Mass emigration of the Palatinate (1709)

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As mass emigration from the Palatinate (Engl. Palatines ) is the first major wave of emigration from Germany to the Kingdom of Great Britain and the British colonies in North America in the year 1709 , respectively. Caring for and resettling the more than 11,000 impoverished newcomers posed a major challenge for the British government and sparked a domestic political debate and a government crisis.

course

Queen Anne, colored engraving from an atlas made for August the Strong 1706–1710

The subjects of the Electoral Palatinate were burdened by protracted wars and high taxes. They had been advised by distinguished persons in England that they could be better cared for in England if they wanted to go there and from there to places to be indicated. This offer spread in southwest Germany through printed brochures with the picture of Queen Anne and by word of mouth, so that in the spring of 1709 an emigrant fever raged on the Middle Rhine . The emigrants drove down the Rhine in groups and crossed from Rotterdam to London , thinking that they would find a better livelihood. Thousands arrived on English soil within a short time. In May 1709 there were already 6520 people in London. There was initially a plan to house them all together in the province of Kent and for this purpose to buy the large zoo and forest of Coloham (probably Chatham ) from the property of the nobleman Joseph Williamson, but this plan was not carried out. Meanwhile the poor people camped near London. Their number grew from week to week, until it was made known in Germany that no one would be accepted any more. Several hundred Catholics were sent back with travel money because they could not be accepted according to state law. For the others, makeshift huts were set up and a number of places to live in Hampshire were assigned .

The emigrants had meanwhile used up their cash and were stuck penniless and unable to act. On the English side, no one had expected such a large number of arrivals, which probably exceeded 11,000, the population of a province. To accommodate and care for them, 100 commissioners from all classes and dignities were appointed, including dukes, margraves, counts, bishops and knights, at the same time a collection was allowed throughout the kingdom, which brought a large sum of money. In the meantime, Queen Anne had around 800 Reichstaler distributed to her every day , plus around 1000 High German Bibles . Those able to work were to be distributed across the kingdom and whoever needed workers could pick them up. The longer the stay lasted, the worse the general mood became. Conflicts arose between the Palatine or Palatines , as the emigrants were generally called, and the London proletariat over job opportunities. The term Palatines became common and in English used to describe all High German emigrants until the end of the colonial period.

On Gaerrsey (probably Jersey ) you put a canvas - bleach in to deal with a number of people there. Ireland requested emigrants to grow abandoned estates. 500 families, around 3,000 people, were immediately sent there. These were well received and promoted, for example the Archbishop of Dublin had church prayers, songs etc. printed in High German and gifted them to the newcomers. 100 families or 650 people accompanied Christoph von Graffenried to Carolina in 1710 , 850 families or 3,000 people were forwarded to New York in 1710 . An unknown number died prior to the distribution.

Areas of origin in Germany

A statistic from 1711 names the following areas of origin of the emigrants: From the Electoral Palatinate 8589. From the Landgraviate Hessen-Darmstadt 2334. From the County Hanau- Munzenberg , the County Isenburg and surroundings as well as from the Wetterau 1113. From Franconia 653. From the Kurmainzischen 63, from Kurtrierischen 58. From the Diocese of Worms , the Diocese of Speyer and the County of Erbach 490. From the Landgraviate of Hessen-Kassel there were 81 emigrants, from the Duchy of Palatinate-Zweibrücken 125. 203 people were named for the Duchy of Nassau the Alsace came 413 emigrants. 320 people came from the margraviate of Baden . Together with a further 871 emigrants from other territories, this made a total of 15,313 people. The same pamphlet then speaks of 8213 accepted and 6994 returning emigrants; together 15,207 people. With 17,261 deaths in London, this would mean 32,468 arrivals. Due to multiple counting, the numbers seem too high.

Push and pull factors

Winter 1708/1709. Temperature anomaly compared to 1971–2000.

The following reasons for the wave of emigration were given at the time:

  • In the home country the extremely cold and harsh winter 1708/09 , for Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe one of the coldest winters of the millennium, which, with the freezing of winter crops , grapevines and fruit trees, expected inflation and famine, but England and Ireland were not affected would have; the never-ending wars on the Middle Rhine, that is, the ongoing War of the Spanish Succession with constant troop presence and requisitions in the southern Palatinate, the high taxes.
  • In the target country, the naturalization of all Protestants, which has been possible since March 1709, plus generous promises by the landlords to recruit the settlers, namely 100 acres , i.e. 200 acres , land ownership per capita, whether man, woman or child, plus 10 years of tax exemption, as well as the expected religious tolerance for the Protestant nonconformists .

The arrival of the unexpectedly large crowd sparked a domestic political debate about the pros and cons of immigration. Queen Anne advocated a settlement of the Palatinate in England; Others wanted to use them to strengthen Protestantism in Ireland, to work for the British Navy and to repel the French, with whom the kingdom was still at war. When in April 1711 a parliamentary report put the amounts spent at 135,775 pounds sterling , the naturalization law was swiftly repealed.

Return to Germany

Neither the British government nor the comers were prepared for the situation. Hardly anyone was able to gain a foothold on their own without relatives, money, language skills or contacts. Anyone who had dreamed of land, house, cattle and tax exemption was mistaken. In addition to the Catholics who were urged to return, emigrants willing to return came back to Rotterdam several times . Lists of names of the returnees show 508 families or 2,150 people in 1709, 482 families with 1,617 people in 1710, 168 families or 620 people in 1711. Together, this results in 1158 families or 4,387 people.

Settlement

Settlement in Ireland

In September 1709, instead of the 500 families proposed by the settlement commission, 821 families with a total of 3,073 people arrived in Ireland, who initially worked in Dublin building an arsenal and distributed throughout the country on a daily wage . Most of them soon left Ireland on their own, so that in February 1710 there were still 507 families with 2051 people in Ireland, in July 1711 there were still 314 families with 1231 people. Some of the families willing to stay were settled as tenants on the land of the nobles Thomas Southwell and Charles Silver Oliver in County Limerick in south-west Ireland. They established settlements at Rathkeale (Courtmatrass, Castlematrass, Killeheen and Ballingarane). In 1715, 213 named household heads were naturalized by law. The Irish Palatinate continued to differ from the Irish Catholic environment for a long time, also because of the denominational differences.

Settlement in the Province of Carolina

100 families with 650 members were taken over by Christoph von Graffenried , an indebted Bernese patrician who wanted to exploit silver mines in Carolina . They left London in January 1710 with the governor-designate of Carolina Edward Hyde and the surveyor John Lawson in two ships from London. Graffenried himself and his partner Franz Ludwig Michel followed in the summer of 1710 with a small group of Bernese . The newcomers, whose number decreased to 300 by July 1711 due to death and departure, established the settlement of New Bern in what is now North Carolina . As early as 1711 the whole colonization enterprise failed because of the politically unstable conditions in the province. The Tuscarora , on whose land New Bern was built, burned the settlement down, and the settlers went hungry. Lawson was killed, and later Michel too. Graffenried finally withdrew and returned to Bern via London in 1713 . The company describes its justification in a cumbersome manner and is the only source for many events.

Settlement in the province of New York

850 families with 3000 people were embarked at the turn of the year 1709/10 and in 1710 sailed on ten ships with the new governor Robert Hunter and the ordained pastor Josua Harrsch alias Kocherthal to New York City , which they reached in the summer of 1710. The Hunters project, approved by the government, stipulated that the Germans should use the pines there to produce pitch and tar for the magazines of the British Navy. Some emigrants stayed in New York City, for the others barrack camps were built on the middle Hudson , the West Camps (Elizabeth Town, George Town, New Town) at Saugerties on royal land on the west bank and the East Camps (Hunterstown, Queensbury, Annsbury, Haysbury), today Germantown , on the east bank on the property of the nobleman Robert Livingston , who is said to have made good money from the government payments to support the immigrants. The pitch and tar production never got going, be it because of the unsuitable tree species or for other reasons. In September 1712, the government stopped paying the settlers and left them to their fate. After a hungry winter in 1712/13, many families left the camps without authorization. Many settled without tools or cattle under miserable conditions in the not too far distant Schoharietal . Since them there the title deeds were disputed, bought 100 families in 1723 with the approval of the Governor in Stone Arabia patent and Burnetsfield patent land from the Mohawk in the middle Mohawktal , 15 families moved in the same year in a big trek to Pennsylvania , she now considered favorable looked for a settlement, and established the settlement Tulpehocken there .

It remains to be seen whether, as is sometimes claimed, emigrants made it to the Isles of Scilly , Jamaica or Barbados or even joined the pirates on Nassau in the Bahamas .

literature

  • Daniel Defoe : Brief history of the Palatinate refugees. Munich (dtv) 2017.
  • Frank Ried Diffenderffer: The German exodus to England in 1709 - mass emigration of the Palatinate , Lancaster, PA 1897. Published by the Pennsylvania-German Society. openlibrary , google
  • Emil Heuser : Pennsylvania in the 17th century and the Palatinate emigrants in England . Neustadt ad Weinstrasse 1910. openlibrary
  • Walter Allen Knittle: The early eighteenth century Palatine emigration: a British government redemptioner project to manufacture naval stores . Philadelphia, PA 1936. (Dissertation at the College of the City of New York).
  • Walter Allen Knittle: Early Eighteenth Century Palatine Emigration , Philadelphia, PA 1937. E-Text
  • Walter Lenke: Investigation of the oldest temperature measurements with the help of the harsh winter 1708-1709 . Reports of the German Weather Service, Vol. 13, No. 92, Offenbach a. M. (1964). on-line
  • Philip L. Otterness: The unattained Canaan: the 1709 Palatine migration and the formation of German society in colonial America . Iowa City 1996. (Dissertation). google
  • Philip Otterness: Becoming German: the 1709 Palatine migration to New York : Cornell University Press, Ithaca 2004. google
  • Vincent H. Todd; Julius Goebel: Christoph von Graffenried's Account of the Founding of New Bern . The North Carolina Historical Commission, Raleigh, NC 1920. E-Text
  • Theatrum Europaeum , vol. 18 [part 3: 1709], Frankfurt am Main 1720, p. 248 f. on-line

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see Sidney Godolphin, 1st Earl of Godolphin
  2. ↑ a b c Theatrum Europaeum , Vol. 18 [Part 3: 1709], Frankfurt am Main 1720, p. 248 f.
  3. ↑ Moritz Wilhelm Höen [= pseudonym of Anton Wilhelm Böhme]: Canaan , Frankfurt and Leipzig 1711 did not achieve this, which was demanded (the print itself was not available). Quoted in: 1. Frank Ried Diffenderffer: The German exodus to England in 1709 - mass emigration of the Palatinate . Lancaster, PA 1897, p. 155 f. 2. Emil Heuser: Pennsylvania in the 17th century and the emigrated Palatinate people in England , Neustadt ad Weinstrasse 1910, p. 72. 3. (Variant based on a handwritten entry in the Dreieichenhain church register; the contemporary scribe was probably also provided with Höen's pamphlet): Henry Z. Jones, Jr: The Palatine Families of New York , Universal City, CA 1985, ISBN 0-9613888-2-X (set), p. viii.
  4. ^ A b c Walter Allen Knittle: Early Eighteenth Century Palatine Emigration , Philadelphia, PA 1937.
  5. ↑ a b Rüdiger Renzing: Palatine in Ireland . Writings on the history of migration of the Palatinate, volume 39, Kaiserslautern 1989. ISBN 3-927754-02-1 .
  6. ^ Henry Z. Jones, Jr; John P. Dern: Palatine Emigrants Returning in 1710 . In: Pfälzer-Palatines, contributions to the population history of the Palatinate, Vol. 2, Kaiserslautern 1981, pp. 53-78.
  7. ^ Henry Z. Jones, Jr: The Palatine Families of Ireland , Camden, Maine 1990. ISBN 0-929539-09-5 .
  8. ↑ Vincent H. Todd; Julius Goebel: Christoph von Graffenried's Account of the Founding of New Bern . The North Carolina Historical Commission, Raleigh, NC 1920.