The 19th century was an era of wide unrest throughout Europe, when extensive demographic and technological changes decisively altered the character of community life. The result was a wave of emigration to the New World, an event that had social, political, and ideological consequences that are still apparent today. Drawing on much previously unexamined material, Mack Walker concentrates on the German aspects of this phenomenon, describing the nature and background of the emigrants, the influence of their experience on nationalistic and liberal thought, and the specific relation of the emigration to Bismarck's policies of colonial expansion.