Missouri's first European immigrants, French fur traders and missionaries, began settling in the state in the early 18th century. Under Spain, Missouri received few Spanish settlers but many immigrants from the eastern US. During the 19th century, newcomers continued to arrive from the South and the East-slave-owning southerners (with their black slaves) as well as New Englanders opposed to slavery. They were joined by a wave of European immigrants, notably Germans and, later, Italians. By 1850, one out of three St. Louis residents was German-born; of all foreign-born Missourians in the late 1800s, more than half came from Germany.
More recently, the state has been losing population through migration—322,000 people were lost to net migration between 1940 and 1970, followed by a net gain of 22,000 during the 1970s and a net loss of nearly 100,000 during the 1980s. Between 1990 and 1998, Missouri had net gains of 94,000 in domestic migration and 34,000 in international migration. In 1998, 3,588 foreign immigrants arrived in the state. The dominant intrastate migration pattern has been the concentration of blacks in the major cities, especially St. Louis and Kansas City, and the exodus of whites from those cities to the suburbs and, more recently, to small towns and rural areas. As of 1996, 82.4% of the population lived in metropolitan areas while 17.6% lived in non-metropolitan areas, up from 17.2% in 1990. Missouri's overall population increased 6.3% between 1990 and 1998. In the period 1995–2000, 473,369 people moved into the state and 427,316 moved out, for a net gain of 46,053.