• nifty@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Technically, colonialists are not “immigrants”. Regardless, if we go by first settlers then it’s the English since they settled first in 1587. First German settlers didn’t arrive till 1628, and when the U.S. was formed these disparate groups combined together to form a better front for fighting. Germans fought on both sides. If these different settler groups didn’t have a common enemy (the Natives or English), they would have started fighting each other. In fact, that’s why we still see remnants of the US civil war to this day.

    • norimee@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Nobody im the Trump family was a coloniser or european settler. They all came to the US in the last 100 years only.

      • nifty@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Ah okay, so yeah Trumps family are all immigrants. I was speaking to the enthnocentric state discussions people often have

        • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          Which is just not applicable at all.

          This is now a thread about soup.

          If you had to eat soup in the summer, what would it be?

    • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      immigrate /ĭm′ĭ-grāt″/ intransitive verb

      To enter and settle in a country or region to which one is not native.

      Yes colonists are immigrants. Everyone in North and South America are immigrants (even those that came by the bering land bridge).

      • nifty@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        I guess that fair to some extent, the distinction I’ve made in the past is that people who were “settling” for a crown or a state were colonialists (see Spanish conquistadors, for example), and those who sought asylum from religious persecution or poverty were immigrants. I think if the French and English crown had not started wars in the early 1600s, the later English arrivals (think Plymouth Rock, not Jamestown) would have probably had a better time getting along with the Native Americans. But who can say now 🤷‍♀️