| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.3

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 244 words from this article are provided below; about 402 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Foreigners in Their Own Land: Pennsylvania Germans in the Early Republic. By Steven M. Nolt. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002. x, 238 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-271-02199-3.)
This judicious assessment of the transformation of Pennsylvania German culture from 1790 to 1850 fills a major historiographical gap. Steven M. Nolt convincingly integrates sweeping themes of national, religious, and ethnic identity with clear analyses that remain close to his evidence. Nolt argues that Pennsylvania Germans "were the first major group to experience ... ethnicization-as-Americanization" (p. 3) wherein "cultural particularism and universalizing political ideology could coincide" (p. 26). By 1850 Pennsylvania Germans increasingly participated in American public life and still maintained a strong sense of ethnoreligious distinctiveness. Nolt shows that cultural assimilation and cultural separatism were not exclusive choices in the early republic.	1
Given the importance of American pluralism, this book deserves a large audience, especially due to its concise and synthetic style. Nolt's Pennsylvania Germans are Lutheran and German Reformed adherents (as opposed to much smaller sectarian groups) who mostly descended from colonial-era immigrants. They merit close attention as the largest non-British white cultural group in early America (representing about a tenth of the national white population and a third of Pennsylvanians in 1790). Although the group also settled from Tennessee to Ontario, the label is well chosen to distinguish them from later German immigrants to the Midwest whose quite different ethnic formation centered more fully upon economic class.	. . .

There are about 402 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.