Main content

Hidden worlds : revisiting the Mennonite migrants of the 1870s

Formats disponibles :

  • Accessibilité:
    • Images décrites
    • Affichage personnalisable
    • Imprimer les numéros de page
    • Navigation par rubriques
    • Navigation dans la table des matières
    Publisher:
    University of Manitoba Press, 2001

Details:

  • Author: Loewen, Royden
    Date:
    Created
    2001
    Summary:

    In the 1870s, approximately 18,000 Mennonites migrated from the southern steppes of Imperial Russia (present-day Ukraine) to the North American grasslands. They brought with them an array of cultural and institutional features that indicated they were a “transplanted” people. What is less frequently noted, however, is that they created in their everyday lives a world that ensured their cultural longevity and social cohesiveness in a new land. Their adaptation to the New World required new concepts of social boundary and community, new strategies of land ownership and legacy, new associations, and new ways of interacting with markets. In Hidden Worlds, historian Royden Loewen illuminates some of these adaptations, which have been largely overshadowed by an emphasis on institutional history, or whose sources have only recently been revealed. Through an analysis of diaries, wills, newspaper articles, census and tax records, and other literature, an examination of inheritance practices, household dynamics, and gender relations, and a comparison of several Mennonite communities in the United States and Canada, Loewen uncovers the multi-dimensional and highly resourceful character of the 1870s migrants.

    Contents:
    • Wonders and drudgery: the diaries of Mennonite migrants, 1857-1879
    • 'If joint heirs of grace, how much more of temporal goods?': inheritance and community formation
    • Potato patch in a cornfield: the worlds of Mennonite immigrant women, 1881-1906
    • Mr. Plett and Mr. Bergey: land and social practice in two Canadian Mennonite communities, 1890s
    • Neighbors: Mennonites and other rural folks in the American midwest.
    Original Publisher: Winnipeg, Man., University of Manitoba Press
    Language(s): English
    ISBN: 0887556558, 9780887556555, 9780887553233, 0887553230, 1283090732, 9781283090735, 9786613090737, 6613090735, 9780887550584