The triangular trade, controlled from Liverpool, ships millions of Africans across the Atlantic as slaves

Joseph Banks tells a committee of the House of Commons that the east coast of Australia is suitable for the transportation of convicted felons

20-year-old John Jacob Astor emigrates from Germany to America and sets up in the fur trade

A British ship lands a party of freed slaves as the first modern settlers in Sierra Leone, on the west coast of Africa

After a journey of eight months from England the First Fleet reaches Australia, anchoring in Botany Bay

The autobiography of Olaudah Equiano, a slave captured as a child in Africa, becomes a best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic

A second fleet arrives in Sydney, bringing more convicts and a regiment, the New South Wales Corps, to keep order

Robert Finley, a US anti-slavery campaigner, founds the American Colonization Society to settle freed slaves in Africa

The American Colonization Society buys the area later known as Liberia to settle freed slaves

Mzilikazi, after a quarrel with Shaka, leads the Ndebele people to new territories west of Natal

The first shipload of freed slaves reaches Cape Mesurado (in the region soon called Liberia) from the USA

A network of undercover abolitionists in the southern states of America help slaves escape to freedom in the north

The Great Migration across the north American continent to the Pacific establishes the Oregon Trail

The Irish, fleeing from the potato famine at home, become the main group of immigrants to the USA

A journalist in the Terre Haute Express gives a piece of advice, 'Go west, young man', that chimes perfectly with the US pioneer spirit

In the four years since the discovery of gold, the population of California has leapt from 14,000 to 250,000

German immigrants arriving in the USA now outnumber even the Irish

Chinese immigrants to Australia are the victims of violent racial attacks at Lambing Flat

Congress passes a Chinese Exclusion Act, in the USA's first retreat from the policy of welcoming all immigrants

The first settlements of European Jews, returning to the promised land, are established in Palestine

Ellis Island in New York Bay opens as the point of reception for arriving immigrants

Theodor Herzl publishes The Jewish State, calling for a national homeland for all Jews

Australia passes an Immigration Restriction Act to underpin the White Australia policy

Foreign Secretary A.J. Balfour declares Britain's conditional support for a homeland in Palestine for the Jews

The first West Indian immigrants to Britain arive from Jamaica on the Empire Windrush