Babel of the Atlantic / / ed. by Bethany Wiggin.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn State University Press Complete eBook-Package 2019
• MitwirkendeR: Atwood, Craig,; Erben, Patrick M.,; Falk, Cynthia G.,; Faull, Katherine,; Flügel, Wolfgang,; Gerbner, Katharine,; Jackson, Maurice,; Minardi, Lisa,; Overhoff, Jürgen,; Pfleger, Birte,; Wiggin, Bethany,
• HerausgeberIn: Wiggin, Bethany,
• Place / Publishing House: University Park, PA : : Penn State University Press, , [2021]; ©2019
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: Max Kade Research Institute: Germans Beyond Europe
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (336 p.) :; 44 illustrations

Despite shifting trends in the study of Oceanic Atlantic history, the colonial Atlantic world as it is described by historians today continues to be a largely English-only space; even when other language communities are examined, they, too, are considered to be monolingual and discrete. Babel of the Atlantic pushes back against this monolingual fallacy by documenting multilingualism, translation, and fluid movement across linguistic borders. Focusing on Philadelphia and surrounding areas that include Germantown, Bethlehem, and the so-called Indian country to the west, this volume demonstrates the importance of viewing inhabitants not as members of isolated language communities, whether English, German, Lenape, Mohican, or others, but as creators of a vibrant zone of mixed languages and shifting politics. Organized around four themes-religion, education, race and abolitionism, and material culture and architecture-and drawing from archives such as almanacs, newspapers, and the material world, the chapters in this volume show how polyglot, tolerant, and multilingual spaces encouraged diverse peoples to coexist. Contributors examine subjects such as the multicultural Moravian communities in colonial Pennsylvania, the Charity School movement of the 1750s, and the activities of Quaker abolitionists, showing how educational and religious movements addressed and embraced cultural and linguistic variety.Drawing early American scholarship beyond the normative narrative of monolingualism, this volume will be invaluable to historians and sociolinguists whose work focuses on Pennsylvania and colonial, revolutionary, and antebellum America.In addition to the editor, the contributors include Craig Atwood, Patrick M. Erben, Cynthia G. Falk, Katherine Faull, Wolfgang Flügel, Katharine Gerbner, Maruice Jackson, Lisa Minardi, Jürgen Overhoff, and Birte Pfleger.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Multilingual Soundings in the Colonial Mid-Atlantic: "Differences of Manners, Languages and Extraction, Was Now No More"? -- Part 1 New World, New Religions -- Chapter 1 " Wie ein Nimrod / Like a Nimrod" Babel, Confusion, and Coercive Bilingualism in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic -- Chapter 2 The Moravian Threat to the Old World Establishment -- Chapter 3 Women, Migration, and Moravian Mission Negotiating Pennsylvania's Colonial Landscapes -- Part 2 The Languages of Education and Established Religions -- Chapter 4 Benjamin Franklin, the Philadelphia Academy, Halle, and Göttingen -- Chapter 5 German or English? Halle's Pastors in Pennsylvania and the Search for the Right Language, 1742-1820 -- Part 3 The Languages of Race and (Anti-) Slavery -- Chapter 6 Writing Against Slavery Germantown, Quakers, and the Ethnic Origins of Early Antislavery Thought -- Chapter 7 " Ein schrecklicher Zustand" Race, Slavery, and Gradual Emancipation in Pennsylvania -- Chapter 8 How the Quakers Worked with Moravians, Germans, the French, the British, and Enslaved and Free Africans All in the Antislavery Cause -- Part 4 The Languages of Wood and Stone -- Chapter 9 Communicating Through Wood and Stone Building a New World Identity in Pennsylvania -- Chapter 10 Germans in Colonial Philadelphia Ethnicity, Hybridity, and the Material World -- Contributors -- Index