European Migration, Social Structure and Empire Building in Portuguese Asia, 1500-1650

Objective

Migration has become a central issue in today’s public and political discourse. This discourse is often instrumentalized against migrants portrayed as “invading” Europe, forgetting that the early modern period was defined by a reverse flow: the mass emigration of mostly poor Europeans that enabled the construction of global colonial empires. Although the imperial migrations that shaped the Americas and Africa are well-studied, the equally significant movements to Asia remain largely understudied. MIGRASIA addresses this gap by reconstructing in the scale, demographic composition, and social logic of these migrations at macro-, meso- and micro-level, using the Portuguese Empire in Asia (Estado da Índia) and the Portuguese Carreira da Índia (India Run) between 1500-1650, as a case study. A comparative approach with other European colonial polities (Spanish, Dutch (VOC), and English (EIC)) will situate the findings in a global context. MIGRASIA hypothesizes that European empire building in Asia was shaped not only by top-down policies, but by the migration dynamics and the formation of new hybrid social structures involving subaltern populations, so far grossly overlooked by the scholarship. The project's central objective is to re-evaluate the social structure and quantitative dimensions of migration from Europe to the Estado da Índia, challenging what is known about its role in the empire-building process itself. Methodologically, the project combines quantitative and qualitative analysis to reconstruct trans-oceanic migration flows, as well as individual trajectories. By adopting a bottom-up perspective focusing on the agency of subaltern migrants and the gender dimension of these migratory flows, this project deepens our perspective on global mobility and social change, contributing to a more inclusive history of migration and empire building.