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Taking into consideration how the U.S. came into existence, it's understandable that helping one's community is deeply ingrained in American culture. However,

by Rod 18y ago

Taking into consideration how the U.S. came into existence, it's understandable that helping one's community is deeply ingrained in American culture. However, your argument that people who had this tendency came to America and the other stayed in Europe does sound sketchy. I am an engineer, not an historian, but if I remember right, the ones who came to America were the starved, and the persecuted. If you were an aristocrat in England or the Netherlands in the 16th, 17th or 18th century, why would you bother to risk your pleasant life of luxury and debauchery to cross the Atlantic in a fragile vessel?

tokenadult 18y ago
An interesting fact of history I learned (sorry I don't have a reference readily at hand) is that about one-third of European immigrants who settled in America eventually moved back to Europe. That experience of a different culture probably promoted many of the social changes in Europe during the nineteenth century. Among my own ancestors, I have ancestors whose family name reveals that they were people of moderately high social standing who came to America en masse (whole towns moving together as "colonies") because they dissented from Bismarck's policies upon the unification of Germany, particularly his state control of religious organizations and militarization of the country. I have about equally many European ancestors who simply left Europe because they were wretchedly poor, leaving the two countries (Ireland and Norway) that experienced the greatest population loss to emigration experienced by any European countries. They all had to learn to be more self-organizing once they arrived to North America than they had been in Europe, because the social and economic structure here was still developing.
- Rod 18y ago
  Those are some really cool pieces of historical data. Thanks for sharing! I had no idea so many immigrants in the U.S. had gone back to Europe.

by Rod 18y ago

tokenadult 18y ago

An interesting fact of history I learned (sorry I don't have a reference readily at hand) is that about one-third of European immigrants who settled in America eventually moved back to Europe. That experience of a different culture probably promoted many of the social changes in Europe during the nineteenth century. Among my own ancestors, I have ancestors whose family name reveals that they were people of moderately high social standing who came to America en masse (whole towns moving together as "colonies") because they dissented from Bismarck's policies upon the unification of Germany, particularly his state control of religious organizations and militarization of the country. I have about equally many European ancestors who simply left Europe because they were wretchedly poor, leaving the two countries (Ireland and Norway) that experienced the greatest population loss to emigration experienced by any European countries. They all had to learn to be more self-organizing once they arrived to North America than they had been in Europe, because the social and economic structure here was still developing.

Rod 18y ago
Those are some really cool pieces of historical data. Thanks for sharing! I had no idea so many immigrants in the U.S. had gone back to Europe.