Palatines

Palatines refers to the people of the Palatinate, a historic region along the middle Rhine in what is now southwestern Germany. In the Middle Ages and early modern period it was part of the Holy Roman Empire and, as the Electorate of the Palatinate (Kurpfalz), one of the empire’s secular electorates. The region’s historic capital for much of its early modern history was Heidelberg, and the Elector Palatine held one of the empire’s seven electorates. The Palatinate is known for wine production and fortified towns. It suffered heavy destruction during the Thirty Years’ War and again in later wars with France, which contributed to population decline and waves of emigration.

The term Palatine is also used in a historical sense for a group of Protestant refugees who left the Palatinate during the early 18th century amid the War of the Spanish Succession. In 1709–1711 a substantial number of Palatines arrived in England, where their settlement became a notable episode in the era’s immigration debates. Some Palatines were granted relief and land within Britain, and over time others were resettled in Ireland and, in the following decades, in the American colonies, where they contributed to early German-speaking communities and to the broader German diaspora in North America.

In modern usage, Palatines typically refers to people connected to the Palatinate region for historical or genealogical reasons. Today the Palatinate is part of the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany, with Heidelberg and Mannheim as major cities.