On Migration by Ruth Padel

Author:Ruth Padel
Format: epub
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2013-08-27T16:00:00+00:00

The historical Greeks who colonised Asia Minor in the seventh century BC migrated for trade. Trade moved over deserts, mountains and seas – the Sahara, the Himalayas, the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean – and migration follows. Religion follows, too. It was traders who brought Hinduism to Indonesia in the fifth century AD, Buddhism soon after and Islam from 1200 onward.

Christianity, however, was set up to spread from the start. ‘Apostle’ comes from Greek apostellein, ‘to send out’, and the Apostles spread Christianity through the Roman Empire. In 1095 this became a violent spreading: the First Crusade began centuries of war (mainly against Muslims, but also against Jews and Orthodox Christians) for Catholic control of the Holy Land.

People migrate to spread their own religion (‘missionary’ comes from the Latin mittere, ‘to send’) but also to escape other people’s. In 1492 the Inquisition expelled the Jews from Spain (or forced them, and Spanish Muslims, to turn Catholic). In 1620 the Pilgrims boarding the Mayflower were escaping religious persecution: they wanted a place to worship as they pleased.

Trade and religion can move without war, but often arrive because of it. Before the Second World War, Coca-Cola was bottled in forty-four countries. After US troops landed in North Africa in 1943, General Eisenhower requested ten bottling plants there. At the end of the war the troops went home but Coca Cola stayed. Sixty-four new plants were shipped abroad during the war; by the 1960s the number of countries with bottling operations had doubled.

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