In Citizens in a Strange Land, Hermann Wellenreuther examines the broadsides—printed single sheets—produced by the Pennsylvania German community. These broadsides covered topics ranging from local controversies and politics to devotional poems and hymns. Each one is a product of and reaction to a particular historical setting. To understand them fully, Wellenreuther systematically reconstructs Pennsylvania’s print culture, the material conditions of life, the problems German settlers faced, the demands their communities made on the individual settlers, the complications to be overcome, and the needs to be satisfied. He shows how these broadsides provided advice, projections, and comment on phases of life from cradle to grave.
Our Documents is a collection of 100 documents that the staff of the National Archives has judged most important to the development of the United States. The entry for each document includes a short introduction, a facsimile, and a transcript of the document. Backmatter includes further reading, credits, and index. The book is part of the much larger Our Documents initiative sponsored by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), National History Day, the Corporation for National and Community Service, and the USA Freedom Corps.
Contains names of approximately 60,000 persons applied to leave Germany from late eighteenth century to 1900. Includes date & place of birth, residence at time of application & application date.
Why do some migrants integrate quickly, while others become long-term minorities? What is the role of the state in the settlement process? To what extent are experiences in the past different from the present? Are the recent migrants really integrating in another way than those in the past? Is Islam indeed an obstacle to integration? These are some of the burning questions, which dominate the current politicized debate on immigration in Western Europe. In this book, leading historians and social scientists analyze and compare a variety of settlement processes in past and present migration to Western Europe. Identifying general factors in the process of adaptation of new immigrants, the contributors trace social changes effected by recent European immigration, and the parallels with the great American migration of the 1880s-1920s. The history of migration to Western Europe and the way these migrants found their place in the receiving societies, is not only essential to understand the way nations deal with newcomers in the present, but also constitutes a highly interesting laboratory for different paths of integration now and then. By analyzing and comparing a wealth of settlement processes both in the past and in the present this book is both a bold interdisciplinary endeavor, and at the same time the first attempt to identify general factors underlying the way migrants adapt to their new surroundings, as well as how societies change under the influence of immigration. The chapters in the book both look at specific groups in various periods, but also analyses the structure of the state, churches unions and other important organized actors in Western European nation states. Moreover, the results are embedded in the more theoretical American literature on the comparison of old and new migrants. All chapters have an explicit comparative perspective, either by comparing different groups or different periods, whereas the general conclusion ties together the various outcomes in a systematic way, highlighting the main answers to the central questions about the various outcomes of settlement processes. --Publisher.
This study reframes Civil War-era history, arguing that the Franco-Prussian War contributed to a dramatic pivot in Northern commitment to African-American rights.
Unprecedented in scope and critical perspective, American and the Germans presents an analysis of the history of the Germans in America and of the turbulent relations between Germany and the United States. The two volumes bring together research in such diverse fields as ethnic studies, political science, linguistics, and literature, as well as American and German History. Contributors are leading American and German scholars, such as Kathleen Neils Conzen, Joshua A. Fishman, Peter Gay, Harold Jantz, Günter Moltmann, Steven Muller, Theo Sommer, Fritz Stern, Herbert A. Strauss, Gerhard L. Weinberg, and Don Yoder. These scholars assess the ethnicity and acculturation of German-Americans from the seventeenth century to the twentieth; the state of German language and culture in the United States; World War I as a turning point in relations between German and America; the political, economic, and cultural relations before and after World War II; and the midcentury state of affairs between the two countries. Special chapters are devoted to the Pennsylvania Germans, Jewish-German immigration after 1933, Americanism in Germany, and a critical appraisal of current research. American and the Germans presents a fascinating introduction to the subject as well as new perspectives for a more critical and comprehensive study of its many facets. It can be used as a reader in the fields of German studies, American studies, political science, European and German history, American history, ethnic studies, and German and American literature. Although each of the 49 contributions reflects the state of current scholarship, they are formulated with the uninitiated reader in mind.
"In 1708, representatives of the first major wave of German immigrants arrived upon American shores. By that time, Germans had already been coming to America for a century, but this was the date associated with the first major wave-the first of many that
This book provides the most comprehensive history of German migration to North America for the period 1709 to 1920 than has been done before. Employing state-of-the-art methodological and statistical techniques, the book has two objectives. First he explores how the recruitment and shipping markets for immigrants were set up, determining what the voyage was like in terms of the health outcomes for the passengers, and identifying the characteristics of the immigrants in terms of family, age, and occupational compositions and educational attainments. Secondly he details how immigrant servitude worked, by identifying how important it was to passenger financing, how shippers profited from carrying immigrant servants, how the labor auction treated immigrant servants, and when and why this method of financing passage to America came to an end.
