History Post-confederation (1867-)
Hidden Worlds
Revisiting the Mennonite Migrants of the 1870s
- Publisher
- University of Manitoba Press
- Initial publish date
- Nov 2001
- Category
- Post-Confederation (1867-), Emigration & Immigration, 19th Century
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9780887550584
- Publish Date
- Nov 2001
- List Price
- $24.99
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780887556555
- Publish Date
- Nov 2001
- List Price
- $22.95
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Description
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.
About the author
Royden Loewen is a senior scholar at the University of Winnipeg. His books include Horse-and-Buggy Genius: Listening to Mennonites Contest the Modern World and Village Among Nations: "Canadian" Mennonites in a Transnational World, 1916–2006.
Other titles by
Mennonite Farmers
A Global History of Place and Sustainability
Horse-and-Buggy Genius
Listening to Mennonites Contest the Modern World
Young, Well-Educated, and Adaptable
Chilean Exiles in Ontario and Quebec, 1973-2010
Village Among Nations
"Canadian" Mennonites in a Transnational World, 1916-2006
Immigrants in Prairie Cities
Ethnic Diversity in Twentieth-Century Canada
Diaspora in the Countryside
Two Mennonite Communities and Mid-Twentieth Century Rural Disjuncture
From the Inside Out
The Rural Worlds of Mennonite Diarists
Family, Church, and Market
A Mennonite Community in the Old and the New Worlds, 1850-1930