Hopeful Journeys - (Early American Studies) by Aaron Spencer Fogleman (Paperback)

About the Book

The first comprehensive history of the settlement of Germans in the 1700s and how they influenced the economy, politics, and ways of life in the New World.--Pennsylvania

Book Synopsis

In 1700, some 250,000 white and black inhabitants populated the thirteen American colonies, with the vast majority of whites either born in England or descended from English immigrants. By 1776, the non-Native American population had increased tenfold, and non-English Europeans and Africans dominated new immigration. Of all the European immigrant groups, the Germans may have been the largest.

Aaron Spencer Fogleman has written the first comprehensive history of this eighteenth-century German settlement of North America. Utilizing a vast body of published and archival sources, many of them never before made accessible outside of Germany, Fogleman emphasizes the importance of German immigration to colonial America, the European context of the Germans' emigration, and the importance of networks to their success in America

From the Back Cover

Hopeful Journeys traces the German migrant groups from their origins to their places of final settlement in the colonies. The immigrants' Old World customs, beliefs, and connections did not entirely disappear as they adapted to life in the colonies; instead, the Germans' past ways helped shape behavior in the New World. Germans settled in rural, ethnic communities where family, village, and religion helped them succeed in the multi-ethnic, capitalist economy of British North America. This collective strategy carried into the political arena, as the immigrants and their descendants sought to solidify and protect their gains. Fogleman contends that, to a significant degree, the immigrants and their children developed a new ethnic identity: adapting to the strains of migration, settlement, and politicization, they became Americanized without becoming less German.

Review Quotes

"A book that is accessible to both layman and specialist alike."-- "Journal of American History"

"The first comprehensive history of the settlement of Germans in the 1700s and how they influenced the economy, politics, and ways of life in the New World."-- "Pennsylvania"

About the Author

Aaron Spencer Fogleman is Professor of History at Northern Illinois University. He is the author of Jesus Is Female: Moravians and Radical Religion in Early America, also published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.