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Beginning in the 1840s, large-scale German migration to Texas created a sizable and distinctive ethnic community in a region essential to U.S. territorial expansion at Mexico's expense. The United States was a young republic whose unity was strained by the scale of its land claims and by the cultural divisions that mass foreign migrations brought with them. It was an open question whether European immigrants would integrate into the American nation. What role would a large foreign population play at the edges of an unproven empire? This dissertation uses press, private, and government sources, as well as secondary literature, about Germans in Central Texas from the 1840s to the 1880s to explore ideas and practices of race and nationalism in the U.S. Southwest. It traces how immigrants' concepts of citizenship and nation from the German states of Central Europe interacted with local social structures and political opportunities on the Southwestern frontier to cement immigrants' affinity for the U.S. nation, including its federal institutions. German immigrants were diverse in background, aspirations, and political beliefs, but as a whole, I argue, the migration had certain discernible effects on society in Central Texas. Germans in Texas tended to emphasize the importance of cultural diversity against Anglo-American hegemony. At the same time, however, they advocated for U.S. territorial conquest in spite of its deleterious consequences for other minority groups--particularly native Tejanos, Mexican immigrants, and indigenous Indians. In the case of German-Texans, this combination of assertively maintaining ethnic culture while actively supporting U.S. nation-building allowed them to operate successfully within Anglo-American legal and political structures. I argue that their conceptualization of citizenship, while it was not unique to Germans in Texas, is important to our understanding of what it meant for the United States to become a nation of immigrants.
Describes the experiences of German immigrants upon arriving in America. The readers choices reveal historical details from the perspective of Germans who came to Texas in the 1840s, the Dakota Territory in the 1880s, and Wisconsin before the start of World War I.
A gripping historical novel about the Germans who left their home country more than 150 years ago. False promises of a better life and incompetent organisers attracted thousands who had little to lose back home to look for a new life in Texas with the hope of creating a New Germany free from tyranny and poverty. These courageous people created much of the culture of Texas today. This emotive rendering of Scheffel’s monumental ‘lost’ heart-rending classic makes this story available for English language readers for the first time. Notes are provided for additional background information.
In the 1840s an organization of German noblemen, the Mainzner Adelsverein, attempted to settle thousands of German emigrants on the Texas frontier. Nassau Plantation, located near modern-day Round Top, Texas, in northern Fayette County, was a significant part of this story. No one, however, has adequately documented the role of the slave plantation or given a convincing explanation of the Adelsverein from the German point of view. James C. Kearney has studied a wealth of original source material (much of it in German) to illuminate the history of the plantation and the larger goals and motivation of the Adelsverein, both in Texas and in Germany. Moreover, this new study highlights the problematic relationship of German emigrants to slavery. Few today realize that the society's original colonization plan included ownership and operation of slave plantations. Ironically, the German settlements the society later established became hotbeds of anti-slavery and anti-secessionist sentiment. Responding to criticism in Germany, the society declared its colonies to be "slave free zones" in 1845. This act thrust the society front and center into the complicated political landscape of Texas prior to annexation. James A. Mayberry, among others, suspected an English-German conspiracy to flood the state with anti-slavery immigrants and delivered a fiery speech in the legislature denouncing the society. In the 1850s the plantation became a magnet for German immigration into Fayette and Austin Counties. In this connection, Kearney explores the role and influence of Otto von Roeder, a largely neglected but important Texas-German. Another chapter deals with the odyssey of the extended von Rosenberg family, who settled on the plantation in 1850 and helped to elevate the nearby town of Round Top into a regional center of culture and education. Many members of the family subsequently rose to positions of leadership and influence in Texas. Several notable personalities graced the plantation--Carl Prince of Solms-Braunfels, Johann Otto Freiherr von Meusebach, botanist F. Lindheimer, and the renowned naturalist Dr. Ferdinand Roemer, to name a few. Dramatic events also occurred at the plantation, including a deadly shootout, a successful escape by two slaves (documented in an unprecedented way), and litigation over ownership that wound its way to both the Texas Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Dr Cohn provides an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of the economic history of European immigration to the antebellum United States, using and evaluating the available data as well as presenting fresh data. This analysis centers on immigration from the three most important source countries - Ireland, Germany, and Great Britain - and examines the volume of immigration, how many individuals came from each country during the antebellum period, and why those numbers increased. The book also analyzes where they came from within each country; who chose to immigrate; the immigrants' trip to the United States, including estimates of mortality on the Atlantic crossing; the jobs obtained in the United States by the immigrants, along with their geographic location; and the economic effects of immigration on both the immigrants and the antebellum United States. No other book examines so many different economic aspects of antebellum immigration.