From refugees to settlers: ‘Palatines’ in the British Isles, New York, Carolina, and the Bahamas, 1709-1755

This dissertation examines the migration of German-speaking refugees from the Palatinate region of the southwestern Holy Roman Empire to various British Atlantic colonies in the first half of the eighteenth century. Beginning in the spring of 1709, over ten thousand “Palatine” migrants departed their homelands, floated down the Rhine River, and crossed the English Channel to London, where they expected to receive charitable support and funding for their transportation to North American colonies from Queen Anne I of England (reigned 1702-1714). Over the course of the following decades, Palatine refugees from German lands became central figures in several mercantilist settlement projects designed by British authorities at sites in Ireland, New York, Carolina, and the Bahamas. In examining the experience of Palatine settlers on several different frontiers where they interacted with colonial “others” such as Indigenous Americans, Irish Catholics, and Caribbean pirates, this dissertation is a study of how these German-speaking refugee-settlers negotiated, deployed, or even rejected their status as British colonial subjects. While the majority of these Palatine settlement projects were ultimately catastrophic failures, their study offers an opportunity to explore the ways in which “Palatine” ethnic identity was constructed and understood as part of a British multi-ethnic empire in the first decades of the eighteenth century. It posits that the labeling and categorization of these migrants significantly shaped Anglophone perceptions of non-British ethnic groups and British perceptions of their own society. This dissertation also offers a reevaluation of colonial assimilation narratives and contributes to a broader understanding of racial- and ethnogenesis among white European settlers as an aspect of British colonial expansion in the eighteenth- century Atlantic world.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

History

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2023

Author dc:creator

• Brennan, Margaret Lenore

Contributors dc:contributor

• Koslofsky, Craig
• Rabin, Dana
• Morrissey, Robert
• Fogleman, Aaron
• Gittermann, Alexandra

• Palatine Refugees
• German Transatlantic Migration
• Atlantic World

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2023 Margaret Brennan

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/121524

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F121524