Population Migration

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Timeline of events c.1763 - 1980
List of sources for further study available at Archives & Local Studies
For questions to use in the classroom

This section concentrates on the following aspects of population migration:

Topic Areas

• 18th century - George Africanus
• 19th century - Irish
• World War I (1914 - 1918) - Belgians
• World War II (1939 - 1945) - Other Europeans
• Post war (1945 - ) - Indian Sub Continent
• Post war (1945 - ) - African - Caribbean

Migration to the United Kingdom is a not a recent phenomenon. People have been coming to Britain from all over the world for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Most of the documents in the collections of Wolverhampton Archives and Local Studies relate to the 19th and 20th centuries. What information there is from the 18th and earlier centuries tends to record events of the local indigenous population. There is much more work to be done on researching into the records to see if they contain references to people who originated from outside Britain. This section which looks at migration in Wolverhampton since the 18th century, is the result of initial research into the archives. It examines who came, and what happened to them in their new surroundings. It looks at individuals and groups from Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and Asia.

Further information may also be obtained from the Channel 4 Black History map www.channel4.com/history/microsites/B/blackhistorymap/ as well as the CASBAH project www.casbah.ac.uk (a pilot web site for research resources relating to Caribbean Studies and the history of Black and Asian peoples in the UK).