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Chapter five of the Atlantic World focuses on the environmental entrapments that allowed for specific opportunities for different labor systems. Egerton lists the many various circumstances with which labor was considered: “Economic cycles, population growth and collapse, declining opportunities for employment and marriage, domestic discord, death of a parent, custom, war, invasion, deception: all helped define the constraints within which people found themselves laboring for others.”(Egerton, 149). This opening statement helps broaden our sense of the Atlantic as a whole. The argument being that there were many different modes or systems that allowed for labor to be exchanged between peoples, with migration being a major factor.
The migration chart in this chapter makes note of the some two million plus European migrants who traveled the Atlantic world, and the authors make the claim that the amount of migrants per European country is not necessary corollary (Egerton, 160). The authors also state that the amount of Europeans migrating across the atlantic from the years 1500-1783 were not in the largest group of peoples traveling the atlantic during that period of time, leaving that title to fishermen working seasonally in fisheries around Newfoundland. This in turn supports the author’s argument that migration was driven by the need for labor.
The authors detail the way that male dominance was introduced through the need for labor: “Especially in the seventeenth-century northern European colonies, a need for labor drove migration, and most laborers were young, able-bodied men. In their earliest years, colonies welcomed populations that were as high as 95 percent male.”(Egerton, 163). This sheds light on the increased importance and sense of value that was placed on laboring males at the time and in a broader context can teach us about gender roles and their places in evolving European and American societies.