The German American consumer: Ethnicity, opportunity, and community in colonial America

German immigrants were a critical component of colonial American diversity. Before the Revolutionary War, over 100,000 Germans migrated to the Americas, many settling in the rich farmland of southeastern Pennsylvania. German Americans provide a unique perspective on processes of ethnic formation, which shaped American political values on diversity and the experiences of later immigrant groups. Studies of German Americans highlight ethnic strategies focused on investment in land, livestock, and capital goods, but these strategies cannot explain the archaeological assemblages of German American sites, which contain imported goods similar to those found on British American sites. I argue that these artifacts are evidence of a second ethnic strategy that entails the use of imported consumer goods to maintain connections with family and friends in Europe. I use archaeological assemblages from the Grushow-Fahnestock site (36LA1490), primary documents, and probate data from a sample of 225 German American inventories held at the Lancaster County Historical Society to demonstrate how German American material culture and ethnic identity emerged through global trade networks that transported people and information, as well as goods.;Beginning in Europe, German immigration and ethnic formation were tied to the processes and goods of global trade. The trade routes which brought these goods into continental Europe also carried information about overseas colonies and encouraged immigration. When immigrants departed, they followed the same routes and employed the same shipping infrastructure used in transatlantic trade. They even converted their wealth to European and Asian goods for resale in the colonies. Once in the colonies, German Americans used trade and commercial networks to maintain communication with people in Europe. German Americans were not the most conspicuous consumers, but their communities were built and sustained by trade and the networks which transported people and information across the Atlantic. Highlighting the importance of imported goods on German American archaeological sites, emphasizes American colonial ethnicity as emerging through processes of transatlantic trade and, networks of people, goods, and information.