3 - Labor for Forests

Summary

In the early 18th century, around 15,000 people fled southwestern Germany for the British Isles with the hopes that Queen Anne would send them to North America. Once they reached England, they established refugee camps near the Thames in and around London, raising fears of disease, competition of refugee artisans with locals, and other issues. Feeling the pressure, Queen Anne supported three resettlement schemes: one to shore up the Protestant presence in Ireland and two to produce naval stores (tar, pitch, turpentine, etc.) in North Carolina and New York. Naval stores were strategic materials used for shipbuilding and consequently European expansion around the world, yet their production involved onerous work in pine forests. The British, having denuded most of their forests for fuel and building materials, were dependent on Scandinavian sources for them. Although the two resettlement schemes targeting North America failed, they constituted early experiments with deploying immigrant labor for difficult, dangerous tasks in the New World.