Approximately 52 million Europeans emigrated from the continent in search of opportunities and better living conditions. Of these, approximately 10 million were Italians, with peaks of up to 603,000 per year at the beginning of the 20th century. They were second only to the 18 million British and Irish. With the Great Depression in the United States in the 1930s, this flow of migrants was redirected toward their colonial dominions.
