"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

Hopeful Journeys
German Immigration, Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial America, 1717-1775

Aaron Spencer Fogleman

272 pages | 6 x 9 | 41 illus.
Paper 1996 | ISBN 978-0-8122-1548-9 | $24.95s | £16.50 | Add to shopping cart
A volume in the Early American Studies series

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

"A major contribution to our understanding of the re-peopling of America in the eighteenth century."—American Historical Review

"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

Aaron Spencer Fogleman is Associate Professor of History at the Northern Illinois University.

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