Trade in Strangers: The Beginnings of Mass Migration to North America [Paperback]

Marianne Sophia Wokeck (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 027101833X | ISBN-13: 978-0271018331 | Publication Date: April 1, 1999

American historians have long been fascinated by the "peopling" of North America in the seventeenth century. Who were the immigrants, and how and why did they make their way across the ocean? Most of the attention, however, has been devoted to British immigrants who came as free people or as indentured servants (primarily to New England and the Chesapeake) and to Africans who were forced to come as slaves. Trade in Strangers focuses on the eighteenth century, when new immigrants began to flood the colonies at an unprecedented rate. Most of these immigrants were German and Irish, and they were coming primarily to the middle colonies via an increasingly sophisticated form of transport.Wokeck shows how first the German system of immigration, and then the Irish system, evolved from earlier, haphazard forms into modern mass transoceanic migration. At the center of this development were merchants on both sides of the Atlantic who organized a business that enabled them to make profitable use of underutilized cargo space on ships bound from Europe to the British North American colonies. This trade offered German and Irish immigrants transatlantic passage on terms that allowed even people of little and modest means to pursue opportunities that beckoned in the New World.Trade in Strangers fills an important gap in our knowledge of America's immigration history. The eighteenth-century changes established a model for the better-known mass migrations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which drew wave after wave of Europeans to the New World in the hope of making a better life than the one they left behind--a story that is familiar to most modern Americans.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Based on detailed research in German, Dutch, English and American archives,Trade in Strangers is clearly the best study we have of this important migration and will serve as the starting point for all future scholarship on the subject. . . . Wokeck presents the clearest description I have seen of the redemptioner system, and offers a compelling account of the experience of eighteenth-century trans-Atlantic migrants. In sum, this is a first-rate book that deserves a large audience. --Russell R. Menard, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

This is a rich study of the peopling of North America that should be of widespread interest to specialists in many sub-disciplines of history. --Susan E. Klepp, Temple University Book Review

Trade in Strangers makes a useful contribution to our knowledge of colonial immigration, and raises many questions for future research. --David W. Galenson, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

About the Author

Marianne S. Wokeck is Associate Professor of History at Indiana University/Purdue University at Indianapolis. She was previously Associate Editor of The Papers of William Penn and director of the Biographical Dictionary of Pennsylvania Legislators.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Pennsylvania State Univ Pr (Txt) (April 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 027101833X
• ISBN-13: 978-0271018331
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,335,944 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The fascinating mechanics of early immigration., September 2, 2000

By 

Mark Howells (Puyallup, Washington State, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Trade in Strangers: The Beginnings of Mass Migration to North America (Paperback)

How did tens of thousands of Germans and Irish arrive in America before the War for Independence?

How did they decide on the journey? What factors turned their heads westward instead of to the eastern settlement schemes of Prussia, or the Austrian or Russian empires? Where did they get their advice from? Who led the Germans down the Rhine? How were they collected for trans-Atlantic shipment? Which middlemen profited from (or exploited) the "trade in strangers"? What were the costs of their passage? How were they received in the valley of the Delaware?

This scholarly book addresses the earliest trans-Atlantic mass migration to North America - those immigrants from southwestern Germany and northern Ireland who arrived prior to 1775. It answers the above questions and many more.

Our immigrant ancestors didn't just jump on a boat one day and arrive in the New World many weeks later without an entire system of personal and commercial contacts, information flows, and market forces to facilitate their passage. The huge influx of Germans prior to the Revolution followed a very complex chain of immigration which ensured that ships sailing to Philadelphia from ports in Holland carried "Redemptioners" rather than mere ballast. This book is primarily focused on their experiences.

The later and lesser pre-1775 Irish immigration differed significantly from the German experience both in immigrant composition and geographic mix between the northern counties and the southern counties of Ireland. Elements of the both the German immigrant trade and the Irish immigrant trade prior to the Revolution set the pattern for all later migration in the 1800s.

If you have Palatine, Swiss, or other German ancestors who landed in Philadelphia prior to 1775, this work is a fascinating study in understanding what they were up against - the "system" that moved them and the challenges they faced within that system.

Using both first-hand accounts and statistical analysis of diverse sources and studies, "Trade in Strangers" is an excellent way to understand early German and Irish immigration into the New World. Its focus is primarily the German immigration into the port of Philadelphia but it does mention why other destinations in America were less successful at attracting these immigrants. The smaller Irish immigration prior to 1775 is dealt with to a lesser extent and is mostly used as contrast for comparison to the simultaneous German immigration.

The elements of the system of immigration to America which were to remain constant until at least 1924 are highlighted because they were first used to channel these two early immigrant streams from Germany and Ireland.

This is a thoroughly-researched and well-written book. Historians of the American colonial experience, students of immigration, and family historians may all profit from reading this.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Definitive Work on a Much Neglected Subject, October 16, 2002

By 

Jerry Aurand(Fillan) (Warren OH, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Trade in Strangers: The Beginnings of Mass Migration to North America (Hardcover)

As an amateur genealogist and family researcher I have had many questions on the mechanics of how my ancestors made their voyage from Nassau (Germany) to Pennsylvania in the 18th Century. Most sources skip over these details. However, to understand the challenge they faced, one must know these details. Wokeck has mastered many documentary sources on both sides of the Atlantic to provide the definative answers to such questions. She also explores how these early mass migrations of Germans and Irish provided a model for the later and better known 19th Century migrations. To understand how we became Americans all of use must understand the immigrant experience. That experience began with the subject of this book: the development of the transportation of European migrants into a successful business enterprise. It began small, sporadic, and experimental and became a mass commercial enterprise which was both efficient and profitable. The text and the cited sources are invaluable. I was exhilarated after reading it. It has renewed my enthusiasm for my research at a time it was in the doldrums. Any person with a 'Palatine' ancestry should consider this a 'must read.'

Also recommended: A Tide of Alien Tongues, Marrianne Wokeck (1982)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Probably THE authoritative work on the topic - -,, March 11, 2007

By 

James Allen (Lakewood OH USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Trade in Strangers: The Beginnings of Mass Migration to North America (Paperback)

A comprehensive and detailed account of the heavy migration from German-speaking areas of Central Europe, and from Ireland, during the l8th Century. It is heavy with facts and statistics regarding the above subjects, including many charts, tables, and an appendix of all known German voyages during the period. Professor Wokeck has obviously done a lot of work researching and analyzing all the available information. She has also spent more than a little time establishing new estimates of the numbers of persons involved in the above migrations, estimates that will most likely be considered the most authoritative for many years to come.