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Becoming German: The 1709 Palatine Migration…
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Becoming German: The 1709 Palatine Migration to New York (edition 2006)

by Philip Otterness (Author)

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Becoming German tells the intriguing story of the largest and earliest mass movement of German-speaking immigrants to America. The so-called Palatine migration of 1709 began in the western part of the Holy Roman Empire, where perhaps as many as thirty thousand people left their homes, lured by rumors that Britain's Queen Anne would give them free passage overseas and land in America. They journeyed down the Rhine and eventually made their way to London, where they settled in refugee camps. The rumors of free passage and land proved false, but, in an attempt to clear the camps, the British government finally agreed to send about three thousand of the immigrants to New York in exchange for several years of labor. After their arrival, the Palatines refused to work as indentured servants and eventually settled in autonomous German communities near the Iroquois of central New York. Becoming German tracks the Palatines' travels from Germany to London to New York City and into the frontier areas of New York. Philip Otterness demonstrates that the Palatines cannot be viewed as a cohesive "German" group until after their arrival in America; indeed, they came from dozens of distinct principalities in the Holy Roman Empire. It was only in refusing to assimilate to British colonial culture--instead maintaining separate German-speaking communities and mixing on friendly terms with Native American neighbors--that the Palatines became German in America.… (more)
Member:sallyandbob
Title:Becoming German: The 1709 Palatine Migration to New York
Authors:Philip Otterness (Author)
Info:Cornell University Press (2006), Edition: 1, 235 pages
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Becoming German: The 1709 Palatine Migration to New York by Philip Otterness

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In Becoming German, Philip Otterness tells the story of a disparate group of German-speaking peoples from across southwestern Germany who, beginning in 1709, left their country to settle in upstate New York. Although he shows that the migrants came from dozens of communities and carried no single identity, much less a “German” identity, they adapted and adopted a sort of single group identity to attain their desired lands in the British New World. Once the mass of migrants reached the colonies, they forged a unique path between the Indians, the Dutch, and the English to retain a semblance of culture that was their own, a distinct “German” culture that was different from the “others” that surrounded them.

Otterness uses a variety of sources, but primarily utilizes contemporary primary sources, in both German and English, from the migrant’s homelands, from their stay in and around Rotterdam and London, and from their eventual settlement in New York. By utilizing these documents, in addition to more recent genealogical research and a base of secondary material, he is able to analyze the process in which the migrants became first Palatines and then Germans, and their collective motives for taking up these identities. Otterness’s description of events proceeds in a narrative fashion, but he does sprinkle his story with analysis and contentions that support his theory. The fact that he clearly states his thesis in the introduction helps the reader to grasp the lines of his argument throughout the text.

Otterness ably proves, through analysis of petitions some migrants had to fill out to leave the territory, genealogical records, and information provided to benefactors in London, that most of the “Palatines,” as the British insisted on calling them, were not strictly from the Palatinate. Still, the mostly Whig supporters of the influx of migration to Britain lumped the differing multitude together and gave them one name and identity: “poor Protestant Palatines.” The fact that around thirty percent of them were Catholics and thus undeserving of “protection” from French Catholic atrocities, at first at least, escaped the attention of their promoters. The migrants too, encamped around London waiting for removal to the New World, accepted this designation because it was politically expedient – outwardly at the utmost. This is one point where his argument is a bit lean. Otterness contrasts the first and second petitions the migrants sent to the royal government. In the first the petitioners “relied too heavily on the truth and showed little recognition of the British prejudices that might have proved useful to them.” The second petition, however, portrayed the Germans as “poor distressed Protestants,” downtrodden by “a Bloody Enemy, the French.” Although he makes it clear that the second petition was probably authored by a select cadre of individuals, probably the German pastors in London, he goes on to intimate that all the Germans took up the stereotypes the British placed on them. Phrases like “they called themselves,” and “they blamed” imply that the entire mass of migrants, strewn across the countryside surrounding London, got together and created the petition. This, most assuredly, was not the case. Did all the migrants begin thinking of themselves as Palatinates or calling themselves such to appease British sensibilities?

Fortunately, this petition is not the crux of his argument. The German-speaking migrants did begin to highlight the similarities they had between each other against the British “other” they encountered on a daily basis. This group identity survived when they reached New York, even though many continued to call themselves after their native states. Here they battled the machinations (so they believed) of Governor Robert Hunter and played themselves off as intermediaries between the Iroquois and Europeans in upper New York, even to the point of pursuing their own independent Indian policy. The group, Otterness maintains, sustained most of their cohesiveness after they acquired their own lands in the Schoharie and Mohawk valleys. Here they retained their language, their own schools, and their own religion with only a modicum of change to their daily lives. Although he tends to stress how they kept their “Germaness” he does note significant changes to their diet with the introduction of new plants and animals. Only the coming of the French and Indian War in the mid 1750s prompted the “German” communities, as they were invariably called by their colonial counterparts, did they enter into a more direct dialogue with the surrounding British colonial culture and power structure. Still the German communities still were different enough for late eighteenth century commentators to note the strangeness of some of their folkways, such as allowing women to do outdoor, “un-domestic” labor.

Otterness’s work does draw attention to how a heterogeneous assortment of people from southwest Germany was first labeled by a culture as a homogeneous group and then able to use that created identity to its own ends. The subsequent trip to and settlement in British North America further broke down the bonds of regionalism and stressed the similarities in their culture. Because the German-speaking migrants were treated as a monolithic culture by the groups they encountered, and it was in their interests to appropriate that label, they truly were the first Germans. ( )
  tuckerresearch | Feb 9, 2007 |
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Becoming German tells the intriguing story of the largest and earliest mass movement of German-speaking immigrants to America. The so-called Palatine migration of 1709 began in the western part of the Holy Roman Empire, where perhaps as many as thirty thousand people left their homes, lured by rumors that Britain's Queen Anne would give them free passage overseas and land in America. They journeyed down the Rhine and eventually made their way to London, where they settled in refugee camps. The rumors of free passage and land proved false, but, in an attempt to clear the camps, the British government finally agreed to send about three thousand of the immigrants to New York in exchange for several years of labor. After their arrival, the Palatines refused to work as indentured servants and eventually settled in autonomous German communities near the Iroquois of central New York. Becoming German tracks the Palatines' travels from Germany to London to New York City and into the frontier areas of New York. Philip Otterness demonstrates that the Palatines cannot be viewed as a cohesive "German" group until after their arrival in America; indeed, they came from dozens of distinct principalities in the Holy Roman Empire. It was only in refusing to assimilate to British colonial culture--instead maintaining separate German-speaking communities and mixing on friendly terms with Native American neighbors--that the Palatines became German in America.

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