Moravian Americans and Their Neighbors, 1772–1822

While the world was weathering a global pandemic in September 2020, curious minds from a variety of disciplines gathered online for a conference on Moravians and their neighbors between 1772 and 1822. Focused on the Moravian settlement in North Carolina, conference attendees specifically asked how the interaction between Moravians and their white, indigenous, and enslaved and free black neighbors shaped the process of Americanization. The resulting book, Moravian Americans and Their Neighbors, 1772–1882, has enabled those key questions to engage a broader audience, contributing to a discussion of southern political and cultural development in the decades following the American Revolution and wondering about the relevance those questions still hold for contemporary Moravians.

Editors Ulrike Wiethaus and Grant McAllister have taken a set of sixteen diverse papers and skillfully woven them into a coherent picture of how the communal and theocratic ideals of the early Wachovia settlements gave way to...