AHC: Have the French be a Significant Component of 19-century Migration to America?

The French, despite their large population size as a whole in Europe, and their relatively similar economic conditions to the rest of the continent, weren't a major group of migrants to the New World in the 19th Century. Why weren't they, and what would the consequences have been if they were?
 
Well, having a demographic stagnation at the same time that the other states' populations are exploding doesn't exactly help. Correcting that would have a lot of excess population to migrate over time..
 
Any ideas as to how that excess population growth could be achieved?

A different French revolution, different farming systems being implemented, thousands of young French men not dying in 20 years of war... the decline is a very complicated thing, and there was so much going on its hard to pin it on any one cause.
 
"The French exceptionalism of small emigration was attributed to the French people's love of their land; for example, one French author wrote in 1860: 't must be recognized that the French rarely emigrate. The fact is that among the various races of Europe there is none with a greater regard for his native land than the French, with a more instinctive, more inviolable affection for his home, his village, and his country...Only religious or political persecution have led in France to emigration on a scale of any importance.'75 However, the key to the difference is to be found within the distinctive French pattern of economic development in the long nineteenth century, the major feature of which was was the survival of a large agrarian sector. On the eve of the French Revolution, the productivity of workers employed in British agriculture was already well above that of the French; in familiar fashion, the more favorable British land-to-labor ratios fostered more capital-intensive agriculture, producing a surplus for urban investment, which in turn increased rural out-migration. But in France, the revolution 'gave the peasantry what they had long wanted--full rights of ownership and freedom from the burden of feudal exactions from all kinds.' 76 Although French agricultural output remained consistently below that of the British, the landless peasantry formed a far smaller proportion of the rural population. The characteristics of the agrarian sector in turn conditioned the pace and pattern of industrial development along different lines. Compared with Britain, the workshop sector in France survived much longer, and industry used much less unskilled labor. Most significantly for the present purpose, the rural exodus was long delayed. The French could afford to love their land, so long as they kept their families small.77

"In short, France made the transition from agriculture to industry and from rural to urban life without experiencing the shock of the Great Transformation. Not only did fewer of the French leave France, but fewer also moved to great urban centers, because the push on rural localities was much weaker than elsewhere. If 'migration begets migration,' the reverse is true as well: the absence of emigration in the early period of transition makes it less likely that, should a 'push' subsequently arise, emigration will follow. Concomitantly, in the absence of surplus population, the state had no reason to turn emigrationist. Although the precocious limitation of fertility in the middle decades of the nineteenth century was rational from the economic perspective of the rural population, it was problematic in other respects. Hence, uniquely in Europe, from the middle of the century onward, the French state became decidedly immigrationist..." - David T
http://books.google.com/books?id=Dqawo0Kpvz0C&pg=PA53
 
"The French exceptionalism of small emigration was attributed to the French people's love of their land; for example, one French author wrote in 1860: 't must be recognized that the French rarely emigrate. The fact is that among the various races of Europe there is none with a greater regard for his native land than the French, with a more instinctive, more inviolable affection for his home, his village, and his country...Only religious or political persecution have led in France to emigration on a scale of any importance.'75 However, the key to the difference is to be found within the distinctive French pattern of economic development in the long nineteenth century, the major feature of which was was the survival of a large agrarian sector. On the eve of the French Revolution, the productivity of workers employed in British agriculture was already well above that of the French; in familiar fashion, the more favorable British land-to-labor ratios fostered more capital-intensive agriculture, producing a surplus for urban investment, which in turn increased rural out-migration. But in France, the revolution 'gave the peasantry what they had long wanted--full rights of ownership and freedom from the burden of feudal exactions from all kinds.' 76 Although French agricultural output remained consistently below that of the British, the landless peasantry formed a far smaller proportion of the rural population. The characteristics of the agrarian sector in turn conditioned the pace and pattern of industrial development along different lines. Compared with Britain, the workshop sector in France survived much longer, and industry used much less unskilled labor. Most significantly for the present purpose, the rural exodus was long delayed. The French could afford to love their land, so long as they kept their families small.77

"In short, France made the transition from agriculture to industry and from rural to urban life without experiencing the shock of the Great Transformation. Not only did fewer of the French leave France, but fewer also moved to great urban centers, because the push on rural localities was much weaker than elsewhere. If 'migration begets migration,' the reverse is true as well: the absence of emigration in the early period of transition makes it less likely that, should a 'push' subsequently arise, emigration will follow. Concomitantly, in the absence of surplus population, the state had no reason to turn emigrationist. Although the precocious limitation of fertility in the middle decades of the nineteenth century was rational from the economic perspective of the rural population, it was problematic in other respects. Hence, uniquely in Europe, from the middle of the century onward, the French state became decidedly immigrationist..." - David T
http://books.google.com/books?id=Dqawo0Kpvz0C&pg=PA53


Thanks for the great explanation!
 
Maybe, Louis XVII dies, Charles X becomes king earlier, during the Unobtainable Chamber parliament, and the aristocracy is restored, and even though they are a dying class, the land never goes back to the peasants, spurring the same issue of rural displacement as in England.
 
No French Revolution. French demographic bulge is not expended in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, but population growth continues. Those seeking economic opportunities or political rights are naturally drawn to French trade partner and ally in the United States. If Louisiana and/or Quebec becomes part of the US, those areas may be especially attractive to French immigrants.
 
I have always heard that if Frenchmen emigrated to America, they almost always went to Mexico or South America. Mostly because if you knew French, Spanish was more easy to master then English. Plus those countries were Catholic. So even if you didn't understand the language, you would still understand the Latin spoken in Holy Mass...


So may be if Louisiana (either the US state or some territory along the Mississippi) would retain more of their French or just Latin culture, it would be an attractive place for educated Frenchmen dissatisfied with the way their home country was going (kind-of like the American Germans...). To help them along, have France loose (or never get) their colonies in Algeria and Morocco. So now every Frenchman at odds with the political regime of the year HAS to emigrate across the ocean instead of just laying low in Casablanca until the heat dies down a bit.
 
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Driftless

Donor
Perhaps an earlier POD? Have a different Edict of Nantes (1598) generate an earlier and more extensive exodous of Huguenots from France? OTL, the relatively smaller number that left, scattered in several directions. and either became a very secondary body in their new homes, or their New World colonies got hammered by the Portugese or Spanish. A larger exodous may create a larger critical mass of population in an area, which might be more likely to grow long term. That also would provide a draw for additonal bodies of Huguenots from later persecutions (i.e.Edict of Fontinbleau-1685).

OTL, small groups of Huguenots settled in Virginia and especially South Carolina and some later migrated across the Appalachians. The local English authorities extended some land grants to the Huguenot groups

There were also wide-spread, if small numbers of French speaking, French heritage, ostensibly Catholic peoples living along the Great Lakes and Mississippi Valley areas well into the mid 1800's. Many of the foundation explorers of that region in the mid to late 1600's were Jesuit priests, but the French are far less remembered for their religious work in the region than for their other activities: mostly trade. Have some of the Huguenots migrate to that area.
 
It's worth noting that much of the early/mid 19th-century immigration was driven by upheaval in the home countries (the Famine for the Irish, the 1848 upheavals for many of the Germans).

So turning France into a violent, catastrophic disaster zone would also potentially be helpful for encouraging emigration. I leave it to someone more knowledgeable than I to design the ultimate 19th-century France-screw.
 
It's worth noting that much of the early/mid 19th-century immigration was driven by upheaval in the home countries (the Famine for the Irish, the 1848 upheavals for many of the Germans).

So turning France into a violent, catastrophic disaster zone would also potentially be helpful for encouraging emigration. I leave it to someone more knowledgeable than I to design the ultimate 19th-century France-screw.

Have the July Revolution turn really bloody somehow?
 
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