in burgeoning California. The proportion of
Europeans fell to less than one-fifth of the total
number of immigrants. The second-largest ethnic
influx came from Asia – Taiwan, Korea and, after
the Vietnam War, Vietnam. The US has become
more of a multicultural society than ever before.
But, unlike most black people and Hispanics,
many Asians have succeeded in working their way
out of the lower strata of American society.
Although the migration of Europeans to Africa
south of the Sahara after 1945 was less spectacu-
lar in terms of numbers – probably less than a
million in all – their impact as settlers and admin-
istrators on the history of African countries was
crucial for the history of the continent.
One of the most significant developments in
the Middle East after 1945 was the creation of a
new nation, the State of Israel. Proportionally,
migration into Israel saw the most rapid popula-
tion increase of any post-war state. Under the
Law of Return any Jew from any part of the world
had the right to enter and enjoy immediate
citizenship. Between May 1948 and June 1953
the population doubled and by the end of 1956
had tripled to 1,667,000.
There are no accurate statistics relating to the
peoples of the world who, since 1945, have been
driven by fear, hunger or the hope of better
opportunities to migrate. They probably exceed
80 million. More than 10 million are still refugees
without a country of their own; political up-
heavals and famines create more refugees every
year. The more prosperous countries of the world
continue to erect barriers against entry from the
poor countries and stringently examine all those
who seek asylum. In Europe, the Iron Curtain has
gone but an invisible curtain has replaced it to
stop the flow of migration from the East to the
West, from Africa across the Mediterranean, from
the poor south of the world to the north.
The only solution is to assist the poor coun-
tries to develop so that their populations have a
hope of rising standards of living. The aid given
by the wealthy has proved totally inadequate to
meet these needs, and loans have led to soaring
debt repayments. The commodities the Third
World has to sell have generally risen in price less
than the manufacturing imports it buys. The
natural disadvantage is compounded by corrup-
tion, economic mismanagement, the waste of
resources on the purchase of weapons, wars and
the gross inequalities of wealth. But underlying
all these is the remorseless growth of population,
which vitiates the advances that are achieved.
There has been a population explosion in the
course of the twentieth century. It is estimated
that 1,600 million people inhabited planet earth
in 1900. By 1930 the figure reached 2,000
million, in 1970 it was 3,600 million and by
the end of the century the world’s population
exceeded 6,000 million. Most of that increase,
has taken place in the Third World, swelling the
size of cities like Calcutta, Jakarta and Cairo
to many millions. The inexorable pressure of
population on resources has bedevilled efforts
to improve standards of living in the poorest
regions of the world, such as Bangladesh. The gap
between the poor parts of the world and the rich
widened rather than narrowed. Birth-control
education is now backed by Third World govern-
ments, but, apart from China’s draconian appli-
cation, is making a slow impact on reducing
the acceleration of population growth. Despite
the suffering caused, wars and famines inflict no
more than temporary dents on the upward curve.
Only the experience with AIDS may prove differ-
ent, if no cure is found: in sub-Saharan Africa the
disease is endemic, and in Uganda it has infected
one person in every six. The one positive measure
of population control is to achieve economic and
social progress in the poorest countries of the
world. With more than 800 million people living
in destitution the world is far from being in sight
of this goal.
At the end of the twentieth century many
of the problems that afflicted the world at its
beginning remain unresolved. The prediction of
Thomas Robert Malthus in his Essay on the
Principle of Populations published in 1798 that,
unless checked, the growth of population would
outrun the growth of production, still blights
human hopes for progress and happiness in the
Third World. According to one estimate, a third
of all children under five, some 150 million, in
the Third World are undernourished and prey to
disease. Of the 122 million children born in
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PROLOGUE 11
