Voyagers to the West

The years just before the American Revolution—years in which immigration to the New World from Britain increased dramatically—are the focus of this major volume in Bernard Bailyn's large-scale work on the transatlantic movement of people to the North American continent, a movement that formed the basis of modern American society.

Using the most comprehensive and detailed source of information available about any large group of immigrants during this early period (an emigration register that lists every person officially known to have left Britain for America from December 1773 to March 1776 and that provides personal information about each individual listed), together with newspapers, genealogical data, state papers, town records, local histories, and personal manuscript collections on both sides of the Atlantic, Bailyn shows us who these people were, where they came from, why they came, how they traveled, and where and how they re-established themselves once they arrived.

The five sections of this book present a progressively refined depiction of the pre-Revolutionary emigration from Britain. Beginning with a broad overview, Bailyn explains the critical events of 1772 and 1773 that led the British government first to consider banning all emigration to the colonies, and ultimately—in an effort to control the flow of people out of the country—to compile the official emigration register which is at the heart of this book.

Part II provides a wealth of concrete information about the emigrants' social and occupational characteristics, their sex and ages, family groupings, legal status, stated reasons for emigrating, and their final destinations—information newly gathered in a computer-based study of the 10,000 emigrants listed in the register. Analyzing this information, Bailyn establishes the dimensions and structure of the migration and reveals that there was not one movement of people from Britain, but two: in motion simultaneously, reflecting different social and economic forces, and affecting the developing character of American life in different ways.

Part III is a detailed examination of the first of the two intersecting migrations—a labor force made up largely of indentured servants from central and southern England who were brought to the middle range of colonies, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Bailyn explains the geographic and socioeconomic sources of this migration, the way it was recruited, and the way it was distributed in America.