Departure of Italian immigrants from French and English ports

A large number of Italian immigrants left for the Americas from French and English ports for various reasons:

• Not always what was nearer was easier to get to. Italian immigrants from some regions found it very difficult to get to the port of Genoa because the railway was in very bad conditions.
• Our ancestor perhaps tried their luck in France, because of the short distance and then decided to travel to the Americas.

The Italian might have left from the French ports of Le Hâvre, Cherburg, Nantes, Marseille, Boulogne and even Bordeaux. As well as from ports such as Liverpool, Southampton or Glasgow in the United Kingdom.

There are other reasons why the Italians were embarked from England to North and South America.

• From the beginning of the 19th century, the port and transport network became a multinational network, with French ports and those in northern Europe covering most of the transoceanic transport (Marseille, Le Havre, Bremen, Hamburg, Liverpool ), especially those that covered a direct path to the United States.
• The large shipping companies were owned by English, French and German capital. All of these companies were not authorized to have their ships stop in Italian ports, but they had an agency in Italy and a network of immigration agents who, in the absence of an immigration law (until 1901), wove true networks of intermediaries in the country. ¹

The Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890-1960 database gives access to records with more than 30 millions of passengers arriving from different European countries and departing from British ports.

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