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THE RHINE EXODUS OF 1816/1817 WITHIN THE DEVELOPING GERMAN ATLANTIC WORLD*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2015

JAMES BOYD
JAMES BOYD*
Affiliation:
Cardiff University
*
Cardiff School of History, Archaeology & Religion, Cardiff cf10 3eu[email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines the exodus down the Rhine in 1816 and 1817 of tens of thousands of German migrants, who attempted to reach the United States after the Napoleonic Wars. It establishes the episode as an important link between the mass-migration periods of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which saw more Germans land in North America than any other European group. The article focuses on the active commercial, logistical, social, and religious networks, produced in the eighteenth century, which made the exodus possible, and how it in turn changed future migration patterns. This integrates the exodus into an evolving German Atlantic movement, where previous historiography has treated it as an isolated episode, produced by extraordinary post-war conditions.

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Articles
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The Historical Journal , Volume 59 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 99 - 123
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

This research was generously supported by the Gerda Henkel Foundation Research Scholarship AZ/37/V/13, and the Horner Library Fellowship of the GHI, Washington DC. I am grateful to Frank Trommler, Gerwin Strobl, and Geraint Evans for comments on an earlier version of this article, as well as the helpful suggestions of two anonymous referees.

References

1 The Württemberg interior ministry counted 17,216 emigrants from January to July 1817, the Baden ministry 16,321 from January to May. More than 2,000 departed Württemberg in 1816, a number likely exceeded in Baden. See Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart (HSAS) E146 Bu1783; Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe (GLK) E236 2871.

2 The majority of Russian migrants departed from Württemberg, where they contributed 9,222 of the 1817 total. HSAS E146 Bu1783.

3 In his seminal narrative of German-American migration, Mack Walker suggested that as many as 75,000 could have tried to depart Baden and Württemberg, two-thirds from the former, and one third from the latter. Mack Walker, Germany and the emigration, 1816–1885 (Cambridge, MA, 1964), pp. 30–1.

4 See Günter Moltmann, Aufbruch nach Amerika: Friedrich List und die Auswanderung aus Baden und Württemberg 1816/1817 – Dokumentation einer sozialen Bewegung (Tübingen, 1979). A second edition of Moltmann's Aufbruch was printed in 1989, omitting the fabricated Hungerchronik von Laichingen, cited in the original. The first edition is used here. Walker, Emigration, pp. 1–41, gives a lengthy description of events in 1816/17. Some Württemberg networks are touched on in Bassler, Gerhard P., ‘Auswanderungsfreiheit und Auswandererfürsorge in Württemberg 1815–1855: zur Geschichte der südwesdeutschen Massenwanderung nach Nordamerika’, Zeitschrift für Württembergische Landesgeschichte, 12 (1974), pp. 129–34Google Scholar, providing a lead into the present research.

5 This historiography had a nascent precedent in some earlier study, notably Peter Marschalck, Deutsche Überseewanderungen im 19. Jahrhundert: Ein Beitrag zur soziologischen Theorie der Bevölkerung (Stuttgart, 1973), as well as Walker's still informative Emigration. In-depth historiography began to develop at the tri-centennial of the first German arrivals in North America, in 1983. See Günter Moltmann, ed., Germantown: 300 Jahren Auswanderung in die USA, 1683–1983 (Stuttgart, 1982), published simultaneously as Germans to America: 300 years of immigration, 1683–1983; also Frank Trommler and Joseph McVeigh, eds., America and the Germans: an assessment of a three hundred year history (Philadelphia, PA, 1985). Major analytical enquiries include Wolfgang von Hippel, Auswanderung aus Südwestdeutschland: Studien zur Württembergischen Auswanderung und Auswanderungspolitik im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1984); Walter D. Kamphoefner, The Westfalians: from Germany to Missouri (Princeton, NJ, 1987); Walter D. Kamphoefner, Johannes Helbich, and Ulrike Sommer, eds., Susan Carter Vogel trans., News from the Land of Freedom: German immigrants write home (Ithaca, NY, 1991); Dirk Hoerder and Jörg Nagler, eds., People in transit: German migrations in comparative perspective (Washington DC, 1995). Recent historiography has taken a focused turn toward acculturation and the role of German immigrants in American society, particularly the Civil War era.

6 A. G. Roeber, Palatines, liberty and property: German Lutherans in colonial British America (Baltimore, MD, 1993); Mark Häberlein, Vom Oberrhein zum Susquehana (Stuttgart, 1993); Andreas Brinck, Die deutsche Auswanderungswelle in die britischen Kolonien Nordamerikas um die Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1993); Aaron Spencer Fogelman, Hopeful journeys: German immigration, settlement, and political culture in colonial America, 1717–1775 (Philadelphia, PA, 1996); Hartmut Lehmann, Hermann Wellenreuther, and Renate Wilson, eds., In search of peace and prosperity: new German settlements in eighteenth-century Europe and America (University Park, PA, 1999); Marianne S. Wokeck, Trade in strangers: the beginnings of mass migration to North America (University Park, PA, 1999); Georg Fertig, Lokales Leben, atlantisches Welt: Die Entscheidung zur Auswanderung vom Rhein nach Nordamerika im 18. Jahrhundert (Osnabrück, 2000); Rosalind J. Beiler, Immigrant and entrepreneur: the Atlantic World of Caspar Wistar, 1650–1750 (University Park, PA, 2008).

7 Notable exceptions are the tri-centennial publications which, chronologically at least, consider both eras, although without critical examination of the active connections between the two. The study by Wolfgang von Hippel, Auswanderung, also deals with both periods of south-west German emigration to North America, with a focus on continuities in material conditions, rather than active networks. Although not an extensive examination of cross-century network linkages, the best general survey of German emigration to America in the early national period remains Hans Jürgen Grabbe, Vor der großen Flut: Die europäische Migration in die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, 1783–1820 (Stuttgart, 2001).

8 Marginal religious networks directly tied to Penn and his continental agents were not easily accessed by large volumes of the conforming public, nor was close association with such individuals and networks a guarantee of social goodwill. Rosalind Beiler, ‘Dissenting religious communication networks and European migration, 1660–1710’, in Bernard Bailyn and Patricia L. Denault, eds., Soundings in the Atlantic: latent structures and intellectual currents, 1500–1830 (Cambridge, MA, 2009), pp. 220–36, provides a detailed account of the religious networks connecting William Penn with Separatist Rhineland congregations, and ultimately America, while touching on the social (as opposed to political) antipathy towards such groups. Despite the publication of several promotional tracts regarding the colony, produced by Penn himself and the Germantown colonists, the population of Germantown, initially founded by 13 families, grew to just 150 in the twenty-five years to 1708.

9 As many as 13,000 had left the south-west in 1709, attempting to reach the British colonies, based on false assumptions about free offers of land and transportation, initially believing they would be sent to Carolina. See Phillip Otterness, Becoming German: the 1709 Palatine migration to New York (Ithaca, NY, 2004); Marianne S. Wokeck, ‘Rethinking the significance of the 1709 mass migration’, in Jan Stievermann and Oliver Scheiding, eds., A peculiar mixture: German language cultures and identities in eighteenth-century North America (University Park, PA, 2013), pp. 24, 36.

10 Although the 1709 group were mostly sent to New York, they quickly lost patience with a scheme to produce naval stores in return for their passage costs. Some made it as far south as Pennsylvania, and corroborated existing positive reports of the Colony. As William Smith later recorded ‘cheated, abused and deceived in the grants of land assigned to them, and made the property of avaricious designing men, [the Palatines] were forced to seek new habitations. They found their way thro’ the woods to good lands in the colony of Pennsylvania. Here they were used well, and grants made them bona fide. They represented the fraudulent usage of one government, and the justice of the other, to their brethren in Europe; which determined all future German emigrants to prefer this colony.’ William Smith, A true and impartial state of the British and French colonies in North America (London, 1755), p. 142.

11 Records suggest that Rotterdam merchants offered this system as early as 1722. Wokeck, Trade, p. 85. The initial instance of this appears to have been underwritten by Benjamin Furly, Penn's continental agent in Rotterdam.

12 The early availability of this system was detailed by Christopher Saur. See ‘Durnbaugh, Donald F., ‘Two early letters from Germantown’, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 84 (1960), pp. 231–2Google Scholar.

13 Total German emigration to the British American colonies in these years was 57,671, with a major recruiting campaign for Nova Scotia delivering the movement to a peak of 16,675 individuals in 1752, the only year in which Pennsylvania did not command the greatest share. Wokeck, Trade, p. 45; Marianne Wokeck, ‘German immigration to colonial America: prototype of a transatlantic mass migration’, in Trommler and McVeigh, eds., America, p. 7.

14 David Warren Sabean, Kinship in Neckarhausen, 1700–1870 (Cambridge, 1997), provides an extensive analysis of this strategy, also found in other regional micro-study; see Fertig, Georg, ‘Balancing, networking and the causes of emigration: early German transatlantic migration in a local perspective, 1700–1754’, Continuity and Change, 13 (1998), p. 432CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Grubb, Farley, ‘German immigration to Pennsylvania, 1709–1820’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 20 (1990), p. 432CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Von Hippel estimates that in 1700, agriculture was the primary source of income for around 70 per cent of the Württemberg population, and remained so for 60 per cent of the population by 1820. Wolfgang von Hippel, ‘Bevölkerungsentwicklung und Wirtschaftsstruktur im Königreich Württemberg 1815/1865: Überlegungen zum Pauperismusproblem in Südwestdeutschland’, in Ulrich Engelhardt, Volker Sellin, and Horst Stuke, Soziale Bewegung und Politische Verfassung: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Modernen Welt (Stuttgart, 1976), pp. 306–10, 353–60.

16 Hippel, Auswanderung, p. 52. On the nature of guild control in contemporary Württemberg, see Sheilagh Ogilvie, State corporatism and proto-industry: the Württemberg Black Forest, 1580–1797 (Cambridge, 1997); also Sheilagh Ogilvie, A bitter living: women, markets and capital in early modern Germany (Oxford, 2003).

17 Incentives included exemption from tradesman's taxes for up to thirty years in rural regions, and free transportation for those without funds. In the period during which the Russian land offers initially stood – 1763–9 – the estimated number of German immigrants, predominantly from the south-west, was 25,000–27,000, or 4,500 per year at the upper estimate. In the same time period, German immigrants to North America declined to 1,386 per year, or about 14 per cent of the previous peak volumes. Karl Stumpp, The emigration from Germany to Russia in the years 1763 to 1862 (Lincoln, NE, 1973), p. 32; Wokeck, Trade, pp. 45–6.

18 A series of strong harvests in the 1820s significantly lowered grain prices and pushed many small-scale farmers in the south-west to insolvency. When insolvencies peaked in 1828, emigration began. On insolvency levels in Württemberg, see Gerhard Seybold, Württembergs Industrie und Außenhandel von Ende der Napoleonischen Kriege bis zum Deutschen Zollverein (Stuttgart, 1974), p. 35; on rising emigration levels, Hippel, Auswanderung, p. 138. Also Boyd, James, ‘The role of rural textile production in South West German emigration: Württemberg communities in the early nineteenth century’, Textile History, 46 (2015), pp. 28–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Kamphoefner, Westfalians, pp. 12–69, also Anderson, Timothy G., ‘Proto-industrialization, share-cropping and out-migration in nineteenth-century rural Westphalia’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 29 (2001), pp. 1–30CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

20 This pattern of parity-induced decline accords with the Hatton/Williamson model. See Hatton, Timothy J. and Williamson, Jeffrey G., ‘What drove the mass migrations from Europe in the late nineteenth century’, Population and Development Review, 20 (1994), pp. 533–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 With three successive legislative acts in 1783, 1803, and 1816, the British government rendered indenture-based voyages essentially unprofitable, therefore ending the major system of Irish emigration. Kerby Miller, Emigrants and exiles: Ireland and the Irish exodus to North America (Oxford, 1988), pp. 170, 193–4.

22 After 1763, fully half the ships arriving on the Delaware carrying German immigrants were registered in Philadelphia, and only three had no connection to Philadelphia. Wokeck, Trade, p. 95, also appendix, pp. 240–76.

23 Estimates of slightly more than 8,000 German-speaking arrivals for the period 1800–8 seem conservative; Farley Grubb has enumerated 8,031 for Pennsylvania alone, with arrivals in Baltimore likely inflating the figure. See Grabbe, Flut, p. 144; Farley Grubb, German immigration and servitude in America, 1709–1920 (New York, NY, 2011), p. 344.

24 Total figure taken from Burkhart Oertel, Ortssippenbuch Ölbronn (Neubiberg, 2007).

25 Ibid., nos. 1184, 1190.

26 Ibid., no. 1184.

27 Ibid., no. 742.

28 Older merchants continued the trade right up to the turn of the century. See, for example, the large consignments of Warder and Parker in the Independent Gazetteer, 4 Sept. 1784; Willing and Morris in Claypooles Daily Advertiser, 18 June 1792. By 1800, the firms involved in the redemptioner trade from the pre-revolutionary era no longer appear in the local press, with many having dissolved upon the death of their elderly patrons, as happened with Willing and Morris in 1798.

29 The new generation of merchants active in the redemptioner trade were often members of Philadelphia's oldest and most respected merchant families. Between 1800 and 1806, redemptioner ships were consigned by, among others, Manuel Eyre Jr, one of Philadelphia's richest merchants; Samuel Coates, future president of the Pennsylvania Hospital; and Jacob Sperry, a principal stockholder in the Philadelphia bank, and between 1809 and 1815, vice president of the German Society of Pennsylvania. See Poulson's American Daily Advertiser, 28 Oct. 1800, 22 Oct. 1802, 10 Sept. 1804; Oswald Seidensticker, Erster teil der Geschichte der deutschen Gesellschaft von Pennsylvanien: von der Gruendung im Jahre 1764 bis zur Jubelseier der Republik 1876 (Philadelphia, PA, 1917), pp. 442–3; Stephen Noyes Winslow, Biographies of successful Philadelphia merchants (Philadelphia, PA, 1864), pp. 192–3, 229.

30 Grubb, German immigration, p. 344. Just as in the previous century, the majority of immigrants in this period were not endowed with significant material wealth; ships manifests for the period show that more than 60 per cent of arrivals had no possessions of any value. Grabbe, Flut, p. 349.

31 Walker, Emigration, pp. 6–7, gives a very colourful description of weather events during that year.

32 The testimonies are reproduced in whole or in highlights, Moltmann, Aufbruch, pp. 130–66.

33 See in particular the sections devoted to Friedrich List's interviews, ibid., and the sections devoted to conditions in Amsterdam, ibid., pp. 197–9, 201–5.

34 Bassler, ‘Auswandererfürsorge’, p. 130; Walker, Emigration, p. 33.

35 GLK E236 2869.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid.

38 Several families from Lower Schopfheim, led by Christian Waldschmidt, had already settled successfully in Ohio Territory, by way of Pennsylvania, by 1800. See Der Deutsche Pionier, 10 (1878), pp. 349–53Google Scholar.

39 GLK E236 2870 nos. 7, 8, 10, 11.

40 Bassler, ‘Auswandererfürsorge’, p. 131.

41 The binding terminology being that ‘those, who can not pay here, and who wish to pay in Philadelphia, give, whether man or woman, 190 Gulden’ (‘Die, so hier nicht bezahlen können, und in Philadelphia bezahlen wollen, geben, es sein Mann oder Weib, hundert und neunzig Gulden’). This was a 20 Gulden increase on those able to pay in Amsterdam. GLK E236 2870 no. 37.

42 Atlantic migration was not, however, unprecedented. See n. 38 above.

43 Lancaster Journal, 26 Aug. 1816. The brig Brodershap arrived in Philadelphia on 16 August, and was the first German passenger ship to arrive from Amsterdam that year.

44 Ibid.

45 ‘ohne Geld kann man aufgenommen werden; aber dann ist man Sklave im strengsten Sinne des Wortes…Kann der Amerikaner ihn brauchen, so bezahlte er ihm die Frachtgelder, und der europäische Sklave muß selben binnen 8 bis 10 Jahren bei kärglichten unterhalt abverdienen; nach Verlauf dieser Zeit ist er wieder so Reich, als er kaum bei seiner abreise aus Europa war, und ist und bleibt auf fremden Boden, fern von seinen Geliebten und Jugendfreunden, ein ewiger Taglohner. Es giebt Ausnahmen; aber diese sind äuserst selten.’ Großherzoglich Badische Staats-Zeitung, 16 Dec. 1816.

46 Walker, Emigration, p. 6.

47 ‘sie wollen lieber Sklaven in Amerika seyn als Bürger in Weinsperg’. Moltmann, Aufbruch, p. 150.

48 In 1816, 2,063 left Württemberg for foreign territories. From January to July 1817, the figure leaving for foreign territories was 16,797. HSAS E146 1783.

49 Karl J. Arndt, George Rapp's Harmony Society: 1787–1847 (Philadelphia, PA, 1965), pp. 65, 68.

50 Ibid., p. 68; Ralph B. Strassburger, Pennsylvania German pioneers: a publication of the original lists of arrivals in the port of Philadelphia from 1727 to 1808 (Norristown, PA, 1934), pp. 165–9. Many of those who departed the village of Ölbronn were followers of Rapp.

51 Arndt, Harmony, pp. 182–3.

52 Moltmann, Aufbruch, pp. 140–2.

53 Ibid., pp. 166–9.

54 HSAS E146 Bu1628 no.18.

55 ‘so viel er wisse, hatten die ersten aus dem Württembergische abgegangenen Auswanderer die bekanntschaft des Dirks in dem Niederlanden gemacht, und diese hätten ihn an Ihrer Landsleute empfohlen’. HSAS E146 1628 no. 15.

56 Ibid.

57 Strassburger, Pennsylvania, pp. 165–9. Each of the first three groups, on the Aurora the Atlantic, and the Margaret's first voyage, embarked from Amsterdam.

58 HSAS E146 1628 no. 21. Greulich lived in the village of Nordheim, a neighbouring community to Rapp's home village of Iptingen, Arndt, Harmony, p. 50.

59 HSAS E146 1628 no. 21.

60 HSAS E146 1628 no. 16.

61 48 per cent as the upper estimate from available records; Grabbe, Flut, p. 335.

62 The customary nature of the trade, as opposed to its basis in law, was given great attention through the legal research of Christian Mayer, of the German Society of Maryland, who noted in 1785 that as existing laws pertained only to ‘convicts from British and Irish prisons or negro slaves’, ‘only custom and habit oblige the German emigrants to accept…service contracts’. In legal terms, ‘the contract which they engage in with the shipowner in Holland does not bind them in anyway. When they arrive here they are mere debtors of the captains or owners of the vessel and legally they could apply for the relief of insolvent debtors.’ The fact that in all but exceptional circumstances very few did speaks to the immigrants’ ignorance of American laws, the practicalities of absconding from a captains' boat, and in light of Mayer's best efforts, the overall strength of the redemptioner system as an informal economic institution. Klaus Wust, Pioneers in service: the German Society of Maryland, 1783–1981 (Baltimore, MD, 1981), pp. 6–7.

63 HSAS E146 Bu1783.

64 GLK E236 2871.

65 See Moltmann, Aufbruch, pp. 197–9, 201–5, 212–14.

66 Hans von Gagern, Mein Antheil and der Politik, iii (Stuttgart, 1830), pp. 147–8.

67 Arndt, Harmony, p. 190.

68 See, for example, the collected essays in Grubb, German immigration, in particular pp. 303–71; on changing migrant strategies as a factor, Drew Keeling, ‘Amerikanischen Arbeitsmärkte und die Einwanderung von den Britischen Inseln und Deutschland, 1700–1914’, in Dittmar Dahlmann and Margrit Schulte Beerbühl, Perspektiven in der Fremde? Arbeitsmarkt und Migration von der frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart (Essen, 2011), pp. 171–89; Fogelman, Aaron, ‘From slaves, convicts and servants to free passengers: the transformation of immigration in the era of the American Revolution’, Journal of American History, 85 (1998), pp. 43–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar, stresses the importance of post-revolution American conditions for ending indentured servitude among all ethnic groups as a whole in the former colonies, but does not extend this explanation to the Germans.

69 Grubb, German immigration, pp. 326, 334, 349.

70 Ibid., p. 349.

71 Ibid., p. 356.

72 Ibid., p. 345.

73 Ibid.

74 HSAS E146 Bu1783 nos. 15–20.

75 Ibid.

76 Ibid.

77 The ship April, whose brokers ‘foreseeing their loss in not shipping more passengers, proceeded to the inhuman speculation of engaging passengers from other vessels, who lay in the same situation waiting for freight’ and who tried to embark 1,200 passengers, remains perhaps the most infamous example. Between the summer of 1817 and its arrival in the Delaware estuary in January 1818, the ship lost 700 passengers; some disembarked in England with sickness, most perished. German Society of Pennsylvania (GSP) Ae2.2, 1802–21; also Swierenga, Robert P. and Lammers, Henry, ‘Odyssey of woe: the journey of the immigrant ship April from Amsterdam to New Castle, 1817–1818’, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 118 (1994), pp. 303–23Google Scholar.

78 In 1819, the Württemberg authorities began to investigate individuals suspected of migrant recruitment, who had returned from Philadelphia, including the prominent German-American merchant, C. L. Mannhardt, a leading figure in American society, but wanted in Württemberg for ‘seducing Württemberg subjects to emigrate’. See HSAS E146 Bu1628. Ironically, Mannhardt had been the first notary to board the ship April after its arrival, in order to help the passengers, and was also prominent in publicizing abuses of the redemptioner system. See GSP Ae2.2, 1802–21; Grabbe, Flut, p. 347.

79 Keeling, ‘Amerikanischen Arbeitsmärkte’, pp. 178–85, has argued the importance of the redemptioner system as a risk strategy for migrants, who took advantage of it for integration into American economy and society, but who turned away from the system after 1820 as the ease of entry into an industrializing economy undermined any need of indenture. This is a sure contributor to the loss of the system's few remaining clients after 1819. However, the role of risk management in underpinning the redemptioner system, prior to the exclusion of poorer migrants in 1819, should not be overestimated. The socio-economic standing of German Atlantic migrants during the high points of redemptioner traffic, overwhelmingly concentrated into the poorer, wage-earning sections of society, indicate the importance of the system first and foremost as an access mechanism – until barriers were erected by Dutch legislation.

80 Ticket prices from Le Havre and Bremen were in the region of 70–5 Gulden, as compared to a standard price of 170–5 Gulden from Amsterdam during 1817. The smaller sum still prohibited much migration, unless subsidized by family. During the food crises of the late 1840s and early 1850s, widowers and day labourers were commonly given the sum of 75 Gulden from the community poor box in order to emigrate, indicating that lower price levels still represented a barrier to migration for those who would have traditionally used redemptioner contracts. Price data for Le Havre taken from Hugo Sattler, Auswanderer der Gemeinde Ötisheim: Ein Beitrag zum Schwäbischen Weltwanderbuch, 1937 (Pforzheim, 2001), p. 6; for Bremen, Rolf Engelsing, Bremen als Auswandererhafen, 1683–1880 (Bremen, 1961), p. 119; for the 1817 exodus as quoted in contemporary sources, HSAS E146 Bu1683 no. 16; GLK E236 2870 no. 37.

81 A ticket from Liverpool was just under 46 Gulden, although passage had to be sought on a trade vessel from Hamburg to England. Only in the late 1840s did Hamburg begin to abandon its hostile attitude to emigrants, and begin shipping significant numbers of emigrants directly, a move led by the formation of Hapag in 1847. Sattler, Auswanderer, p. 6; Michael Just, ‘Schiffahrtsgesellschaften und Amerika-Auswanderung im 19 und frühen 20 Jahrhundert’, in Michael Just, Agnes Bretting, and Hartmut Bickelmann, Auswanderung und Schiffahrtsinteressen: Little Germany's in New York, Deutscheamerikanische Gesellschaften (Stuttgart, 1992), pp. 19–22.

82 Individual financing strategies differed depending on regional institutions of inheritance, however. In the German south-west, where partible inheritance allowed families to sell land in order to raise capital, family migration was common; in impartible regions, such as the German north-west, and parts of Hesse, migration was often financed from the savings of a head of household, who thereafter sent remittances. See Kamphoefner, Westfalians, pp. 40–50; Wegge, Simone A., ‘To part or not to part? Emigration and inheritance institutions in nineteenth-century Hesse-Cassel’, Explorations in Economic History, 36 (1999), p. 40CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

83 In 1817, for example, an entire shipload of 283 Württemberg Separatists from the ship Vaterlands-Liebe moved to Ohio to found a religious settlement. Grabbe, Flut, p. 345.

84 Contemporary reports give examples of redemptioner contracts made at $50 in Philadelphia and sold for $150 in Indiana Territory, whilst other attempts were made to sell $76 contracts for $250 in Ohio. Some shipping merchants attempted to by-pass Pennsylvanian markets and laws altogether in order to sell to buyers from the interior. See Grabbe, Flut, pp. 344–7.

85 Martin Baum, a first-generation German from Alsace who settled in Cincinnati ‘sometime around 1800’, was among the most prominent merchant figures in the city from 1807 to 1831, and ‘in his numerous undertakings he needed reliable labourers, and brought many German redemptioners to Cincinnati, whom he treated well’. Baum founded the first iron foundry in the region, and introduced sail boats to the Ohio and Mississippi in favour of flat and keel boats. Other German merchants were hugely successful in the region, including railroad entrepreneur Johann Jacob Weiler, who arrived in 1818, and died in 1881 as the ‘richest man in central Ohio’. See Der Deutsche Pionier, 10 (1878), p. 44Google Scholar; Albert Bernard Faust, The German element in the United States (2nd edn, New York, NY, 1927), pp. 422, 424–5.

86 From a German-American perspective, see Kamphoefner, Helbich, and Sommer, eds., Vogel, trans., News, esp. pp. 27–30; also Kamphoefner, Walter D., ‘Immigrant epistolary and epistemology: on the motivators and mentality of nineteenth-century German immigrants’, Journal of American Ethnic History, 28 (2009), pp. 34–54Google Scholar.

87 Such publications appeared immediately. Some of the more famous examples are Moritz von Fürstenwärther's Der Deutsche in Nord-Amerika (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1818), the result of a commission to follow the 1816/17 migrants. It was followed by countless others, including Valentin Hecke, Reise durch die Vereinigten Staaten von Nord-Amerika in den Jahren 1818 und 1819 (Berlin, 1820); Ludwig Gall, Meine Einwanderung nach den Vereinigten Staaten in Nord-Amerika (Trier, 1822); Charles Sealsfeld, Die Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika (Stuttgart, 1827); and the most influential tract in the history of German-American migration, Gottfried Duden's Bericht über eine Reise nach den westlichen Staaten Nord-Amerika's, und einen mehrjährigen Aufenthalt am Missouri in den Jahren 1824, ’25 ’26 und ’27 (Elberfeld, 1829). Other examples can be found in Christoph Strupp and Bigit Zischke, German Americana, 1800–1955 (Washington DC, 2005), pp. 138, 190–1.

88 From 1830 to 1834, when significant German emigration resurfaced, the United States claimed 76.9 per cent of all departures; by 1835–9 the figure reached 91 per cent, and remained near or above 90 per cent for the rest of the century. Kollman, Wolfgang and Marschalck, Peter, ‘German emigration to the United States’, Perspectives in American History, 7 (1973), p. 518Google Scholar.

89 Sune Åkerman, ‘Theories and methods of migration research’, in Harald Runblom and Hans Norman, eds., From Sweden to America: a history of the migration (Uppsala, 1976), pp. 25–31.

90 Ibid.

91 Åkerman points out that the introductory phase can be a drawn-out process, which ‘can develop over a relatively long period of time. External factors as well as basic structural features in a population which has been exposed to a [migratory] innovation can delay or accelerate this growth.’ Åkerman, ‘Theories’, p. 28.

92 Ibid., p. 29.

93 See Hatton and Williamson, ‘Mass migrations’.

94 See Wokeck, Trade, p. 44; Fogelman, Journeys, p. 6.

95 As Thistlethwaite suggests, ‘We only come to the secret sources of the [migratory] movement if we work to a finer degree of tolerance.’ See Frank Thistlethwaite, ‘Migration from Europe overseas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’, Rudolph J. Vecoli and Suzanne M. Sinke, A century of European migrations, 1830–1930 (Urbana, IL, 1991), p. 28.