Book Review

Comparative/World

This book is a collection of fourteen essays that grew out of a conference held in 1992 at Pennsylvania State University. According to Hartmut Lehmann, who was the driving force behind this gathering, the goal of the conference was to counteract the influence of "national traditions" (p. xi) in shaping modern histories of internal and transatlantic migrations. Many of the essays in the volume depict striking similarities among Germans migrating to North America and within Europe. These similarities and other findings could indeed contribute to universalizing eighteenth-century migration history. However, the absence of an introduction to integrate the essays into a clearly defined thesis and to link the experiences and patterns of transatlantic and European migration undermines their value. Essays that emphasize, rather than reduce, nationalist perspectives also betray the goal of this book.	1
Thomas Klingebiel's essay, "Huguenot Settlements in Central Europe," contains several examples of significant discoveries that are virtually buried in this non-indexed volume. In his study of Huguenot populations that "settled permanently in German territories" (p. 50), Klingebiel uncovers social and demographic developments that are remarkably similar to those of British North America and the United States. Social mobility was common among Huguenots settling in German territories at the end of the seventeenth century, as well as among the seventeenth and eighteenth-century British, Irish, and Germans who migrated to North America. "Middle class" Huguenots, who constituted about thirty to forty percent of the approximately 43,000 refugees in Klingebiel's sample, exhibited "extraordinary social mobility." Initially Huguenot weavers and cloth manufacturers prospered in their German refuge, but those who lacked the independent resources necessary to purchase essential machinery and to market their productions, eventually fell into "wage dependency" (p. 55). Tradesmen serving domestic needs usually succeeded in establishing and maintaining their own independent shops. Ultimately, Huguenot refugees, who had often emigrated as congregations, experienced "a weakening in the close relations across different social groups," as "Increasingly, propertied Huguenots closed themselves off from their less fortunate brethren" (p. 56). Young adults (average age of twenty-five), married and unattached, were prominent among both Huguenots who migrated to German lands at the end of the seventeenth century and emigrants to early modern North America. In Klingebiel's sample, young Huguenot refugee families, and newly married adults, produced "a birth rate of 5 per cent or more in the first three decades" in their German refuge (p. 57). These figures strongly imply that America's phenomenal eighteenth-century population growth was not due to American's exceptionalism, liberty, or vast frontier but rather to its status as a land of youthful immigrants. However, these connections were not made in the book's introduction, conclusion, or in the essay itself.	2
Mack Walker's chapter, "The Salzburger Migration to Prussia," offers especially valuable, but underemphasized observations. Walker describes the migration of youthful Salzburgers to Prussia in the 1730s as an offshoot of "the seasonal or otherwise temporary migration mainly of unattached . . . individuals" (p. 70), which was part of a "life-cycle experience of a large part of the population, occurring when they had outgrown family dependence but had not yet formed permanent attachments of their own" (p. 71). Such "temporary migrations" parallel indentured servitude among young adults in England, as a temporary interlude between childhood and full adult status. The prevalence of indentured servants and "undomiciled" young adults among British and German migrants to North America as well as within Europe suggests yet another transnational characteristic awaiting analysis and integration into migration literature. And, given Walker's conclusion that "the demographic, social, or economic circumstances of the migrants . . . commonly invoked to explain the push and pull of human migrations . . . seem neither necessary nor sufficient" (p. 70) in explaining the Salzburg migration, new approaches are essential.	. . .