600Chapter 30
of France was foreign-born, and nearly 90 percent of
the immigrants came from Europe—chiefly Belgians
and Italians who found work across the border. By the
end of the century, immigration had quadrupled and
most French immigrants were Algerians (22 percent)
and Moroccans (12 percent). Nearly half of all French
immigrants came from Africa; meanwhile, Italian and
Belgian immigration into France fell to less than one-
sixth of its previous rate. The wars and revolutions of
twentieth-century Europe also shifted millions of peo-
ple across national frontiers, such as the repatriation of
1.2 million Greeks from Turkey after World War I, the
migration of 200,000 Magyars from Transylvania to
Hungary in the 1920s, or the flight and expulsion of
nearly 7.5 million Germans from Eastern Europe after
World War II. But none of these migrations changed
Europe as profoundly as the arrival of millions of non-
Europeans as a result of decolonization.
Another important form of migration accompanied
European prosperity in the late twentieth century. The
United Nations estimated in 1973 that the Common
Market states plus Austria, Norway, Sweden, and
Switzerland included 7.5 million foreign workers. West
Germany, for example, held 2.6 million “guest workers”
(Gastarbeiter) who constituted 12 percent of the German
labor force. Nearly 20 percent of those workers came
from Turkey, a figure that surpassed one-third by the
late 1980s. The Turkish population of Germany passed
two million in the 1990s. Although their guest-worker
status (and an extremely strict German citizenship law
of 1913) denied them the rights of immigrants, a study
in 1977 found that one-fourth of all German guest
workers had resided there for at least a decade. The
foreign-born population of Germany again increased
dramatically after the collapse of the Soviet bloc in
- Tens of thousands of ethnic Germans returned
(claiming citizenship under the 1913 law), hundreds of
thousands of refugees arrived (for example, 320,000
Bosnians fled the Yugoslav War), and tens of thousands
of Soviet Jews were granted residence. These trends,
along with the strict laws and a plummeting birthrate,
combined in the late 1990s to create a situation in
which more than 20 percent of the babies born in
Germany were born to non-Germans.
The immigration trends of the late twentieth cen-
tury led to tense political situations in many European
countries. Most European states had defined their iden-
tity in images shaped by nineteenth-century national-
ism: A shared language, religion, culture, and history
created a nation-state. Many states now confronted the
reality of cultural diversity.
Economic Structures: The Decline
of Agriculture
Agriculture dominated the economy of eighteenth-
century Europe but began to lose that preeminence dur-
ing the industrialization. Nineteenth-century industrial-
ization, however, should not obscure the persistence of
agricultural society. Just as the European political his-
tory of 1900 depicts the progress of democracy as well
as the persistence of monarchical government and aris-
tocratic privilege, the European economic history of
1900 must show the progress of industry alongside a
surviving agricultural society. In Eastern Europe, where
industrialization had not yet advanced greatly, the huge
majority of the population was still engaged in agricul-
ture. In France, a major industrial power, less than
one-third of the labor force worked in industrial
occupations. Even Germany, the greatest industrial
power-house of the continent, had less than half of its
population engaged in the industrial workforce (see
table 30.4).
Despite the strength of agricultural society at the
beginning of the twentieth century, a trend was clear:
Agriculture was steadily employing fewer people, pro-
ducing a smaller share of the gross national product
(GNP). On the eve of the First World War, many
states, including Austria and Italy, still found the major-
ity of their population on the farm. By 1930 compara-Percentage of labor force engaged in agriculture
Country c. 1910–11: c. 1930–31: c. 1960–61:
Austria 53.1 31.7 18.4
Britain 8.6 6.0 3.6
France 41.0 35.6 20.0
Germany 37.8 29.0 13.4 (West)
Ireland 42.9 25.3 (Northern) 13.0 (Northern)
52.1 (republic) 48.6 (republic)
Italy 55. 435.5 29.0
Russia 23.5
Source: Calculated from tables in B. R. Mitchell, European Historical Sta-
tistics, 1750–1970(London: Macmillan, 1975), pp. 153–63.TABLE 30.4The Decline of Agricultural Employment,
1920–60