Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World.

Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World. By Alison Games. Harvard Historical Studies, No. 133. (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1999. Pp. xiv, 322. $45.00, ISBN 0-674-53781-1.)

The English colonial world was like no other, if only because so many English people helped create it. Some 400,000 left the British Isles for North America during the seventeenth century, a proportion of emigrants to domestic population far higher than in any other colonizing European nation. Alison Games argues that "the English Atlantic world was a place created by migration" (p. 4). The centerpiece of this impressive book is an analysis of the London port register of 1635. The list reminds us that emigration from England was not necessarily directed westward or permanent: among the 7,507 passengers listed are some 1,500 soldiers and over 1,000 other travelers bound for Europe. The remaining two-thirds of the registered travelers--nearly 5,000 people--scattered to thirteen New World destinations. By tracing the careers of the more than 1,300 of these emigrants who can be found in colonial records, Games has produced one of the few truly comparative examinations of transatlantic migration.

The book offers compelling new evidence for the dynamism of the English Atlantic world even as it corroborates many findings of other scholars. Games's analysis confirms the importance of the demographic composition of emigrant populations in shaping regions and underscores the ways in which colonial labor requirements affected the recruitment of new settlers. Her detailed examination of colonists in Virginia, Maryland, Bermuda, and Barbados reveals how the timing of arrival and choice of destination affected chances for success. It may surprise readers to learn that, in the 1630s, Barbados offered some of the best economic opportunities for free laborers. Games then turns to the issue of religion and migration and demonstrates that, while there were only a few "Puritan" colonies, Puritans settled all over the Atlantic world. Moreover, Puritanism often was a divisive influence that threatened, rather than reinforced, the social order. Puritan factions fought one another in Bermuda, for example, and officials in the short-lived Providence Island colony repeatedly clashed with ministers. Even New England was less staid and stable than one might have thought. Motivated by religious differences or economic opportunities, New Englanders moved around. Their peregrinations, Games asserts, were "symptoms of the profound disarray" of early settlement (p. 187).

This meticulously researched book invites readers to see the entire English Atlantic world as a place in "disarray" with a population constantly in motion. But if earlier regional studies have overemphasized colonial stability by examining people only after they had settled down, this one may exaggerate the disruptive effects of mobility for ordinary settlers (no one has argued that high levels of mobility within England created social "disarray"). Nearly three-quarters of the emigrants who settled in New England, for example, either stayed in the town of first arrival or else made just one move thereafter (p. 168). Nevertheless, the book establishes the centrality of migration in creating a distinctively English colonial world. The presence of Indians and Africans, as well as non-English Europeans, meant that colonial communities were necessarily "hybrid," but the sheer numbers of English emigrants (and their impressive ability to reproduce) left little doubt about the English character of settlements. Of course, migration might create but in the end could not sustain an empire. Only the development of trade would give England the reason to protect and encourage the efforts of its transplanted people. Games has made a valuable contribution to the new Atlantic history by exploring the ways that emigrants created the conditions under which imperial development would Occur.

VIRGINIA DEJOHN ANDERSON University of Colorado, Boulder