Print

Introduction: Migrants to America, to 1870 Elliott Robert Barkan A reader—student, scholar, or a member of the general public—exploring the arrival of migrants to the lands that eventually became the United States of America faces an initial series of overarching ques- tions: Which lands can we identify as ultimately being included under the American territorial umbrella, and how did the acquisition of those lands impact the for- tunes of immigrant newcomers? Which were the major groups to migrate during the principal decades of migration beginning in the 1590s (the 1590s mark the first years of Spanish movement into what becomes New Mexico)? How many persons made the journey among each of the principal groups that migrated? What in their respective cultural back- grounds best prepared the newcomers for adaptation to life in America? Who then settled on these lands, and who only visited them? Among those who re- mained and those who did not, what motivated the for- mer to settle and the latter to relocate or return home? Of those who had been compelled to leave their home- land, who were forcibly uprooted and/or otherwise pressured to emigrate? And, finally, who among them ventured to America of their own accord? Answers to these questions are found in the 16 essays located in Part 1 of Immigrants in American His- tory: Arrival, Adaptation, and Integration, covering these groups of people new to the land that would becometheUnitedStates:Africans theBritish(English, Scots, Welsh, and Scots Irish) Canadians the Chinese the Danish the Dutch the French Germans Irish Catholics Irish Protestants the Jews Mexicans Norwegians Poles Spaniards and the Swedes. Even in the early period, the factors determining migration decisions and those shaping settlement experiences varied considerably across all commun- ities. But they did have some comparability where the migration experiences were somewhat parallel or overlapping in time. In collections of essays only alphabetically organized, the reader confronts the daunting task of processing extensive readings in order to extract those specific populations that pos- sessed the commonality of having migrated at similar times and with comparable cultural or economic backgrounds. Broad surveys of different populations do not always account for the impact of particular variables, such as separate settlements begun during the same time periods or newcomers confronting sim- ilar conditions with similar cultural and historical backgrounds. Arranging groups by time period as has been done in three parts of this four-part work is intended to make the evaluative and comparative processes less complex. The underlying assumption here is that by providing groups with separate essays within a shared time frame, similarities and differences in their adap- tation patterns would be more readily discerned. However, while Parts 2 and 3 each cover 70-year peri- ods (1870–1940 and 1940–2010, respectively), Part 1 includes more sparse settlements over a longer period of time, with population numbers rising more sharply during the 50-year period, 1820–1870. The longer time frame for this first era, beginning in 1590, is in- tended to alert readers to the early presence of Mexicans in what later becomes the American Southwest (Santa Fe, New Mexico, was founded in 1609, about two years after Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607), the Dutch in New Amsterdam, and the French in what later becomes the Midwest. 3