Contents: 1. German long - distance migration / 2. The flow and composition of German immigration to the American colonies / 3. The trade in migrants / 4. The ordeal of relocation / 5.Irish immigration to the Delaware Valley / Conclusion : A model for the modern era / Appendix : German immigration voyages 1683 to 1775
Summary
"Wokeck shows how first the German system of immigration, and then the Irish system, evolved from earlier, haphazard forms into modern mass trans-oceanic 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. 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." [from the publisher]
