Non-British Immigrants in the 1700s

As a student of culture in all its forms, the writing below was my response to the questions in blue that were given to me for a course on immigration at Metro.

Discuss the newcomers who populated British North America in the 1700s.  What groups of voluntary immigrants arrived during the eighteenth century, what motivated their influx, and how did established colonial residents respond to new arrivals from Europe?  Describe the demand for and process of forced migration of Africans to the colonies.  Is it appropriate to refer to Africans as immigrants?  What role did immigration play in the American Revolution and creation of a new nation at the century’s end?

Not only English people were moving into the British North America, but people from all over Europe. They had many reasons for coming to North America, and even though they were European they were culturally different from the English. This caused them to have different reasons for leaving their home countries and how they treated each other. Even with these prejudices they seemed to agree upon the need for African slaves. These slaves did not fit in with the reasons why Europeans were moving across the ocean, but instead were brought over with no control of where they went. By the time of the American Revolution the interaction of the different European groups would play into building the new nation. The different cultures and how they viewed one another would be a defining part of this period in American History.

There were many different groups of people coming over into the new would besides just the English. One such group was the Germans or German Speaking peoples (Daniels, 69). Their main motives for leaving Europe were mostly due to the politics and economics instead of religion (Daniels, 70). War had devastated much of their land, there was overpopulation in their areas, and a very bad winter were just a few of the reasons that they decided to leave (Daniels, 70). Germans often times deliberately chose to become indentured servants because of the opportunities it could offer them (Daniels, 71-72). Another group was that came to America was the Irish, whose reason was mostly religious based (Daniels, 85). The English and British governments had “enacted a harsh series of penal laws” that affected the Irish’s religious choices (Daniels, 85). Tied with religion was control of land back in Ireland where “only 5% of Ireland’s land remained in Catholic hands, though Catholics represented about 75% of Ireland’s roughly two million people” (Daniels, 85). These were just a few of the groups that would be moving into areas where there were already established colonial residents.

            People that had already established themselves in the colonies viewed the different immigrant groups in different ways. The Germans were viewed as being useful as indentured servants because the very base of the trade allowed their exploitation (Daniels, 74). Even with this laws were passed to help German indentured servants unlike what happened to Irish indentured servants (Daniels, 74-75). “At least three colonies passed laws aimed at stopping or reducing the importation of” the Irish (Daniels, 86). The Irish “were generally unwelcome in the North American colonies” (Daniels, 86). The Jews also had a hard time in the colonies and “suffered legal disabilities” (Daniels, 99). Even though the official tone of the period was supposed to be “secular and tolerant,” anti-Semitism could be seen with “some state laws” continuing “to prescribe religious tests for office holding into the second half of the nineteenth century” (Daniels, 100). Even though these groups were treated with varying amounts of negativity the group that had it the worst off was the Africans.

            When Europeans figure out that they were running out of Indians to use as slaves (due to death from white mans’ diseases) they were forced to look for other sources of slaves, and Africans were already more used to these diseases because of long contact between Europe and Africa (Daniels, 105). During the colonial period a staggering number of Africans were brought to the new world (5 Africans for every 1 European) (Daniels, 53). There were many jobs that slaves could be made to do, and they did everything from working in the fields to being domestic servants. There was a triangle of trade, with most ships starting out in New England, going to Africa to pick up slaves, dropping slaves off in places like the West Indies, where they traded them for goods (like molasses or rum) that they then returned to New England with (Daniels, 54). Of the 10 million people kidnapped from Africa, only about $27,300 made it to the area of the United States (most of which were in the South) (Daniels, 61). Even though the Africans were showing up in large numbers in other countries, it is not necessarily right to use the term immigrant for them.

The book “Coming to America” focuses on the causes/reasons that people become immigrants, but for all the other peoples (except for the Africans) it was a choice to move (Daniels, 66-100). In some cases it did boil down to life or death for so people, but it was still an active choice of theirs to move to some place verses another. The Africans had no choice. They were kidnaped (nearly 10 million) from their homes and sold into slavery with no control over where they ended up (Daniels, 61). Even Europeans that were forced out of one area could decide how far they went (such as just to another European country or all the way across the ocean to the new world). The Africans had all choices taken from them and because of this lumping them into the term immigrant does not embrace what truly happened to them. Even if Africans did not perfectly fit the concept of immigrants, the other groups that did would help in the fight to create a new nation.

            Immigration was very important in the American Revolution. One of the immigrate groups to help fight were the Irish because they had no love for the British crown after all of the trouble that had been caused by it (Daniels, 86). There were even Irish specific units that picked up arms to oust the British (Daniels, 86). They were willing to fight on the side of the revolutionaries even when they could look back and see how bad they had been treated in the past by colonists (Daniels, 86). Their issues with the British must have seemed larger to them than the ones that they had with their “fellow Americans.” The Swedes also made a “mark in revolutionary politics” with John Morton (a signer of the Declaration of Independence) and John Hanson (“a presiding officer of the Continental Congress”) (Daniels, 98). With so many different groups fighting together, revolutionaries down played ethnic discord or pretended that it never existed (Daniels, 111). Their “natural-rights philosophy” of the period made them lean more towards “tolerance and nonsectarianism” (Daniels, 116). This would be the start to changing how people viewed each other.

            All the groups coming over from Europe during the 1700s had motivations for doing so and some of these motivations overlapped, like wanting religious freedom or acquiring land. Depending on where immigrants came from and how useful they were perceived to be to the area dictated how they were treated by established colonial residents. Unlike the other groups of people coming to the new world, Africans were forced/kidnapped into making the trip and the term immigrant may be hard to place on them because of this. The different groups that immigrated to America played a role in the American Revolution and the philosophy of this period started to link them more together as “one” people. Over all, even though there were some rough spots between the different groups a sense of nationalism was starting to bring people together.

Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A Story of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life, Second Edition (ISBN 9780060505776)