JOSEPH FERRIE

Yankeys Now: Immigrants in the Antebellum U.S. 1840-1860 Oxford (1998).

The first great wave of European migration to the United States before the Civil War transformed both the immigrants and their new country. The extent of this transformation has been difficult to gauge without information on migrants before and after their departure from Europe. Ferrie provides the first detailed look at how these immigrants were changed by their relocation and how the U.S. economy responded to their arrival. Ferrie employs unique data on more than 2,400 British, Irish, and German migrants, who appeared in both passenger ship rosters and U.S. census records, to document the geographic, occupational, and financial movements of Europeans who traveled to the United States in the 1840s.

Contrary to other studies of antebellum immigrants, Ferrie finds substantial mobility in all three contexts. The ability to follow immigrants from their arrival through several censuses enables him to compare the experiences of immigrants who remained in one location with those who sought opportunity in new places over the 1850s. The latter group's achievements, carefully traced in the book, account for most of the contrast with previously published work. Using information on more than 4,000 native-born Americans followed through the 1850 and 1860 U.S. censuses, Ferrie finds little evidence that the immigrants' arrival negatively affected the country's labor force, excluding craft workers in the urban northeast. The findings demonstrate the American economy's ability to absorb additions to its workforce while also illustrating the range of opportunities available to 19th-century migrants drawn to the United States.

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Other Books By Ferrie:

Southern Paternalism and the Rise of the Welfare State: Economics, Politics, and Institutions in the U.S. South 1865-1965 (with Lee J. Alston). Cambridge University Press (1999).

 

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About Joseph Ferrie