European Emigration to the New World - Essay Example

AMERICAN HISTORY: EUROPEAN EMIGRATION TO THE NEW WORLD INTRODUCTION: The movement of Christianity from Europe to North America was an immensely complex migration, extending over centuries and filled with tragic disillusionment as well as unanticipated successes. It amounted to one of the most important transformations in the entire history of Christianity, with far-reaching effects1. In the 1830s the great era of European migration to North America began with the trans-Atlantic crossing of Northern Europeans of all kinds. They were soon followed by great numbers of Eastern and Southern Europeans as well2. DISCUSSION: How Religion Became a Great Catalyst for European Emigration to the New World: The Protestant Reformation, which is generally considered to have begun in 1517, came about after well over a century of growing problems within the Roman Catholic Church. As early as the fourteenth century, religious and civic leaders were calling for church reform, and humanists of the early Renaissance as well and the general public were criticizing corruption in the church3. In England, ever since the late thirteenth century, there had been rivalry between the crown and the church over matters such as taxes, the judicial authority of the Roman Catholic Church, and clerical property rights. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the rise of humanism further heightened the conflict4. Certain events such as the Popish Plot in 1678, the 1679-81 Exclusion Crisis, and the 1685 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes exacerbated anti-Catholic sentiment in England. Anti-popery convinced the Carolina proprietors to to support the Protestant cause. Their aim was to recruit settlers to produce semi-tropical products whose sale would enrich England. Not wishing to weaken England by draining away its population, the proprietors under English private sponsorship encouraged a significant emigration of the Huguenots, Calvinist martyrs in Catholic absolutist France who were in search of a refuge. Economically, the 1660s and 1670s were a period of growth due to commercial expansion, but politically these years were full of instability and crises fuelled by an acute and sometimes hysterical fear of Catholicism, which was referred to as Popery. This proved to be an essential element in the making of Protestant England, serving the purpose of the “evil God” in the creation myth. Popery was everyone’s worst nightmare, and was a catalyst for real as well as imagined menaces to the English nation. The Marian persecutions of the 1550s, the 1588 Great Armada, the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, and the Irish Rebellion of 1641 were collectively perceived as instances of how demoniac Catholic forces could threaten England’s most vital interests5. When French Protestantism was legally banned in 1681, they had the choice of converting, entering the underground church, or escaping from France at the risk of their lives. In early American history, the Huguenots as beleaguered Calvinists in a Catholic land, were Protestant refugees crossing the Atlantic, seeking freedom of religion in America. This resulted in their becoming Puritans: chosen people who left an Absolutist regime6. In England, the breeding ground of Puritanism was found among the middle classes, from which most of the emigrants sprang. The religious and political passions that tore the British empire apart during the reign of King Charles I drove additional sectarians onto the coast of America every year. While people in England continued to be classified despotically according to the hierarchy of rank, the colony in America increasingly exhibited the new spectacle of a society homogenous in all its parts. From the old feudal society, full-fledged democracy had been established7. The Colonial Period: The main stimulant to British migration to North America was considered to be the requirement for religious freedom. However, the first colonies actually underwent a tighter governmental control of religion than existed in the Old World. For instance, New England’s “puritan way” was premised on an ingenious plan that while it liberated the settlers from Britain style of church-state entanglement, it constructed a new basis for connecting religion and politics. In Virginia the Anglican establishment followed more closely the common European pattern of a top-down merger of political and religious authority. In both New England and the Chesapeake, the kind of freedom that mattered most turned out to be “positive liberty”to enable colonists to structure their lives in a manner in which they had been prevented from doing in Great Britain, not “negative liberty” where all were free to do as they pleased. Before the mid-eighteenth century, church and state were bound together more closely in parts of New England, Virginia and Maryland than they were in England at the same time8. Social Impact of the Mass Movement on the Colonies: The European settlers in America found democracy and liberty in the New World. Tocqueville explains that a dual migratory flow was evident: beginning in the heart of Europe, across the great ocean, to the shores of the New World: America, was a migration of the European, who arrived without the comfort of any friends or resources. He was obliged to hire out his services in order to live, and seldom ventured beyond the great industrial zone along the coast. He could not move westwards until he acquired capital and credit, and his body got adjusted to the rigors of the new climate. Hence, it was the American who left the place of his birth and plunged deeper into the wilds of the American heartland. Thus millions of men marched together towards the same point on the horizon, their languages, religion and mores were different, but their goal was the same: to hasten towards the west where there was fortune to be found9. Political Impact on the Colonies: Upon emigration to America, the colonists carried with them the all the rights, immunities and liberties of free and natural-born subjects within the realm of England. In May 1776, the Continental Congress recommended to the respective assemblies and conventions of the several colonies that where such governments were lacking, they should create such governments that “best conduce to the happiness and safety of their constituents and to America in general”. It was also proposed that the Congress adopt a resolution calling for suppression of every kind of authority under the British crown. The colonists’ rights were agreed to be based on the laws of Nature, principles of the English Constitution and charters and compacts10. Colonial separation and independence of America from the mother country took root almost from the first settlement in the New World11. Economic Impact on the Colonies: The pace of economic development in the colonies reflected the rate of growth in the mother country. By the mid-eighteenth century, settlers in the Thirteen Colonies and Canada had more possessions and more disposable income than was the case even a few decades earlier. For most white colonists there were tangible gains, though the pace of development was far slower than in the nineteenth century, and was not even in its progress. The intertwined colonial and metropolitan economies influenced each other’s worldly progress after 1745 in all aspects: population, agriculture, industry and foreign trade. The steeper rise in population meant that total output and consumption grew more rapidly after the 1740s than before12. In the first decade of American independence, the principal European powers restricted or excluded American trade, to suit the needs of their own commercial classes. The twenty years of war among these powers which began in 1793 caused the abandonment of commercial monopolies as the countries were forced to resort to neutral shipping, and to authorize the importation of neutral goods on a wide scale. American commerce became extremely sensitive to shifts in the course of events. There was expansion of trade and opening of promising new markets especially in the West Indies and Spain’s continental colonies13. CONCLUSION: The large numbers of people who emigrated from Germany, Scandinavia, France, Ireland, the United Kingdom and other European countries during the nineteenth century, were driven mainly by religious or political discontent, sometimes by the desire for making a better life for themselves, and some were even impelled by a sense of adventure. However, conflict on the basis of religion in their homeland, with resultant threat of punishment and oppression was the main reason for European migration. This is one of the most important events in the history of mankind, as it stretched over several centuries, and resulted in global changes taking place. The mass movement from Europe to America resulted in the early settlers establishing colonies in which social, political and economic developments took place. America became an independent nation, and great development in all aspects has resulted in the country being the only super-power in the world today. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bumstead, J.M. “Things in the Womb of Time: Ideas of American Independence 1633-1763”. The William and Mary Quarterly (1974), 533-564. Coatsworth, John H. “American Trade With European Colonies in the Caribbean and South America. 1790-1812”. The William and Mary Quarterly (1967), 243-266. Conley, Patrick T and Kaminski, John P. The Bill of Rights and the States: The Colonial and Revolutionary Origins of American Liberties. Wisconsin: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992. Egnel, Marc. New World Economies: The Growth of the Thirteen Colonies and Early Canada. New York: Oxford Publications, 1998. Noll, Mark A. The Old Religion in a New World: The History of North American Christianity. United States: Wm.B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2002. Ruymbeke, Bertrand Van. From New Babylon to Eden: The Huguenots and their Migration to South Carolina, England. Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press, 2006 Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. 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