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Becoming German: The 1709 Palatine Migration to New York
" Becoming German nicely details the complex development of ethnic identity in eighteenth-century British America. With engaging prose and a straightforward style, Otterness demonstrates how people from a variety of religious, political, and cultural backgrounds re-shaped the definition others imposed on them and forged a commonly held and unique identity.... Becoming German significantly broadens our understanding of early American identity formation and adds welcome nuance and complexity to our image of cultural encounters in British America."
― Rosalind J. Beiler ― Journal of American Ethnic History Becoming German tells the intriguing story of the largest and earliest mass movement of German-speaking immigrants to America. The so-called Palatine migration of 1709 began in the western part of the Holy Roman Empire, where perhaps as many as thirty thousand people left their homes, lured by rumors that Britain's Queen Anne would give them free passage overseas and land in America. They journeyed down the Rhine and eventually made their way to London, where they settled in refugee camps. The rumors of free passage and land proved false, but, in an attempt to clear the camps, the British government finally agreed to send about three thousand of the immigrants to New York in exchange for several years of labor. After their arrival, the Palatines refused to work as indentured servants and eventually settled in autonomous German communities near the Iroquois of central New York. Becoming German tracks the Palatines' travels from Germany to London to New York City and into the frontier areas of New York. Philip Otterness demonstrates that the Palatines cannot be viewed as a cohesive "German" group until after their arrival in America; indeed, they came from dozens of distinct principalities in the Holy Roman Empire. It was only in refusing to assimilate to British colonial culture—instead maintaining separate German-speaking communities and mixing on friendly terms with Native American neighbors—that the Palatines became German in America.
― Rosalind J. Beiler ― Journal of American Ethnic History Becoming German tells the intriguing story of the largest and earliest mass movement of German-speaking immigrants to America. The so-called Palatine migration of 1709 began in the western part of the Holy Roman Empire, where perhaps as many as thirty thousand people left their homes, lured by rumors that Britain's Queen Anne would give them free passage overseas and land in America. They journeyed down the Rhine and eventually made their way to London, where they settled in refugee camps. The rumors of free passage and land proved false, but, in an attempt to clear the camps, the British government finally agreed to send about three thousand of the immigrants to New York in exchange for several years of labor. After their arrival, the Palatines refused to work as indentured servants and eventually settled in autonomous German communities near the Iroquois of central New York. Becoming German tracks the Palatines' travels from Germany to London to New York City and into the frontier areas of New York. Philip Otterness demonstrates that the Palatines cannot be viewed as a cohesive "German" group until after their arrival in America; indeed, they came from dozens of distinct principalities in the Holy Roman Empire. It was only in refusing to assimilate to British colonial culture—instead maintaining separate German-speaking communities and mixing on friendly terms with Native American neighbors—that the Palatines became German in America.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
235 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
January 20, 2016
More than 300 years ago, a wave of refugees descended on England after hearing that Queen Anne would fund their journey to the North American continent, where they would be given free land and could begin life anew. They were collectively called 'the Palatines', although they came from a number of small principalities in what is today southwestern Germany. In 1708, a small group of people from the same area had successfully traveled to 'Carolina' at the expense of the English crown and were granted land on which to settle. One of their party, Joshua Kocherthal, wrote an account of their journey and urged others to go to London and petition Queen Anne for help. His book was distributed widely along the Rhine, sometimes being read aloud to those who were illiterate. This prompted waves of desperate refugees to head for London, by way of Rotterdam, in 1709. The author explains that historians have speculated about why so many refugees packed up and left all at once. The War of the Spanish Succession had been going on in Europe since 1701 and incursions across the border from France created some havoc. The winter of 1708-9 was the worst in 118 years and many crops were ruined. But in the end, the lives of these people had never been easy. The immigrants were, for the most part, peasants who were kept in poverty by being subservient to the reigning aristocrats in their little city-states, being heavily taxed to pay for their rulers' lavish palaces. The idea of being given land where they could work hard for their own betterment was immensely appealing. Initially, there were those in England who encouraged immigrants to come , not to send them on to North America, but thinking that beefing up their own population was a good idea. As spring flowed into summer though, and the flood of refugees didn't ease, minds began to waver. London, the largest city in Europe then, had 600,000 people in 1709 and already 15,000 refugees were pouring in, overwhelming the camps set up for them. As the author says, there was some confusion as to just who these people were. Here is a paragraph from page 53:
The first step in defining a people is naming them. And the names the British applied to the German-speaking immigrants revealed scant interest in determining their geographic origins or the reasons they had left their homes. In his earliest instructions concerning the migrants, Sunderland referred to them as "poor German Protestants...coming from the Palatinate". The journals of the Board of Trade were filled with many similar references. The minutes of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel referred to "the poor persecuted Palatines lately arrived from Germany", and Daniel Defoe referred to the migrants in his 'Review of the State of the British Nation' as "poor Inhabitants" of the Palatinate fleeing "Popish Persecution" [never mind that a third of them were Catholic!]. The fondness for alliterative terms stuck, although Defoe eventually distilled his description into the more manageable "poor Palatine refugees".
Later, on pages 55-56, the author continues:
In the process of making the German-speaking immigrants well-suited objects of British charity and the potential beneficiaries of naturalization, Defoe created a new identity for them, one that Londoners could readily understand. These poor Palatine refugees were latter-day Huguenots, skilled, albeit rural, laborers on the run from French and Catholic tyranny. In creating this identity, Defoe simply disregarded the immigrants' varied origins and different religious backgrounds. He overlooked why they left their homes, and he ignored their wishes to continue on to America .....The description, of course, was wildly misleading. Most of the German-speaking immigrants were not Palatines, few were fleeing French invasions, and almost none---especially the thousands of Catholics among them---were victims of Catholic persecution. The immigrants were not the first or the last victims of simplistic and ill-informed labels. Studies of migration are full of stories of new arrivals coping with the crude categorization of host populations...Newcomers are compelled to assume a larger, less differentiated identity because the people they encounter either cannot make such fine distinctions or in fact prefer the simplistic, and often pejorative, labels they have created. Meanwhile , the labels dehumanize the newcomers by forcing them into crude and misleading categories that ignore the immigrants' deeply held sense of who they are....Defoe created , and the British people quickly adopted, such a label for the "poor Palatines". But rather than resisting the inaccurate and misleading label, the immigrants embraced the identity that the British forced on them, willfully adopting an identity and a history that had not been part of their past. They had good reason to do so. They faced a dilemma. In one way Defoe had labeled them correctly: they were certainly poor. Most had spent all they had to get to London. They now needed British charity to feed and clothe themselves and , with luck, to get to America. They were not refugees, but it seemed a poor strategy to pose as what they really were: peasant opportunists bent on acquiring free land. Better to adopt the British label and use it to their advantage."
I read this book because my husband's brother has been doing genealogical research and has determined their family was a part of the "poor Palatines". As I read though, I couldn't help but draw analogies between this earlier wave of immigrants and those descending on Europe now from the Middle East. This thoroughly researched book, written by a professor of history at Warren Wilson College, is very accessible and a thought-provoking read.
The first step in defining a people is naming them. And the names the British applied to the German-speaking immigrants revealed scant interest in determining their geographic origins or the reasons they had left their homes. In his earliest instructions concerning the migrants, Sunderland referred to them as "poor German Protestants...coming from the Palatinate". The journals of the Board of Trade were filled with many similar references. The minutes of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel referred to "the poor persecuted Palatines lately arrived from Germany", and Daniel Defoe referred to the migrants in his 'Review of the State of the British Nation' as "poor Inhabitants" of the Palatinate fleeing "Popish Persecution" [never mind that a third of them were Catholic!]. The fondness for alliterative terms stuck, although Defoe eventually distilled his description into the more manageable "poor Palatine refugees".
Later, on pages 55-56, the author continues:
In the process of making the German-speaking immigrants well-suited objects of British charity and the potential beneficiaries of naturalization, Defoe created a new identity for them, one that Londoners could readily understand. These poor Palatine refugees were latter-day Huguenots, skilled, albeit rural, laborers on the run from French and Catholic tyranny. In creating this identity, Defoe simply disregarded the immigrants' varied origins and different religious backgrounds. He overlooked why they left their homes, and he ignored their wishes to continue on to America .....The description, of course, was wildly misleading. Most of the German-speaking immigrants were not Palatines, few were fleeing French invasions, and almost none---especially the thousands of Catholics among them---were victims of Catholic persecution. The immigrants were not the first or the last victims of simplistic and ill-informed labels. Studies of migration are full of stories of new arrivals coping with the crude categorization of host populations...Newcomers are compelled to assume a larger, less differentiated identity because the people they encounter either cannot make such fine distinctions or in fact prefer the simplistic, and often pejorative, labels they have created. Meanwhile , the labels dehumanize the newcomers by forcing them into crude and misleading categories that ignore the immigrants' deeply held sense of who they are....Defoe created , and the British people quickly adopted, such a label for the "poor Palatines". But rather than resisting the inaccurate and misleading label, the immigrants embraced the identity that the British forced on them, willfully adopting an identity and a history that had not been part of their past. They had good reason to do so. They faced a dilemma. In one way Defoe had labeled them correctly: they were certainly poor. Most had spent all they had to get to London. They now needed British charity to feed and clothe themselves and , with luck, to get to America. They were not refugees, but it seemed a poor strategy to pose as what they really were: peasant opportunists bent on acquiring free land. Better to adopt the British label and use it to their advantage."
I read this book because my husband's brother has been doing genealogical research and has determined their family was a part of the "poor Palatines". As I read though, I couldn't help but draw analogies between this earlier wave of immigrants and those descending on Europe now from the Middle East. This thoroughly researched book, written by a professor of history at Warren Wilson College, is very accessible and a thought-provoking read.
January 29, 2013
This book clearly isn't for everyone. The only reason I searched it out and read it is because it is linked to my family history. Through reading this book, I discovered one of my many Palatine German ancestors was a listmaster of one of the early settlements. My brother, who is our official family historian, is incredibly happy that I am now more interested in this topic. I would whole-heartedly recommend this book to anyone that is also intrigued by their New York or Pennsylvania German heritage, because this book was fairly easy to read and it kept me really interested in what was going to happen to the emigrants the entire time. I would also recommend reading it cover to cover; there are lots of fun little facts and notes in the citations at the end.
January 18, 2016
This was a fascinating account of the experiences of a group of German immigrants to America, before Germany was a country and before the United States was a country. Really eye-opening to read of the hardships they endured in the various areas of Germany where they lived, and the whole new set of hardships they encountered on the way to America and once here. Further interesting to know that they felt little kinship with each in their native lands because of the fragmented collection of local principalities, and only grew to develop a shared identity in contrast to others in America--as was said of them at the time: not British, not French, and not Indian, but something other.
May 12, 2017
I wanted to read this after finding out about 5 families in my tree were part of this. It was good to read about this event all in one book. One reason I am interested in researching my family tree is trying to understand the personality and lives of my ancestors were and why they made the big jump to America. This book gives good insight on that, how they spent their days, how their neighbors treated them, etc.
It also did a better job explaining where the immigrants came from (not just Palatine) than other sources I've read so far.
The author tends to repeat himself a bit, and his sources are a bit cumbersome to follow. But it helped me to also understand some of the other sources I have on these families.
It also did a better job explaining where the immigrants came from (not just Palatine) than other sources I've read so far.
The author tends to repeat himself a bit, and his sources are a bit cumbersome to follow. But it helped me to also understand some of the other sources I have on these families.
December 16, 2016
This is an absolutely fantastic book if you are interested in the Palatines. I have read previous books but Philip Otterness has done wonderful original research looking at actual sources of information from the event to provide a realistic view of the Palatine migration, why it happened and the results. Other sources too often just repeat the errors of prior authors. Great information in a readable format with wonderful footnotes, I highly recommend it.
March 20, 2017
Read this book because in my genealogy research, I discovered several of my ancestors hailed from the German Palatine Migration. I wish there was more in the book about those who stayed on the Livingston Manor and what happened to them, but this was an interesting read.
February 19, 2019
This is the most complete narrative I’ve discovered so far of the ‘Palatine’ emigration of 1709-10. The later information - after the Scoharie group left - is less focused and seems to lose its point.
March 14, 2021
Very informative history of this migration
I started this book looking for the history of the Palatine migration from Germany and found much more. This book provides a look at migration of any peoples and why they give up so much to make journeys for a better life. It looks at the risks and the hard won rewards. It makes note of those willing to take advantage of others hardships for their own pockets.
I started this book looking for the history of the Palatine migration from Germany and found much more. This book provides a look at migration of any peoples and why they give up so much to make journeys for a better life. It looks at the risks and the hard won rewards. It makes note of those willing to take advantage of others hardships for their own pockets.
September 1, 2021
Excellent book on the developing German identity of the Palatine immigrant group of 1709. Packed with a lot of information about the Palatine immigrants and their experiences in Germany, London, and Colonial New York. If you are doing any kind of research on the Palatines-genealogical or historical, this should be required reading.
May 9, 2018
I always wanted to understand what happened with the Palatine immigration and how my ancestors who were some of the 1710’ers ended up in Pennsylvania. This gave me a great understanding of their story. Thank you for a well researched and documented account of the Palatines.
March 20, 2022
After reading this book about the New York branch of the 1709 Palatine migration, and listening to Otterness's presentation on the North Carolina branch, I feel extremely thankful that my own Palatine ancestors were sent to Ireland.
June 25, 2019
With so many of my relatives migrating to New York from Germany, I thought this was a fascinating subject. I picked up the book to read more on the topic. Found it interesting.
February 14, 2021
Extremely well explained time line. This book will be very helpful in understanding ancestors movements and motivations.
May 1, 2013
Though I previously new of ancestral links to this migration through London - this book filled in many details of what occurred in New York state after arrival of about 3000 German immigrants responding to the agricultural crisis in the Rhinelands.
The coverage of frontier relations between the Germans and Mohawk was particularly detailed and insightful. Some German leaders sent there children to live with native families - which explains how these same families became peacemakers / negotiators in both NY and PA during the years prior to the French & Indian (7 years) war.
The coverage of frontier relations between the Germans and Mohawk was particularly detailed and insightful. Some German leaders sent there children to live with native families - which explains how these same families became peacemakers / negotiators in both NY and PA during the years prior to the French & Indian (7 years) war.
December 12, 2010
Well researched, based on the details given in the conclusion and appendix, with ample endnotes in the back of the book. This book is able to get behind the motivations of the people who left the German Southwest and eventually made it to New York, although discussing motivations runs the risk of becoming speculation. I thought this book was well-written, and a great addition to my library.
January 26, 2010
A fascinating story, quite well-written, about the ornery Germans (not truly all Palatines) who arrived in America in 1710. (Four of them were my ancestors--can't wait to explore that further.)
April 10, 2015
This was a well researched book and raised interesting points about ethnicity.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews