The Strange Career of Johann Matthias Kramer: Transatlantic Migration, Language and the Circulation of Information in the Eighteenth Century

This article examines the career of Johann Matthias Kramer, a language teacher and emigration agent, as a case study to illuminate the intersections between migration, colonialism, cultural transfer and the dissemination of information in the eighteenth century. Kramer’s career spanned diverse places and regions – his birthplace, Nuremberg, the commercial cities of Rotterdam and Hamburg, the university town of Göttingen and the North American colonies of Georgia and Pennsylvania – and it oscillated between two seemingly very different professions. The article argues, however, that both language teachers and emigration agents were highly mobile, usually lacked formal training, and had low reputations, but nonetheless helped to forge important social and cultural links.