Two European peripheries : a comparison of Polish and Portuguese migration from the sixteenth century to the Great War

The article is an attempt at comparing the Polish and Portuguese migration experiences in the period of great labor migration until 1914. The periods of Portugal’s establishment of its colonial empire in the sixteenth century and the period of the Polish expansion east, to Rus in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been juxtaposed before. In the Time of Troubles Polish literature promoting eastward expansion quite directly referred to the examples of India’s or America’s colonization. In the nineteenth century the reasons for emigration from the two distant parts of Europe were similar (overpopulation, economic underdevelopment), the destinations were different, however. The Portuguese often left for Brazil, with which Portugal remained strongly interconnected even after Brazil gained independence. For Poles, the country of emigration was predominantly the U.S. It was there, on the territory of New England, that the representatives of both of the groups met, and even cooperated, in the weaving industry. Both in Portugal and Poland emigration commenced on peripheral territories (Madera and provinces neighboring with Spain in the case of Portugal and the Polish-German and Polish- Hungarian borderland in the case of Poland). In both groups the percentage of returnees was high. It is only later that the Portuguese will travel to other countries, e.g. in Western Europe. Polish emigrants have had already discovered routes to Western Europe. Poles numerously traveled for work also to the occupying states. In this phenomenon we can find similarities to Portuguese migration to the territory of their empire. Regardless of the destination, individual and family histories, be it Portuguese or Polish, were very similar. In the interwar period an interesting postscript has been added to these histories. Poland and certain circles made, unsuccessful, attempts to organize Polish settlement in the Portuguese colonies in Angola and Mozambiqu