Souls for Sale: Two German Redemptioners Come to Revolutionary America (Max Kade Research Institute: Germans Beyond Europe) - Hardcover

3

5 ratings by Goodreads

9780271028811: Souls for Sale: Two German Redemptioners Come to Revolutionary America (Max Kade Research Institute: Germans Beyond Europe)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0271028815 ISBN 13: 9780271028811

Publisher: Penn State University Press, 2006

In 1773, John Frederick Whitehead and Johann Carl B�ttner, two adolescent Germans, were placed on board the same ship headed to colonial America. With few options in Germany, each had been recruited by the labor contractors known popularly as soulsellers—men who traded in human cargo. On arrival in America they were sold to different masters, and, years later, each wrote a memoir of his experiences. These two autobiographies are valuable historical records of immigrant attitudes, perceptions, and goals. Despite their shared voyage to America and similar condition as servants, their backgrounds and personalities differed. Their divergent interpretations of their experiences provide rich firsthand insights into the transatlantic migration process, work and opportunity in colonial America, and the fates of former bound servants.

Souls for Sale presents these parallel accounts—Whitehead's published for the first time—to illustrate the condition of German redemptioners and to examine the religious, economic, familial, and literary contexts that shaped their memoirs. The editors provide helpful introductions to the works as well as notes to guide the reader.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Susan E. Klepp is Professor of History at Temple University and Affiliated Professor of Women's Studies and African American Studies.

Farley Grubb is Professor of Economics and History at the University of Delaware.

Anne Pfaelzer de Ortiz is an independent researcher and freelance writer.

Review:

“This volume will not only serve scholars of early American history and culture as key source material in the interpretation of the immigrant experience, but it should become assigned reading for American history or literature courses from the survey course up.”

—Patrick M. Erben, Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.