Hopeful Journeys: German Immigration, Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial America, 1717-1775 – Aaron Spencer Fogleman
1) Hopeful Journeys: German Immigration, Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial America, 1717-1775 – Aaron Spencer Fogleman
University of Pennsylvania Press | 1996 | PDF
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.
2) Immigrant and Entrepreneur: The Atlantic World of Caspar Wistar, 1650-1750 – Rosalind Beiler
Penn State University Press | 2008 | PDF
Immigrant and Entrepreneur examines the life of German immigrant and successful businessman Caspar Wistar. Wistar arrived in Philadelphia in 1717 with nearly no money; at the time of his death in 1752, his wealth outstripped that of the contemporary elite more than threefold. Through this in-depth look at an immigrant’s path to achieving the American Dream, Beiler reevaluates the modern understanding of the entrepreneurial ideal and the immigrant experience in the colonial era.
The book follows Wistar’s life from his family’s German influences to the potential reasons behind his desire to emigrate and the networks he used to establish himself as a wealthy entrepreneur once he reached his adopted home. Beiler draws from Wistar’s compelling story to examine the greater processes at work in the Atlantic world of the eighteenth century. Wistar’s success exemplifies how European influence, patterns of adaptation, and an innovative cultivation of networks helped integrate immigrants into colonial America and the Atlantic world.
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Immigrant and Entrepreneur. The Atlantic World of Caspar Wistar, 1650-1750.pdf
