The Determinants of International Migration in Early Modern Europe: Evidence from the Maritime Sector, c. 1700–1800

This paper offers the first multivariate regression study of international migration in earlymodern Europe. Using unique eighteenth-century data about maritime workers, we created adata set of migration flows among European countries to examine the role of factors related togeography, population, language, the market and chain migration in explaining the migrationof these workers across countries. We show that among all factors considered in ourmultivariate analysis, the geographical characteristics of the destination countries, size of porttowns, and past migrations are among the most robust and quantitatively the most importantfactors influencing cross-country migration flows