Bernard Bailyn did extensive research in order to write his book "Voyagers to the West." He used immigration records as well as letters, diaries, and business records. It is primarily a book about immigrants from England and Scotland who settled in America during the years just before the American Revolution. He describes in detail from which areas of England and Scotland they came, whether they were single or families, rich or poor, how they were employed, and what may have caused them to decide to emigrate to America. He also goes into great detail telling what areas of America they settled in, and how they came to choose those specific areas. For instance, he shows that there were two primary groups immigrating. One group was of established farm families, and the other group consisted of mostly young single men from urban areas such as London searching for adventure and jobs.
Bailyn gives us a great picture of what people were going through, and why they made the choices that they did. I must admit though, that some parts of the book were somewhat slow. I might have suggested leaving some parts out to make it a far more interesting read. ( )

4535. Voyagers to the West A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution, by Bernard Bailyn with the assistance of Barbara DeWolfe (read 13 Feb 2009) (Pulitzer History prize in 1987) This won the 1987 Pulitzer History prize and is the 47th such winner I have read. It is exhaustively researched, and unless one is interested in the genealogy of the people who came from England and Scotland in the 1770's it is likely to be boring--as I often found it to be. Some things are of interest, particularly toward the end of the book, where details are set out of efforts to organize immigration projects and settlements. The plight of indentured servants is brought out--treated almost as slaves were. Not a page-turner, but I am glad I read the book.. ( )

A Pulitzer Prize winner, maybe for Bernard's amazing research, but truly not for it's readability. This book should be renamed to, Details of the Voyagers to the West. It is nice that detail is available but should be limited to charts, indexes in the back of the book. Not pages of facts, numbers, names, places laced throughout the work.

This 600+ page book contains only a 3-page introduction and relitively no conclusions, though he does a good job sticking to his thesis statements made in the intro. "the magnitudes of immigration were on such a large scale . . . [that it] transformed. . . American life." He proves that the people who emigrated from Scotland & England were immigrating to better their lives in America, and once in America their lives were changed. Social norms and living standards as well as a lack of peerage were upturned. This had enormous impact on relationships between America and Briton.

Bailyn claims that emigration numbers were enormous. Newspapers from 1750-1770 bemoaned the horrible effects of people moving to America. But in Colley's "Britons" nothing is mentioned about this, in her index the word emigration is not even mentioned.

Bailyn's book is not for casual readers, but for those scholars interested in immigration of the American colonies. He does not give %'s only numbers making it difficult to judge proportion.

01-2009 ( )