The American colonies were full of strangers–new arrivals born far away. Among the white population, those colonies teemed with immigrants from all across western Europe and elsewhere. Why did they come? Where did they settle? How did they live? To answer these questions, we’ll examine the demographic makeup of the British colonies in 1700 and then look at how things changed in the decades afterward. To do so, we’ll focus in on the immigration experiences of the English, the Scots, and the Germans, the three groups–along with enslaved Africans, of course–who took the lion’s share of places on board the ships that delivered immigrants in such massive numbers to British North America. 

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