#  Transporting Settlers to the British Colonies: The Religious Foundations of Transatlantic Migration 

 



Rosalind J. Beiler

Historians writing about eighteenth-century transatlantic migration have demonstrated the dominance of economic motivational factors. More specifically, they have shown how the immigration transportation system that emerged by mid-century was fueled by commercial and mercantile interests. This paper argues that seventeenth-century religious communication channels laid the foundation for the secular transportation system of the eighteenth century. Beginning in the 1640s, Mennonite church leaders throughout the Rhine Valley corresponded regularly with one another as they helped Swiss religious exiles resettle in the Palatinate. By 1680, Quaker missionaries established regular meetings for worship among the same families and communities linked to Mennonite information networks. When he received the charter for his colony, William Penn distributed promotional literature through these same channels. What began as a domestic migration expanded to a transatlantic movement. As motivations for migration shifted, European church officials withdrew financial support from needy emigrants. Merchants replaced the church as the suppliers of credit, but church leaders continued to make travel arrangements for potential American settlers. Consequently, religious information networks in seventeenth-century Europe formed the basis for the eighteenth-century secular transportation system.

**\[WP #96004\]**