Patrick Manning, Migration in World History. Routledge, 2013 2nd ed.
Patrick Manning , Migration in World Histor y.
Connie Lamb 0 1
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Article 20
Patrick Manning, Migration in World History, 2nd ed.. Routledge, 2013.
Reviewed by Connie Lamb
This book is part of the series, Themes in World History, which proposes to provide
exciting, new and wide-ranging surveys of the important themes of world history. Each
theme is examined over a broad period of time allowing analysis of continuities and change.
Manning’s book certainly fits this pattern, in its broad time coverage, analysis of local
movements, and historical methods for discussing migration. Manning defines human
migration simply as the “movement from one place to another and from one social context
to another” (191).
Patrick Manning is a well-known world historian and is currently the Andrew W. Mellon
Professor of World History at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also a specialist on Africa
and has written many books and articles on world history and African topics. Besides being
a teacher and author, Manning is the president of the World History Network, Inc. a
nonprofit corporation fostering research and graduate study in world history. His education
includes a BS in chemistry with a minor in history from the California Institute of
Technology and a Masters in history and economics as well as a PhD in history from the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was trained as a specialist in the economic history
of Africa and went on to explore demographic, social, and cultural patterns in Africa and
the African diaspora. Manning has published numerous articles and several books and
teaches classes on world history and interdisciplinary methodology, the use of which is
evident in his world migration book. He has been active in the American Historical
Association and is currently serving as the President of that society.
This book on migration seems to build on his past work about Africa and global history,
especially two of his books, World History: Global and Local Interactions (2005) and
Migration History in World History (2010). Migration in World History is organized
chronologically but by topic within time periods. There are many books on migration, but
Manning’s has a unique approach, covering the entire history of the world with a broad
scope of places and topics. Most other authors discuss current migrations globally or focus
on particular places or peoples.
Chapter one, as the introduction, talks about modeling patterns of human migration, giving
various methods of research and Manning’s own way of studying local and global human
migration. Chapter two covers the emergence of human beings and their earliest migrations
to 40,000 BP. The next seven chapters discuss large time periods and issues that
characterize them: peopling northern and American regions, agriculture, commerce, modes
of movement, spanning the oceans, labor for industry and empire, and urbanization to 2000.
Many disciplines may be used to study migration including sociology, anthropology,
economics, linguistics, history, archaeology, demographics, genetics, chemistry and
political science. Manning sets out his theory or model of migration by defining a human
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community as the speakers of a given language, so he bases his work mainly on linguistics.
He then identifies four categories of human migration: home-community migration,
colonization, whole-community migration, and cross-community migration. Manning
focuses mainly on the last one: cross-community migration (7).
Cross-community migrants are generally rather small in number and the author categorizes
them as settlers, sojourners, itinerants and invaders. Settlers are those who move to join an
existing community with the intent to remain there; sojourners are those moving to a new
community with the intent to return to their home community; itinerants move from
community to community but have no single home to which they expect to return; invaders
are those who arrive as a group in a community with the objective of seizing control rather
than joining. Migrants may journey on their own, but, more often than not, their movement
is facilitated by cross-community networks that involve cooperation across distance and
across boundaries of language and culture, aiding the movement of migrants from one place
to another (8-9). As individuals and groups move, they may absorb the culture and
language of their new locale, and they may, in turn, affect the co (...truncated)