Les vagues d'immigration les plus importantes

Originally, the Indians occupy the USA. The place was called "Mannahatta" or " the island of Hills ".

Cristophe Colomb discovers the island in 1492.

It is the Englishman Henry Hudson, for the Dutch Company of East Indies, who off-loads the first one in the island in 1524.

The first migrants arrived in 1624. They escaped the misery, the starvation and the political, racial or religious persecution. There were 12 million immigrants wich came in from 1892 till 1924. All expected to have a better life in America. At the end of the XIXth century, New York could count 146 daily newspapers in over half-dozen of differents languages.

The most important waves of immigration :

Black immigration

The great majority of the Afro-Americans of New York are descendants of African slaves bought by strength in English colonies of North America ( New York is a colony aswell) between the beginning of the XVIIth and the beginning of the XIXth century.

At the end of the XIXth century, the states of the South gradually created discriminatory laws against the Blacks. They considered Blacks as inferiors to " their place ". So the Blacks gradually lost their civil rights which they had obtained after the abolition of slavery. Several states of the South set up laws legalizing the segregation. Furthermore, the discriminations restrict the possibility of jobs for the Blacks who then found themselves confined to activities which are hard and poorly paid such as cleaning ladies.

New York exercices strongly attraction on these populations because the XIXth century was the period of the good economy.

The Italian immigration:

Italy knows in the second half of the XIXth century three major crises which are going to bring a part of his population to emigrate towards the American continent.

The country knows first of all a historic crisis. The fall of the feudal system engenders a deterirosation of the situation of the farmers. Often they cannot live on their production.It is also confronted with an economic crisis from 1880s, due to three factors(mailmen): the business with France is broken, the country knows an agricultural crisis and a real estate and banking crisis. Italy does not produce enough foodstuffs to feed her population.

In it is added a sanitary crisis. In 1880, 600 000 people are affected by the malaria and in the campaigns of the North, the pellagre (disease due to the malnutrition) develops, affectingmore than 100 000 people.

These events engender a wave of emigration towards the foreigner. The Italians leave their country of origin by hoping for a better life somewhere else: it is a question for them of escaping the poverty. The United States have for them the image of the place which could offer them less bad living conditions and better economic perspectives.

They intalleront almost all in New York where they will trainan enclave: Little Italy.

The Jewish immigration

The Jewish immigration was made as for her in several waves. The first Jews to put the foot in the United States arrived in 1654. 23 Jewish families coming from Brazil land(turn up) in current New York.By 1850, there were approximately 17 000 Jews living in the United States; in 1880, they were about 270 000. Most of these Jews lived in New York.

From 1870-1880 a wave of anti-Semitism touches Europe. It is at this moment there that the Jewish immigration was the most important. Generally very poor, these Jews of the Eastern Europe have the United States a very strong image, that of a country where we can grow rich overnight, when we are less under the cup of

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