Foreigners in Their Own Land [Paperback]

Steven M. Nolt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 11, 2009

Nolt provides the first truly comprehensive study of the largest non-English-speaking white ethnic group in the early United States. He is the first to trace developments among the German Lutherans and Reformed from the 1780s to the 1850s, and he has explored many little-known unpublished and published materials by largely forgotten writers. Foreigners in Their Own Land is full of historical detail that should be new even to most specialists in the field. Mark Haberlein, University of Freiburg, GermanyHistorians of the early Republic are just beginning to tell the stories of the period's ethnic minorities. In Foreigners in Their Own Land, Steven M. Nolt is the first to add the story of the Pennsylvania Germans to that larger mosaic, showing how they came to think of themselves as quintessential Americans and simultaneously constructed a durable sense of ethnicity. The Pennsylvania German Lutheran and Reformed populations of eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the Appalachian backcountry successfully combined elements of their Old World tradition with several emerging versions of national identity. Many took up democratic populist rhetoric to defend local cultural particularity and ethnic separatism. Others wedded certain American notions of reform and national purpose to Continental traditions of clerical authority and idealized German virtues. Their experience illustrates how creating and defending an ethnic identity can itself be a way of becoming American. Though they would maintain a remarkably stable and identifiable subculture well into the twentieth century, Pennsylvania Germans were, even by the eve of the Civil War, the most "inside" of "outsiders". They represent the complex and often paradoxical ways in which many Americans have managed the process of assimilation to their own advantage. Given their pioneering role in that process, their story illuminates the path that other immigrants and ethnic Americ

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Steven M. Nolt is Assistant Professor of History at Goshen College. He is co-author of Through Fire and Water: An Overview of Mennonite History (1996) with Harry Loewen, and of Amish Enterprise: From Plows to Profits (1995) with Donald B. Kraybill.

Product Details

• Paperback: 250 pages
• Publisher: Penn State Press (August 11, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0271034440
• ISBN-13: 978-0271034447
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,943,499 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Meticulously researched and highly recommended, October 5, 2002

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Foreigners in Their Own Land: Pennsylvania Germans in the Early Republic (Pennsylvania German History and Culture Series) (Hardcover)

Foreigners In Their Own Land: Pennsylvania Germans In The Early Republic by Steven M. Nolt (Assistant Professor of History, Goshen College) is the story of Pennsylvania's German population, ranging from the first immigrants to arrive and continuing through the assimilation of their generations of descendants, and how these people were able to maintain their German cultural heritage and background while embracing their citizenship and identity as Americans. Meticulously researched and highly recommended, Foreigners In Their Own Land is a truly fascinating, scholarly, and highly accessible study of the religious, political, and philosophical evolution of this specific American subculture.