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GERMAN IMMIGRATION TO THE NEW WORLD German immigration to the New World began very slowly in comparison to many other nationalities, only to become so forceful that German authorities and English colonists began to worry about it’s impact. In Bernard Bailyn’s book, The Peopling of British North America, the questions of why the Germans came to settle in the colonies of America, and of what hardships they faced on their journey are asked, but never really answered. Bailyn begins to examine the German population of immigrants early on by stating that “An estimated ten percent of the pre-Revolutionary population was German Speaking…about 500,000 people emigrated from southwestern Germany and Switzerland in the eighteenth century.” 1 Bailyn then goes on to ask the question: why? He wants to know what it was that compelled almost 500,000 people to pack up everything they owned and move halfway across the world to a new land in which they knew no one and had no guarantee of work, food, or even a place to live. I have to admit that this immediately caught my interest and I read forward anticipating when he would address the answers. Disappointingly, Bailyn never really gives a sufficient answer. He makes a qu