Pious Pursuits: German Moravians in the Atlantic World

by Michele Gillespie (Editor), Robert Beachy (Editor)

Recent work on the history of migration and the Atlantic world has underscored the interdependence of the political economies of Europe, America, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean in the eighteenth century, emphasizing the impact of these exchanges on political relations and state-building, and on economic structures, commerce and wealth. Too little of this work explores culture and identity, as reflected through religious developments, and outside the Anglo-American context, particularly in relation to radical pietism and German migrants, the second largest group of migrants to the American colonies in the eighteenth century. This volume offers a fresh vantage point from which to examine the Atlantic world. Quick to traverse the conventional political boundaries that divided European states and American colonies, Moravians departed their homelands to form new congregations in the most cosmopolitan European cities as well as on the North American frontier. This volume explores Atlantic World Moravians' lives and beliefs, their communities and their culture, and provides a new framework for analysis of the Atlantic world that is comparative, and even transnational.

237 pages, Hardcover

Published July 1, 2007