Long-distance migration of peoples have been a central if little understood factor in global integration. The essays in this collection contribute to a new history of world migrations, written by specialists of particular areas of the world. Collectively these essays point towards a shift from the regional migrations of individual seas and oceans of the early modern era toward nineteenth-century labor migrations that connected the Pacific and Indian to the Atlantic Oceans. Detailed case studies demonstrate the importance of human migration in the development, consolidation and critique of empire-building, theories of race, modern capitalism, and large-scale commercial agriculture and industry on every continent.