When analyzing the type of commodities that found their way from the peripheries into the Atlantic economy during the early modern period and how they did so, it is important to bear in mind that not only goods but also human beings were bought and sold. Whereas the African slave trade is obviously an essential and well explored subject in this respect, the economic structures underlying the trade in European – in this case, German – migrants are not exactly an entirely new research field. However, they remain a lesser-known part of the story that should be borne in mind when answering the question of just how both goods and people from Central European regions were integrated into the transatlantic trading system.

Involving an estimated 100,000 people, German emigration to North America during the eighteenth century was not the mass phenomenon it became during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In fact, in numbers it lagged behind emigration to Prussia and more or less equaled the number of German settlers recruited by Austria during the same period, although it is difficult to make exact calculations. It is, however, remarkable that despite the costs, the difficulties and perils involved in crossing the Atlantic, so many migrants preferred this route over the much shorter and safer journey to, for example, Prussian, Austrian or Russian territories, whose monarchs issued invitations to potential settlers throughout the century.

While the prospect of religious tolerance and ownership of a piece of land were certainly powerful incentives for Germans to emigrate, these goals could also have been achieved in regions that were much closer to home. This chapter will argue that the reasons behind the irregular but increasing flow of German emigrants to North America until the eve of the Seven Years’ War are in large part to be found in the economic interests and business structures which began to form with William Penn’s efforts to attract settlers to Pennsylvania, and which developed further during the first waves of emigration in 1709 and later during the 1720s and 1750s. The following pages aim to examine the various stages of the migrants’ journeys, insofar as they are related to these economic implications.