Was the American Revolution an Immigrant Revolution? | S1E18 AAR
Half the population in Revolutionary America was made up of immigrants and their descendants. Germans, Irish, enslaved Africans, indentured servants, and even foreign soldiers shaped the politics, land conflicts, and violence of the American Revolution. Colonists demanded more land, pushed into Native territories, and clashed with British imperial limits after 1763. This is the story of migration, loyalty, citizenship, expansion, and revolution in early America.
📄 Interview transcript & takeaways [https://bit.ly/AAR-Home]
🚩About My 216th Guest Scholar: Dr. Aaron Fogleman
Dr. Aaron Fogleman is a Distinguished Research Professor at Northern Illinois University. His work focuses on (1) the Atlantic World, (2) transatlantic migration, and (3) the intersection of religion and culture in early America. He has published extensively about these subjects, including the following books:
—"Two Troubled Souls: An Eighteenth-Century Couple's Spiritual Journey in the Atlantic World",
—"Jesus Is Female: Moravians and Radical Religion in Early America",
—"Five Hundred African Voices", and
—"Hopeful Journeys: German Immigration, Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial America, 1717-1775".
Dr. Fogleman is also working on “Immigrant Voices: European and African Stories of Freedom, Unfreedom, and Identity through Four Centuries of Transatlantic Migrations to the Americas,” a project that is supported by a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship.
You can learn more about Dr. Fogleman here: Academic Homepage: [https://www.niu.edu/clas/history/about/faculty/fogleman.shtml]
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📑 Video Chapters:
00:00 Selected Highlights
01:33 Guest Introduction
03:34 Forced and Free Migrants in Colonial America
06:05 Indentured Servants and Paying for Passage
07:58 Immigration Growth in the 18th Century
09:57 Why Immigrants Came to America
11:54 Colonial Recruitment Projects and Imperial Expansion
14:30 "Hopeful Journeys" and German Immigration
18:44 Catholic Immigrants and Anti-Catholic Restrictions
20:18 Germans, Irish, and Immigration Numbers
24:07 Recruiting Immigrants to the Colonies
30:24 Immigration Processing and Oaths of Allegiance
33:53 Citizenship, Naturalization, and Property Rights
38:52 German Political Participation in Colonial America
40:36 Hyphenated Identities in Early America
43:45 Immigration Backlash and Land Pressure
45:59 The Proclamation of 1763 and Westward Expansion
49:00 Immigrants and the American Revolution
51:19 Hessians, Desertion, and Revolutionary America
52:34 German Regiments in the Continental Army
54:06 Loyalists, Patriots, and Immigrant Communities
55:53 German Newspapers and Revolutionary Politics
58:42 “No Immigrants, No America”
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