Atlantic Migration: 1607–1860

This is one of the major works by Professor Marcus Lee Hansen, a renowned expert in migration history, and it won the 1941 Pulitzer Prize for History. Unlike most migration historians, Professor Hansen examines migration from a European rather than an American perspective. How did factors such as changes in agriculture and land ownership, the rise of industry, natural disasters, political oppression, religious discrimination, and coercive policies by migration agencies intertwine to create waves of migration? What possibilities did advances in science and technology offer for the formation of these waves? Why were people of the time willing to spend everything they had to plan a sea voyage? Why did migration to America, a promised land in the eyes of many, go through periods of decline? Why did the US government at times actively encourage migration and at other times deliberately obstruct it? In short, this book brings to life, in epic style, the sweeping history of ordinary people from Europe's major nations migrating to America from the 17th to the 19th centuries.