Love ye the stranger : public and private assistance to the German poor in nineteenth century London

The thesis examines patterns of inclusion and exclusion in the provision of welfare to outsiders, in this case the largest foreign minority in London throughout most of the nineteenth century. Economic mibrration is a recurring theme history, contemporary resonance. An analysis of the welfare relationships between host community and immigrant minority offers insights into the concepts of natlorlallty citizenship and belonging in a period of growing nationalism in Europe. The study also touches on the role of immigrant organizations in minority assimilation, and segregation. Major sources for the study were the records produced by both statutory and voluntary relief agencies in their day-to-day work, much of it from the recently deposited and not yet systematically exploited archive of the German Lutheran church of S1. Georg in London's East End, as well as records from central and selected East End local poor law authorities. The study balanced an investigation of the agencies supplying relief with a focus on individual actors. For both benefactors and recipients of relief a wide range of sources of nominal data were combed to construct partial biographical narratives of selected individuals which illuminated their experience of giving and receiving relief. The thesis demonstrates that the development of an ethnically segregated alternative welfare system for the German minority in London was linked to the emergence of a strong nationalist movement in the immigrants' country of origin and the concomitant redefinition of the minority as a group of expatriates rather than settlers. British state and society also began to interpret foreign nationality as an obstacle to belonging (llld participation roughly the same time as Germans increasingly exclluded themselves from British society.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo