"French Wave" in the 19th Century

During the 19th century, millions of German immigrants arrived in the US, and today German-Americans make up the country's largest group. My challenge/question is this: How do we get a similar phenomenon to occur with French immigrants to the US, without necessarily averting the French demographic collapse?
 
Well I don't think there were ever that many French immigrants to the US, but it could be done.

Maybe at some point in the 19th century France undergoes a big ol' fashioned civil war that ends with a Prussian/German intervention which basically makes France a crappy place to live and then the government is incompetent and people leave due to aforementioned crappiness?
 
Well I don't think there were ever that many French immigrants to the US, but it could be done.

Maybe at some point in the 19th century France undergoes a big ol' fashioned civil war that ends with a Prussian/German intervention which basically makes France a crappy place to live and then the government is incompetent and people leave due to aforementioned crappiness?

I guess that could work. Is there some other combination of factors that can cause large-scale emigration? IOTL, even with constant revolution and instability, most French people stayed in France, while tons of Germans came to the US in the 1880s and 1890s a time of major economic growth. I'm kind of confused as to how it worked out that way, actually.
 
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Those with more knowledge on this, please correct me, but maybe most of OTL's 19th-century emigration from France was directed into North Africa and Indochina?
 
The French have never been keen on leaving France. The only major wave of migration was that of my ancestors, the Huguenot, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. Only a relative handful of French migrated to Quebec, especially compared to the hundreds of thousands English, Scots and even Germans who came to the British North American colonies. Even to promote colonisation of Algeria much of that migration came from Corsica or other French/Italian borderlands. There was no significant migration to French IndoChina or French tropical colonies. Certainly after the explusion of the Huguenots there was no religious minority looking for a way out nor true ethnic minorities seeking to leave. Rural nineteenth century France was largely a nation of small holders clinging to their traditional way of life in their pays, and often did not consider themselves to be 'French'. It is also no secret that to avoid further division of land holdings or domestic property the peasantry and the townsfolk limited families, hence the notorious population deficit of the 19th century. If their had been a larger population and a greater need or willingness to emigrate in the 19th century, I also think there is little doubt the government would have tried to direct the population movement to Algeria. Without Mothra sized butterflies (maybe no revolution, no Nappy, a much worse agricutural crisis/famine in the 1840's a la Irelande) I don't see any way to bring about a 'French wave' into the United States.
 
Well I don't think there were ever that many French immigrants to the US, but it could be done.

Maybe at some point in the 19th century France undergoes a big ol' fashioned civil war that ends with a Prussian/German intervention which basically makes France a crappy place to live and then the government is incompetent and people leave due to aforementioned crappiness?

If you count the Franco-American movements from Canada just before the, Great Depression when the US tightened its borders because of it, a ton of them were trap in upper New England
 

dead_wolf

Banned
Most of the German immigrants were 49ers, who left after the failure of the 1848 Revolutions and the wave of terror that followed. Simply have France have a more prolonged and violent revolution and boom, an explosion of emigration.
 
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