Description
TitleThe darling strangers and English appetites
Date Created2010
Other Date2010 (degree)
Extentxi, 299 p. : ill., map
DescriptionThe English had the opportunity to serve an apprenticeship for technologies they desired in the early modern period on both sides of the Atlantic. In places such as London or Norwich highly mobile stranger artisans from northern continental Europe created the items for which the English had an appetite, whether sugar or clothes, saw mills or city docks. In the colonies the "darlings" who possessed the skills that the English envied were principally in New Netherland, records showing that they were from the same cultural group of northern continental Europeans who resided as guild strangers in English cities. Family reconstitution revealed the mobility of these skilled artisans in the Atlantic World. North American colonial documents provide a window through which to view when, how, or if, the English managed to acquire the skilled knowledge of cultural outsiders to produce what they coveted. Every examined case of an English appetite for a product or its means of production proved to possess features unique to the circumstances of the interaction between the English and those of another European culture practicing the skill. In most cases deep cultural differences limited the colonial English to hiring foreign experts, buying their products, or finding culturally acceptable sources of information such as the Scots. Occasionally artisans were hired directly from the continent of Europe using colonial middlemen. English citizenship was easier to obtain in the colonies than in England, offering a colonial back door to foreign craft practice that could re-cross the Atlantic to an English town or city. The problems that made England's apprenticeship so difficult became apparent when examining Atlantic World technology transfer and its barriers. There were distinct, deep cultural differences between the English and the northern continental Europeans in mobility, kinship systems, naming practices, family, language, inheritance patterns, views of women, craft practice and values, attitudes toward machines, and concepts of urban life. These acted as barriers to the transfer of technologies including higher craft skills, saw mills, and city building.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes abstract
NoteVita
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Noteby Elva Kathleen Lyon
Genretheses, ETD doctoral
Languageeng
CollectionGraduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.