European emigration

European emigration is the successive emigration waves from the European continent to other continents. The origins of the various European diasporas can be traced to the people who left the European nation states or stateless ethnic communities on the European continent. From 1500 to the mid-20th century, 60-65 million people left Europe, of which less than 9% went to tropical areas (the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa). From 1815 to 1932, 65 million people left Europe (with many returning home), primarily to "areas of European settlement" in North and South America, in addition to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Siberia. These populations also multiplied rapidly in their new habitat; much more so than the populations of Africa and Asia. As a result, on the eve of World War I, 38% of the world's total population was of European ancestry. Most European emigrants to the New World came from Germany, Ireland, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine. More contemporary, European emigration can also refer to emigration from one European country to another, especially in the context of the internal mobility in the European Union (intra-EU mobility) or mobility within the Eurasian Union. In Archaic Greece, trading and colonizing activities of the Greek tribes from the Black Sea, Southern Italy (the so-called "Magna Graecia") and Asia Minor propagated Greek culture, religion and language around the Mediterranean and Black Sea basins. Greek city-states were established in Southern Europe, northern Libya and the Black Sea coast, and the Greeks founded over 400 colonies in these areas. Alexander the Great's conquest of the Achaemenid Empire marked the beginning of the Hellenistic period, which was characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization in Asia and Africa; the Greek ruling classes established their presence in Egypt, southwest Asia, and Northwest India. Many Greeks migrated to the new Hellenistic cities founded in Alexander's wake, as geographically dispersed as Uzbekistan and Kuwait.