Jan and Leo Lucassen deserve tremendous credit for their effort to quantify mobility in historic societies that did not maintain public migration statistics and, moreover, for a long time period and for the whole of Europe.1 Their article goes far beyond a critique of the ‘mobility transition hypothesis’. The Lucassens not only demonstrate the high degree and the rich diversity of geographical mobility in early modern Europe; they also refute any idea of linear trends in the history of mobility. One of the most exciting of their results is, in my view, the evidence for varying rhythms of levels of mobility throughout early modern times, both in respect to migration types and to immigration/emigration regions. Their approach to quantifying early modern migration reveals previously unknown structures of mobility in pre-industrial Europe. This will intensively stimulate research and discussions in migration history in Europe and beyond.