In Baden-Durlach, the population had reached 82,000 by 1746, and 109,000 by 1785. The Margrave, Karl Friedrich, was troubled that the government could not manage the realm as closely as he wished. Traditions, village parochialism, and self-interest led many peasants to ignore some of the decrees and resist the moves to improve the state. (Peasants can be among the most conservative people.) Sometimes, the peasants were successful. The government in Karlsruhe had attempted to draft spinners to work in newly opened cloth mills. Other peasants resisted the attempt to carve up the common fields for private use. Orders banning deforestation were ignored, as were regulations to control inheritance practices.
In Karlsruhe, one of the most serious problems in the view of Friedrich and his advisors was emigration. Too many people were leaving, when the wealth of a state was judged by the numbers of people in the state. To an extent, this had always been a problem, but it intensified in the early Eighteenth Century. The mercantilist mentality demanded there be people to buy and sell goods.
Carl Friedrich shared this problem with other rulers in southwest Germany and Switzerland. Some left from the larger states with a forward-looking policy, such as Baden-Durlach and from the smaller ecclesiastical states (such as the Blankenbakers and their kin), or from the tiny principalities ruled by Knights or lesser nobility (such as the Willheits from Schwaigern and the Weavers from Gemmingen).
They traveled east and west such great distances that there was no hope of returning if things did not work out. If fact, they often had to go into debt to get where they were going. The majority went east, the traditional escape route, but a small minority journeyed even farther to the “island of Pinssel Fania”. What was happening in southwest Germany and Switzerland, which were the origins of most of the emigration from German-speaking lands? How had state-building, recovery from war, and population growth transformed the landscapes of these regions? Why did this lead to the emigration of hundreds of thousands of subjects, and what made some of them choose to go to British North America? The reasons they had for going influenced them in choosing the places to settle and in their attitudes toward the authorities in their new homes.
From the late Seventeenth Century to the mid-Eighteenth Century, the inhabitants of southwest Germany had undergone a period of recovery and reconstruction that transformed and redefined the social, political, economic, religious, and demographic fabric of their societies societies that warfare in the Seventeenth Century had nearly destroyed. Changes came in agriculture, religion, the role of the state, and demographics.
(24 May 03)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.