This project documents the history of laws and policies concerning immigration to colonial America. It locates this history in its broad global context, advancing the general notion that immigration involves not only the interests and goals of the receiving nation, but also those of the sending countries, and the complex interplay between receiving and sending nations. Specifically, the project catalogs significant restrictions on immigration to North America in the colonial period of 1607 to 1763. It demonstrates that these restrictions were not simply local phenomena, but are the result of serious policy disputes between the metropolitan center of the British Empire and its colonial periphery. To document this history and advance the thesis that early immigration laws are a by-product of tensions between the center and the periphery, the investigator uses a combination of statutory research and historical methods, including the full record of primary and secondary sources located in the U.S. and abroad. In addition to filling an important gap in knowledge about the early foundations of U.S. immigration law, it contributes to the broader theme that law formation may be studied as a dynamic between domestic/local interests and goals on the one hand, and external attempts to impose or transplant interests and goals on the other.
