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Book Review
Trade in Strangers: The Beginnings of Mass Migration to North America. By Marianne S. Wokeck. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. xxx, 319 pp. Cloth, $60.00, ISBN 0-271-01832-1. Paper, $21.50, ISBN 0-271-01834-8.)
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This book has two general purposes. The first is to offer a meticulous examination of German and Irish migration to the Delaware Valley from the late seventeenth century to the American Revolution. The second is to argue that those migrations established networks of transatlantic trade and shipping that served as models for subsequent European mass immigration to North America. |
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While Marianne S. Wokeck's book has a valuable comparative dimension, it is most noteworthy for its thorough and pathbreaking analysis of German migration. The author has successfully integrated a wealth of information culled from German, Dutch, British, Canadian, and American archives. Wokeck puts her language skills in Dutch and German to excellent use. She also presents maps, tables, and graphs that correlate nicely with the text. An appendix encapsulates data pertaining to most of the 909 known oceanic voyages transporting Germans to the American colonies between 1683 and 1775. Wokeck estimates that 111,000 German immigrants, about three-fourths of whom landed at Philadelphia, came to British North America during these years. |
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