Lien Bich Luu is Lecturer in History at the University of Hertfordshire, UK
'Lien Luu's wonderful book introduces us to a cosmopolitan London of the 16th-18th centuries, a magnet to refugees from other parts of Europe, young, ambitious and skilled. They brought new ideas and technologies, and new trading and social networks to challenge English insularity and complacency. Lien Luu empathises with her homesick subjects, some of whom lived for years apart from their families and in the disadvantaged status of aliens. This history is also a salutary intervention in our debates now on immigration and asylum-seekers.' Professor Maxine Berg, University of Warwick '... argues persuasively that immigration helped to make Tudor-Stuart London an engine of economic growth... Luu's contentions are well grounded in archival evidence and an extensive bibliography, her prose is fluid, and she suggests useful ways to reflect generally on the relationship between immigration and the economy... Recommended.' Choice '... provides a useful synthesis of the economic contribution of the French and Dutch populations, principally during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The main strength of the book is in the detailed examination of specific trades, looking at the contribution of individual craftsmen and the establishment of these new industries, and in particular through Luu's exploration of the diffusion of this new technology to members of the native community.' Economic History Review 'It is a stimulating study, with a wealth of useful biographical information, as well as a serious contribution to economic history, with incidentally the best account of the poorly understood English sixteenth-century brewing industry in print.' The London Journal 'This is [...] a useful book about an important and relatively neglected topic.' Renaissance quarterly 'Luu's book provides a very stimulating and very important contribution to our understanding of knowledge transfer and the role of migration (not only) in early modern economies. It is