[quote=Parabolica]Jazzman-
Can you give more details about the Nordic explusion of their poor to the US. I always had this idea that they were people seeking a better deal in a new land. At least it sounds like that is the way it was for Swedes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_emigration_to_the_United_States%5B/quote%5D
Which expulsion are you referring to?
According to your link, the PTB in Sweden were opposed to the emigration of Swedes to the Americas.
[From your link:]
“During the later 19th century, the major shipping lines financed Swedish emigrant agents and paid for the production of large quantities of emigration propaganda. Much of this promotional material, such as leaflets, was produced by immigration promoters in the U.S. Propaganda and advertising by shipping line agents was often blamed for emigration by the conservative Swedish ruling class, which grew increasingly alarmed at seeing the agricultural labor force leave the country.“
…
[Also from your link:]
“Swedish mass migration took off in the spring of 1841 with the departure of Uppsala University graduate Gustaf Unonius (1810–1902) together with his wife, a maid, and two students. This small group founded a settlement they named New Upsala in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, and began to clear the wilderness, full of enthusiasm for frontier life in “one of the most beautiful valleys the world can offer.”[13] After moving to Chicago, Unonius soon became disillusioned with life in the U.S., but his reports in praise of the simple and virtuous pioneer life, published in the liberal newspaper Aftonbladet, had already begun to draw Swedes westward.
The rising Swedish exodus was caused by economic, political, and religious conditions affecting particularly the rural population. Europe was in the grip of an economic depression. In Sweden, population growth and repeated crop failures were making it increasingly difficult to make a living from the tiny land plots on which at least three quarters of the inhabitants depended. Rural conditions were especially bleak in the stony and unforgiving Småland province, which became the heartland of emigration. The American Midwest was an agricultural antipode to Småland, for it, Unonius reported in 1842, “more closely than any other country in the world approaches the ideal which nature seems to have intended for the happiness and comfort of humanity.”[14] Prairie land in the Midwest was ample, loamy, and government-owned. From 1841 it was sold to squatters for $1.25 per acre, ($28 per acre ($69/ha) as of 2013), following the Preemption Act of 1841 (later replaced by the Homestead Act). The inexpensive and fertile land of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin was irresistible to landless and impoverished European peasants. It also attracted more well-established farmers.”
…..
[And this, also from your link.]
The political freedom of the American republic exerted a similar pull. Swedish peasants were some of the most literate in Europe, and consequently had access to the European egalitarian and radical ideas that culminated in the Revolutions of 1848.[15] The clash between Swedish liberalism and a repressive monarchist regime raised political awareness among the disadvantaged, many of whom looked to the U.S. to realize their republican ideals.
