It seems to me that (and I could be wrong) during the 18th and 19th centuries most immigrants to the US were from the British Isles, Ireland, Germany, Scandanavia and eastern Europe and that there were very few from France. Is my impression correct and if so why so few French immigrants?
See the history of Louisiana. There are tons of them there.
The French in Louisiana largely predate the purchase. They did not therefore emmigrate to the USA but rather a French owned Territory.
I have had the same impression. Throughout most of the country, it is much much more common to encounter a German, Irish, English, or even Italian surname than a French one. There are exceptions in pockets of Louisiana and upper New England, but it still doesn’t seem anywhere close to the representation of the other countries mentioned.
At a guess, I would think that either a) that means that the economy of France during these mass emigration years was pretty good, giving people less reason to leave, or b) most of the immigrants from France to the New World went to Canada, where they could keep their language and integrate more quickly.
I thought that most French in Louisiana were Acadians who had been expelled from Canada by the British.
WAG only. French had excellent employment is the 17 & 1800’s. Wars with Brit’s, themselves, All of Europe, Germany, itself, Brits, itself. Etc.
Jim
You are porbably correct, but it was still pre-purchase, wasn’t it?
I can’t speak of France specifically, but I expect emigrating French citizens would have been encouraged to go to french overseas territories, in the caribbean, in the south pacific, in africa, in south america.
Such was the case for Dutch emigrants, certainly. My ancestors, who left the Netherlands for America in the 1840’s were part of a group which were looked down on by many of their fellow Netherlanders first of all for leaving, but secondly for not going to Surinam or Indonesia, or some other Dutch colony.
I think they made up only a small part of the french population of the Louisiana area, and they headed there from Acadia mainly because they know lots of folks down there already spoke french. IIRC.
According to a chart I just checked, in 1880 there were 107,000 immigrants from France to the U.S., making it the seventh largest source of immigrants to the U.S. that year. Since then it has dropped out of the list of the top ten nations which are the source of immigrants to the U.S. So while there haven’t been as many immigrants as have come from certain other countries, the number wasn’t insignificant either.
I wonder why the number of immigrants from Germany has been so much larger than the number of immigrants from France over the years. As late as 1920, Germany was the largest source of immigrants to the U.S. As late as 1980, it was the second largest source of immigrants. Even in 2000, it was the tenth largest source of immigrants. Germany isn’t that much larger than France. Immigrants from both countries have to learn a new language. So why have there always been so many more immigrants from Germany?
WAG again. Germany had no colonies. German to English is suppose to be fairly easy. Like Italian to Spanish. Germany was not a country per se until the mid 1800’s.
For much of the late 1700’s thru the 1800, Germany wasn’t much of a functioning nation. Perhaps this helped to contribute to the tendency of germans to high-tail it all over the place. Not only did the Germans end up in North America, but large numbers ended up in Russia (the Volga Germans), and along the Danube river (The Danube Swabians).
One branch of my family hailed originally from Alsace, but moved into present-day Croatia (probably about 200-250 years ago) when that area was under the rule of the Austrohungarian empire. They remained ethnically German, and blended in nicely with the german-speaking community in Milwaukee when they moved there in 1902. Supposedly they left Alsace due to poverty, and the Austrohungarian empire was recruiting colonists. Supposedly they were still trying to rebound from the decimation of their population by the retreating Turks.
These german-speaking folks in the Danube river area often found themselves in positions of power during the Nazi occupation of said area. After the war, they were pretty much driven out (if not killed) by the folks who’d been their neighbors for 200 years.
Yep. Around 1755.
Yep, around 1755.
Wow, do you have a link to that chart? I never would have thought German immigration to the US would have been that big that late (up to 1980??). German-Americans tend to have a much lower profile as an ethnic group than do groups like Italian-Americans or Irish-Americans, so I would have thought they had not provided near as many immigrants.
I guess you can see some potential reasons for it. It would make sense for a lot of Germans to move to the US in the aftermath of both World Wars, and people escaping from the tensions of leaving a country torn apart by the Cold War would also make sense. Add to that the large number of German women who married American servicemen stationed overseas, and I guess it adds up…
jrfranchi writes:
> German to English is suppose to be fairly easy.
Not really. I’ve studied both German and French. German is more closely related, but there are many words derived from French. It’s no more difficult for a French speaker to learn English than it is for a German speaker to learn it.
> Germany had no colonies.
It did, but not very many.
This may be simply a “tipping point” situation. It may have simply happened that Germans immigrated in large numbers at one point to the U.S. and established many locations in the U.S. where there were many German immigrants. After that point, it may be simply that a German wanting to immigrate may have been told, “Well, there are a number of other German immigrants at [American location] if you want to move there.” And until World War I these immigrants still frequently spoke German at home.
I recently read the results of a survey (may have been the US census) that claimed that more caucasian Americans claimed German ancestry than British. If I recall correctly 56% claimed German ancestry.
Rodgers01 writes:
> Wow, do you have a link to that chart?
It’s in The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2005.
> German-Americans tend to have a much lower profile as an ethnic group than
> do groups like Italian-Americans or Irish-Americans, so I would have thought
> they had not provided near as many immigrants.
Germans are clearly the largest ethnic group in the U.S. Second are the Irish. Third are African-Americans, but only by a tiny amount over the English. If you count all Hispanics as being a single ethnic group (and most tables of ethnic origins don’t), then they are the third largest group.
I knew that a huge percentage of Americans had German ancestry (even Americans with apparently British last names are often ethnically German, and just Anglicized their surnames); what surprised me was how very late they kept coming to this country. I had thought that they came much earlier in our nation’s history, and had just been extremely fertile.
Italian- and Irish-Americans came in droves in the first third or so of the last century; during much of that time, according to your statistics, German immigrants equalled or outnumbered them. Yet today, Italian- and Irish-Americans have (or claim they have) a much stronger ethnic identity, link to their homeland, etc., than do any German-Americans I’ve met whose ancestors would have arrived at approximately the same time. Maybe that’s a testament to the difficulty Catholics and/or Mediterranean people had in integrating into the country back then?
Indeed. And in particular to Algeria, which received many settlers after its conquest in 1830. Large tracks of land (for instance land that was collective or “public” property) were confiscated and handed to the settlers.
“Undesirable” people (the most well-known example being people involved in the 1870 “commune”) were sent to New-Caledonia, and criminals to french Guyana.
I would also note that France has one of the lowest population density in western europe, and I think it was already the case during the 19th century, and is on the overall quite fertile with a fairly good and even quite ideal climate. There might have been more available and cultivable land than in other countries, hence less reasons to emigrate. France might have been relatively underpopulated by european standarts.