Emigration of Croats started first in Dalmatia. The first emigrants were seamen. Besides individual emigration, the penetration of the Turk to our lands brought about extensive emigration when large groups moved across the sea to the Apennine Peninsula and to the lands of the Danube Basin: Austria, Hungary, and Romania. The demand for labour became greater in 19th century owing to the rapid growth of capitalism in the countries of the West, following the Industrial Revolution. Some European lands, notably those within the Austrian Empire — Dalmatia among them — offered their surplus of labour to the developed countries, America in particular. This was due to agrarian overpopulation, economic underdevelopment, colonate and serfdom in the country and poor economy in the cities, and in particular this was due to the crisis which affected the shipping and the viticulture. To all of this should be added lack of financing firms which could aid the peasants to free themselves of the agrarian bonds and of the city loansharks who speeded up their impoverishment. Emigration was individual in the first half of the century, later more extensive, and it got mass character at the turn of the century. On the whole, emigration was greatest among seamen in the widest sense of the term: shipyard workers, captains, owners of sailing ships, sailors and fishermen from seaboard towns and villages, and vineyard hands. Emigration was strongest from those regions that were affected most strongly by the crisis of shipping and viticulture — the islands, Southern Dalmatia and parts of Central Dalmatia, but gradually other parts were also hit. The population migrated to almost all continents: North and South America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the Black Sea, to the excavation of the Suez Canal, and particularly to Triest, then the strongest shipping centre in the Adriatic. At the turn of the century emigration became a problem which drew attention of the press and became topic of debates in the Dalmatian Assembly and the Parliament of Vienna.
