Plunge Into The Brief History Of Mail Order Brides
Nowadays, mail order bride practice is a common thing. The notion itself promises more than just dating online, but marriage and family building. Yet, this concept didn’t appear with the advent of the internet and online dating. The history of mail order brides goes back to the 1600s. Online platforms just made the mail order bride search well-known to the world. So, who are mail order brides? How did they appear and why? Let’s find this out.
Mail Order Bride Term History
As it’s known from history when European people first started to migrate to the new and unknown American territories, males suffered from the women’s shortage. In the hope to find a decent wife, men used to send letters to the churches, newspapers, and magazines asking to find a decent wife. That’s how the term of a mail order bride was coined.
Mail order bride history shows those letters contributed to the marriages and family building. So, marrying a mail order bride is quite an old practice. In the past, it meant to get a wife with the help of mails sent to a particular place. Whereas now mail order wives are the ladies you can meet online and pave the way to real marriage.
Two Main Roots Of Mail Order Brides History
When such practice came to existence, the mail order bride was seen as a must for family creation to continue generations and increase the population. And, delving into the origin of this notion, you can spot two mail order brides sources of history.
Jamestown Colony
The first mail order wives appeared in Jamestown Colony located in Virginia when people from Europe started to migrate to the US, the lands known as New World. But the problem of migration was the high male proportion leading to the women’s shortage.
This issue became prevalent in the Jamestown Colony and full of males unable to find wives and create families, the colony started to be deserted by these men. The place started to lose its populations and it almost led to the collapse.
Not to lose the colony, local authorities came up with an idea to advertise the advantages of the local territories and promising life in Europe to attract as many women as possible. This yielded a positive result, and European ladies started to arrive at these lands. Exactly these women are regarded as the first mail order brides.
The King’s Daughters
During the period when people migrated to the lands of New World, there was a French colony, New France, facing the same problems with male prevalence. The French King Louis XIV concerned about the future of his colony came up with an unusual and smart solution. He decided to send women there to improve the situation.
Those ladies were poor and orphans and the king paid them dowries and travel costs. On arrival, they were provided with free accommodation until they found someone to marry. So, they were sponsored by the French king and that’s why these mail order brides were called the daughters of the king.
These ladies were sent not only for maintaining the population or family creation. The other goal was to decrease crime in the colony. The men starting to marry were engaged in crimes less. Thus, mail order wives’ history shows these ladies contributed to the wellbeing of society.
Modern History Of Mail Order Brides
No matter how much time passed, the mail order brides haven’t lost their actuality and demand. Yet, much has changed. Now mail order bride is someone to be spotted online.
Historical events like two world wars, the collapse of the Soviet Union, start and end of the Cold War, and so on resulted in women lacking economic welfare in the post-Soviet countries and other countries from Latin America. These ladies started to seek men outside their homelands with a more balanced economic status. Thus, online dating has become for them the main resort to escape from financial difficulties.
However, it’s not only technological and hard economical contributions that changed the notion of mail order brides. There are some contributing factors explaining why mail order brides exist in the modern world:
- mail order wives attempt seeking a better life
- males desire to find attractive and respectful wives overseas
- women and men seek intercultural experience
- men and women face the inability to create families at the native countries
From the need for women in the territories lacking females to the modern trend of ladies seeking western males, history has shown men are always in need of someone loving and respectful. The rich history of mail order brides and lots of success stories prove you can try to change your life in this way as well.