an artist book by Denise Carbone, Patty Smith and Claire Fouquet

Géologie-Généalogie also refered as Geology-Genealogy, references some of the peak years of migration from different nations in History. Exhaustivity is not the point of the book but to show that Europeans as well as Asian or African have moved from country to country, continent to continant all over the years from pre-history onward. The migration crisis we’re facing now is far from being the first in History and won’t probably be the last.

Here is some more information about the dates refered to in the book.

1629-1640’s The English Puritans settled in North America followed by 1682-1725 British Quakers in Pennsylvania mostly. Great-Britain sent people (farmers, convicts, indured servants) to the New World on a regular basis to cope with their overgrowing population. They stopped when the War of Independance started in 1775.

1845-1849 connects to the potato famine in Ireland that led one million of people to flee their country during those years. The flow continued until 1855. This massiv exodus led to 1.8 million people to emigrate, mostly to North America but also in England and elsewhere in Europe. Even if it other waves of emigration followed in the XXth century, 1845-1914 is considered the age of mass migration for Ireland as one out of two person born in Ireland in the XIXth century left the country.