identities elsewhere.
The Emigration subprojects are organized around continents as this is how the major migrations in 1600-1800 occurred. For each continent, these projects aim to pull together information and sources that are relevant from a genealogy perspective. This includes...
- Colonizing Powers (Background: History of Colonialism)
- Merchant Companies
- Religious and Ethnic Groups
- Ports of Departures
- Ships
- Genealogical Sources
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Objectives of the Migrations master project
- Provide a framework for 'border-crossing' family trees.
- Identify migratory connection points (ships, ports, settlements...).
- Inventorize sources for genealogical exploration at these connection points.
- Encourage global collaboration within the Geni community. The focus of the master project is on the period 1600-1800 - covering the first large-scale migration waves on the back of global colonization. Systematic record-keeping was in its infancy, and thus particularly challenging for genealogists.