Word: bailyn
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Although the book succeeds in illuminating a previously understudied area of immigration history, Bailyn frustrates the reader with his long explanations of his numerous charts and tables. Struggling through the first third of the book is worthwhile, however, as he goes on to display his unique ability to imagine and to sketch the lives of these British emigrants based on the thin documentation that remain...
...BAILYN BASES his quantitative analysis on a massive computer survey of the Register of Emigrants, a British document listing and briefly describing every person officially known to have left Britain from December 1773 to March 1776. The Register--a survey compiled by custom officials at ports of debarkation--was to measure the degree of "American madness" which was purportedly sweeping the land, draining Britain economically as well as demographically...
With the fast approaching Revolutionary War, the Register never fulfilled its original purpose but the document has survived as a treasury of information for historians. Although Bailyn relies heavily on the data from these ledgers, he is careful to ennumerate the limitations of relying on the record-keeping of local port officials...
With this disclaimer, Bailyn counts exactly 9868 individuals who officially left for the colonies between December 1773 and March 1776. Using a variety of other sources including American port entry legers, he estimates that the total emigration to the colonies during these few months on the eve of the Revolution was between...
...first two sections, Bailyn identifies a "dual emigration" of future Americans, some coming from urban London, others leaving from the rural northern provinces. Although his treatment of the data is rigorous, it is more than 150 pages of slow, dry reading...