THE AGE OF CONFUSION Scott Masters and Tomasz Stanek Adapted for HIST118, 2b, 102 • Ongoing industrialization and WWI quickened the crumbling of the “Old Order” – it had staggered imaginations and left traditional values open to question • New intellectual and artistic (and scientific, political…) trends sought to fill the void; since the “rules” had been smashed, experimentation became the norm… • This created an atmosphere of relativism…many sought refuge in extremism… • This process began before the war… • The theme of relativism extended into all parts of society, and Existentialism continued to be the driving force… – – – – – – Life has no absolute meaning… Individuals are accountable to themselves… There is no god… There is no absolute morality… All that awaits us the void (le neant)… There are no rules → total freedom and experimentation… Jean –Paul Sartre – Huis Clos Samuel Beckett – Waiting for Godot • Theatre of the Absurd… Eugene Ionesco – The Chairs Freud… • • • • Psychoanalysis Id, Ego, Super Ego Oedipus Complex The Interpretation of Dreams • Freudian slips… • More confusion… I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. Surrealism • James Joyce - Ulysses • “Stream of Consciousness” Salvador Dali: Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War), 1936 ▪ Late 1920s-1940s. ▪ Influenced by Feud’s theories on psychoanalysis and the subconscious. ▪ Confusing & startling images like those in dreams. Themes in Early Modern Art 1. Uncertainty/insecurity. 2. Disillusionment. 3. The subconscious. 4. Overt sexuality. 5. Violence & savagery. Edvard Munch: The Scream (1893) Expressionism ▪ Using bright colors to express a particular emotion. Wassily Kandinsky: On White II (1923) Gustav Klim t: Judith I (1901) Secessionists ▪ Disrupt the conservative values of Viennese society. ▪ Obsessed with the self. ▪ Man is a sexual being, leaning toward despair. Gustav Klimt: The Kiss (1907-8) Henri Matisse: Open Window (1905) ▪ The use of intense colors in a violent, and uncontrolled way ▪ “Wild Beast” = Fauvism Georges Braque: Violin & Candlestick (1910) CUBISM ▪ The subject matter is broken down, analyzed, and reassembled in abstract form. ▪ Cezanne → The artist should treat nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, and the cone. Georges Braque: Woman with a Guitar (1913) Pablo Picasso: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) Pablo Picasso: Woman with a Flower (1932) Guernica, Spain 1937 Guernica (original and color) • Picasso depicting the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and death in town of Guernica by the German/Italian bombing campaign of Basque Country. • Sadly the horrors of the Great War seemed to be forgotten by 1937 (the eve of WWII) George Grosz Grey Day (1921) DaDa ▪ Ridiculed contemporary culture & traditional art forms. ▪ The collapse during WW I of social and moral values. ▪ Nihilistic. Marcel Duchamp: Fountain (1917) Walter Gropius: Bauhaus Building (1928) Bauhaus ▪ A utopian quality. ▪ Based on the ideals of simplified forms and unadorned functionalism. ▪ The belief that the machine economy could deliver elegantly designed items for the masses. ▪ Used techniques & materials employed especially in industrial fabrication & manufacture → steel, concrete, chrome, glass. LeCorbusier Frank Lloyd Wright MUSIC… FILM… Clark Atlanta University Nativism Author(s): Norman L. Friedman Source: Phylon (1960-), Vol. 28, No. 4 (4th Qtr., 1967), pp. 408-415 Published by: Clark Atlanta University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/274292 Accessed: 25/01/2010 12:48 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. 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Clark Atlanta University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Phylon (1960). http://www.jstor.org By NORMAN L. FRIEDMAN Nativism* IN RECENT YEARS a number of American historians, as part of an increased awareness of and interest in perspectives of the social sciences, have employed various sociological concepts in their inquiries.1 Conceptual development and clarification, however, should involve a two-sided interplay. Sociologists must also examine and reflect upon concepts and generalizations fashioned by historians that are pertinent to areas of sociological interest. This paper represents an attempt by a sociologist to consider historical data for the purpose of examining and analyzing a conceptual generalization, developed by historians, that is important for the area of the sociology of ethnic, racial, and religious relations: the concept of "nativism." Nativism has been viewed as a deep-seated American antipathy for internal "foreign" groups of various kinds (national, cultural, religious), which has erupted periodically into intensive efforts to safeguard America from such perceived "threats."2 Historical peaks in the intensity of nativist reaction have been marked by the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798,3the religious and political manifestations of the anti-Catholicism and Know-Nothing Party nativism of the 1840's and 1850's,4 and the various social and cultural forces after 1880 that culminated in the racist oriented immigration restriction of the 1920's.5 Historian John Higham, in his book Strangers in the Land, an excellent depiction and interpretation of the development of American nativism from 1860 to 1925, has suggested a three-dimensional general definition of the patterns of American nativism: (1) anti-Catholicism - with its roots in European religious and national rivalries; (2) xenophobia - the fear of foreigners and foreign radicalism; and (3) racism - from early nineteenth century national character conceptions of the greatness of the Anglo-Saxon "race," to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century notions of biologically superior and inferior racial stocks.6 Nativism, then, as defined by Higham, is a state of mind shared *Revised version of a paper presented at the 61st Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, August, 1966. in Miami Beach, Florida. For examples, see Edward N. Saveth (ed.), American History and the Social Sciences (New York, 1964). 2 Maldwyn A. Jones, American Immigration (Chicago, 1960), pp. 147-48. 8See John C. Miller, Crisis in Freedom: The Alien and Sedition Acts (Boston, 1951); and James M. Smith, Freedom's Ferment: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties (Ithaca, 1956). 4 See Ray A. Billington, The Protestant Crusade, 1800-1860:A Study of the Origins of American Navitism (New York, 1938). sSee John Higham, Strangers in the Land : Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (New Brunswick, 1955). Ibid., pp. 5-11. 408 NATIVISM 409 by segments of the dominant population, characterized by (more or less overt) expressions of anti-Catholicism, xenophobia, and racism directed toward other segments of the population within American society. Moreover, there has also been a suggestion in the writings by historians that nativism has been a recurrent phenomenon throughout American history, that "Nativism in the United States has existed whenever and wherever there were sufficient numbers of immigrants to cause Americans to become aware of them." 7 Three major questions raised by the concept of nativism will be considered here. (1) Has nativism been a recurrent phenomenon in American society; particularly, has it existed at times other than the well documented period from 1790-1925? (2) How well do the components of Higham's definition of nativism, constructed from events during 1790 to 1925, fit in some other period? (3) How might the sociologist regard nativism as a type of historical/sociological concept? In considering recurrence and conceptual fit, the investigator examined major primary and secondary sources pertaining to a possible instance of pre-1790 colonial American nativism, but one which has not been explicitly, systematically, or extensively analyzed within a nativism frame of reference: the attitudes directed toward German immigrants by the dominant English population in mid-eighteenth century Philadelphia. It was felt that this choice of particular groups, time, and locale would have more than merely a chance or local significance, for it has been suggested that Philadelphia in the eighteenth century was a microcosm of the future America, a setting whose variety of peoples, classes, and ideas "furnishes on an ample stage and with a large cast of characters an excellent example of the silent preparation of the mind of America." Moreover, the German immigration through Philadelphia, from about 1715 to 1755, constituted the most extensive influx of nonEnglish peoples during the colonial period,9 and perhaps therefore provides a large enough threat by which to chart possible manifestations of nativist reaction. NATIVISM IN MID-EIGHTEENTHCENTURY PHILADELPHIA: A CASE STUDY One of the historical roots of American nationalism has been a faith in the society's power to assimilate immigrants.10A view of America as 7W. Darrell Overdyke, The Know-Nothing Party in the South (Baton Rouge, 1950), pp. 2-3. Higham, reflecting upon his research on nativism, has observed that: "As I studied the main nativist traditions, I discovered that over a long span of time they had not changed conthe kind of accusations which ceptually as much as an historian of ideas might suppose... nativists leveled against foreign elements remained relatively constant. Anti-radical and antisounded much in twentieth like those bruited in the eightthe Catholic complaints century eenth. See John Higham, "Another Look at Nativism," Catholic Historical Review, XLIV 150. (July, 1958), s Carl Bridenbaugh Rebels and Gentlemen: in the and Jessica Bridenbaugh, Philadelphia Age of Franklin (New York, 1942), xi. 9E. E. Proper, "Colonial Immigration Laws," Columbia Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, XII (1900), 46. An Interpretative 10Hans Kohn, American Nationalism: Essay (New York, 1957), p. 135. 410 PHYLON an asylum for immigrants developed in the colonial period. In Pennsylvania, William Penn set a pattern of hospitality to strangers. Quakers had much in common with many of the German sects who desired relief from Old World religious intolerance and economic hardship. Coaxed and encouraged to settle, German immigrants made Pennsylvania a haven in the first half of the eighteenth century.l This spirit of welcome toward German immigrants, however, faced a serious crisis and challenge in Philadelphia from about 1749 to 1755. During that period alone, an estimated 60,000 Germans entered Pennsylvania through Philadelphia; and by 1755the German element in Pennsylvania numbered about 100,000out of a total 225,000inhabitants.12While the German immigration remained modest, it had been accepted. But the heavy, visible influx from 1749 to 1755aroused latent nativist fears. Xenophobia and Racial Notions. Gottlieb Mittelberger observed that during his four-year stay in Pennsylvania, 1750 to 1754, German immigrants became unwelcome, particularly in Philadelphia.l3 Underpinning xenophobic expressions of nativism was a general disdain for the new German immigrants on the part of the more established and dominant class in Philadelphia. This local merchant and landowning aristocracy, having cultivated feelings of social superiority by 1750,14 became alarmed by the visibly destitute and ill-clothed German migrants, and accused the latter of spreading disease (Palatine Fever),", possessing odorous clothing,'6 and causing bad weather.17 Numerous Philadelphians argued that the "new" German immigrants since 1749 were less reliable and desirable than the older German settlers.'8 In 1754, news of German riots near Halifax, Nova Scotia, received unfavorable attention in The Pennsylvania Journal.19This reflection of popular concern over Germans in the Philadelphia English language press was significant, for it seldom reported news of Germans or of domestic life in general.20 Mid-eighteenth century xenophobia also expressed fear of the threat of economic competition. Although the need for rural and urban labor was a prime reason for encouragement of German immigration, never"Carl Wittke, We Who Built America: The Saga of the Immigrant (New York, 1939), pp. 66-69. had for some years been the Governor George Thomas in 1738 observed that Pennsylvania "Asylum of the distressed Protestants of... Germany" and that this fusion of many peoples Colonial Records (Harrisburg, was pertly responsible for her prosperity. See "Pennsylvania," 1851), IV. 315. D. Graeff, The Relations between the Pennsylvania 1'Arthur Germans and the British Authorities, 1750-1776 (Norristown, 1939), p. 19. 1 Gottlieb Mittelberger, Journey to Pennsylvania in the Year 1750 and Return to Germany in the Year 1754 (Philadelphia, 1898), p. 37. 4 Max Savelle, Seeds of Liberty: The Genesis of the American Mind (New York, 1948), p. 242. 15 J. Thomas Scharf and Westcott Thompson, 1609-1884 (Philadelphia, History of Philadelphia, 1884), I. 246. 16Samuel Hazard (ed.), Pennsylvania Archives, First Series (Philadelphia, 1853), II, 217. 17 Mittelberger, op. cit., p. 104. 8Graeff, op. cit., p. 53. In 1755, the Provincial Assembly declared that although the German inhabitants were, at first, families of substance, "We have Reason to believe, the Importations of Germans have been for some Time composed of a great Mixture of the Refuse of Archives, Eighth Series (Harristheir People." See Gertrude MacKinney (ed.), Pennsylvania 19burg, 1931), V. 3892. 1754. 26, Journal, February 19, The Pennsylvania 20 Ibid., 1750-1756; Pennsylvania Gazette, 1749-1754. 411 NATIVISM theless doubts were voiced occasionally. The colonial historian William Douglass, for example, warned that the Germans in Pennsylvania were numerous, industrious, frugal and "in consequence they grow rich where others starve, and . . . may in time oust the British from the colony." 21 By far the most important and verbalized expression of nativism was a broad fear that the large mid-century influx of Germans would not be assimilated into the dominant English racial culture, and that Pennsylvania therefore might become eventually a German colony. Benjamin Franklin, whose anxieties about the Germans at mid-century were typical of many of his fellow Philadelphians,22 asked in 1751: "Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them. . .." 23 In his periodic distaste for Germans, Franklin emphasized his admitted admiration for the English race: . . . the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionally very small . . . the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians, and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also . . . the English make the principal body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased .... But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind.24 In their thoroughgoing English nativism, Franklin and his contemporaries thought in terms of an English Philadelphia as the set and stable type of culture to which all alien elements should adjust and conform.25 Immigrant preservation of the German language, rather than any displayed eagerness to master English, was an important source of additional friction and suspicion. Some Philadelphians interpreted this reluctance to learn English as an indication that the Germans were an innately stupid and ignorant people. This impression, buttressed by the rise of nativism, intensified the stereotype of the "Dumb Dutch."26 Prominent Philadelphians, for example, wrote back to England that the Germans are "so profoundly ignorant as to be unable to speak the English language" and are "fast becoming like unto woodborn savages." 27 Anti-Catholicism. Though the majority of the German immigrants were Protestants, certain kinds of anti-Catholic nativist feelings nevertheDouglass, A Summary, Historical and Political, of the First Planting, Progressive Improvements, and Present State of the British Settlements in North America (London, 1760), II, 326. Such sentiments were similar to views expressed from time to time in England. In London's The Gentleman's Magazine in 1749, one writer, for instance, raised the question: "What Must foreigners come and take the bread out of our mouths? ... all English 2William are used to live better than foreigners, and therefore cantradesmen, of every denomination, not afford to work or sell so cheap as they." See Urban Sylvanus, The Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Chronicle, XIX (1749), 557-58. 2 Bridenbaugh and Bridenbaugh, op. cit., p. 1. 23Albert E. Smyth (ed.), The Writings of Benjamin 72. a Ibid., pp. 72-73. 2"See Conyers Read, "The English Element Franklin in Benjamin of History and Biography, LXIV (July, 1940), 330. (New York, 1907), II (1750-1759), Franklin," The Pennsylvania Germans As Seen By the Historian," "Richard Shryock, "The Pennsylvania Germans (Princeton, 1942), p. 240. (ed.), The Pennsylvania 27Quoted in J. H. Dubbs, "Pennsylvania Dutch," Nation, XLI (1885), 532-33. Magazine in Ralph Wood 412 PHYLON less were directed toward them, sometimes coupled with a fear that the Germans might ally with the (Catholic) French. William Smith, provost of the Philadelphia Academy and a leading Anglican clergyman, was obsessed with the fear that Germans would convert to Catholicism and then unite with the French against the English. In a pamphlet written especially to explain why such a properous colony was backward in defense against the French, he presented the belief that there were already "near one Fourth of the Germans supposed to be Roman Catholics, who cannot be supposed Friends to any Design for defending the Country against the French."28 Moreover, he cautioned that the rest of the Germans were an "uncultivated Race ... liable to be seduced by every enter29 prising Jesuit." A peak of nativist intensity led to unsuccessful legislative attempts in 1754 and 1755 to exclude nearly all German immigrants.30 The following cautious observation by the governor at that time, Robert Morris, reflected upon the struggle in 1755 by the Assembly, representative of the established and dominant class, to limit seriously German immigration: "It seems not an unfair inference from the attitudes of the colonists that, left to their own free will, they would have prevented the settling of such a large body of foreigners among them." 3 Eventually, as a result of various historical circumstances, the more intensive and manifest nativist antagonisms toward the Germans tended to subside after 1755A72 Assessment. The foregoing case seems to lend considerable eighteenth century substantiation to the hypothesis of "recurrent phenomenon of nativism." In the long view, however, compared with the descriptions of nativist uprisings within the more established and vehemently nationalistic American receiving culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was considerably less intensive. The case seems to fit Higham's general definition of nativism, with little need artificially to push the data into the component categories of the definition. However, if a rough form of Znaniecki's procedure of "analytic induction"33 is followed, the weakest chain in the definition, as it applies to this particular case, is anti-Catholicism. The case description, while exhibiting considerable evidence of xenophobia and early racial notions, on the other hand, presents little related anti-Catholicism in this particular instance and only a rather indirect form of it (tied in with fear of the French) at that. Other students have questioned either the basic correctness or lack of breadth of the anti-Catholicism com2 William Smith, A Brief State of the Province (New York, reprint, 1865; of Pennsylvania originally 1755), p. 37. 29Ibid., p. 19. Colonial Records (Harrisburg, 1851), VI, 225-26. g""Pennsylvania," 31 Quoted in Proper, op. cit., p. 53. Germans in the Eighteenth 8James 0. Knauss, "Social Conditions among the Pennsylvania German Society, (XXVIII, 1922), 63. Century," The Pennsylvania SFlorian Znaniecki, The Method of Sociology (New York, 1935), pp. 249-57. NATIVISM 413 ponent, and have indicated that nativism in California in the 1840's and 1850's included no crusade against Catholicism,34 or that nativism has also included feelings against Masons and Mormons,35 as well as hostility toward Jews,36 or that some faithful Catholics have also been nativists.37 Viewed in this light, what is probably needed is some designation which recognizes the reality of the religious aspect of nativism, but expresses these periodic hostilities of the dominant Protestant core culture in terms broader than only anti-Catholicism. Another question, of which more complete consideration is beyond the scope of this paper, is whether nativism can be viewed as a phenomenon beyond its American boundaries, either as something of longer history or as a universal generalization. One historian, for example, has suggested: When the United States is viewed as a frontier of Europe, the possibility suggests itself that what is termed "American" by nativists could be quite general concepts not confined by national boundaries, and whose roots run far back in the traditions of western civilization.38 Others have indicated that nativism - a term which not only in its particular manifestations but also in its origin is characteristically American - should be viewed as a special American expression of a more general and universal ethnocentrism probably found in all societies in all eras.39 NATIVISM AS A TYPE OF CONCEPT nativism be viewed by the sociologist as a type of conHow might cept? First, nativism is the kind of concept such as feudalism, democracy, bureaucracy, which is a generalization, i.e., a concept that defines a social or cultural phenomenon or process according to its several distinguishing characteristics.40 As a conceptual generalization, nativism also has certain spatial and temporal qualities. Spatially, it has been suggested that the concept was devised as a concrete generalization descriptive of a phenomenon in one place, American society. Temporally, this and other writings have suggested and, to some extent, supported, the idea that nativism has been a recurrent phenomenon within its spatial setting. If it can be assumed momentarily, for analytiof Nativism in California," Pacific Historial Review, XXX Pitt, "The Beginnings (February, 1961), 36-37. 5 David B. Davis, "Intergroup Conflict," in Saveth, op. cit., p. 549. 8 Colman J. Barry, "Some Roots of American Nativism," Catholic Historical Review, XLIV (July, 1958), 140. 87Overdyke, cit., p. 13. op. 88Barry, op. cit., p. 139. 89 Jones, op. cit., pp. 147-48. in Comparative Studies," Sociological 0 Reinhard Bendix, "Concepts and Generalizations 83 Leonard American Sociological Review, XXVIII (August, 1963), 533. Allen H. Barton and Paul F. Lazarsfeld, in a discussion of qualitative research procedures, have referred to a conceptual as a verbal "matrix formula": "cases where the analyst wants to encompass generalization such a great number of dimensions that he cannot make them all explicit, but tries to sum them up in a general 'pattern.'" See their "Some Functions of Qualitative Analysis in Social The Progress of a Decade Research," in S. M. Lipset and N. J. Smelser (eds.), Sociology: (Englewood Cliffs, 1961), p. 96. 414 PHYLON cal purposes, that nativism has been cyclically present throughout the entire temporal length of the American colonial and national experience, nativism may then be viewed as a conceptual generalization about one society (spatially) throughout its history (temporally). Discussions of concepts and generalizations in regard to their spatial and temporal qualities usually recognize two or three major types. Almost always delineated are the categories of: (1) universal concepts and generalizations presumably applicable to human conduct in all societies through all of history, and (2) particular concepts and generalizations descriptive of a particular time in one society. In addition, work in comparative studies usually attempts a third category: "Comparative sociological studies represent an attempt to develop concepts and generalizations at a level between what is true of all societies and what is true of one society at one point in time and space."41 Such a customary three-part classification, however, fails to take into account the special nature and value of a conceptual generalization like nativism. It would need to be considered as part of a more complex spatial-temporal typology of concepts. For example, in regard to spatial societies, concepts might be viewed as applicable to one society, two or more societies, or all societies: SPATIAL QUALITY (S) (1) Applicable to one society (2) Applicable to two or more socieites (3) Applicable to all societies In regard to temporal span, concepts might be viewed as representative either of single or isolated instances or of that which is historically recurrent: TEMPORAL QUALITY (T) (A) Representative of a single or isolated instance (B) Representative of that which is historically recurrent This breakdown affords the possibility of six spatial-temporal combinations: S3-TA, S3-TB, S2-TA, S2-TB, Sl-TA, and Sl-TB. Nativism, by such reckoning, would constitute an S1-TB concept, i.e., one that is spatially applicable to one society and temporally representative of that which is historically recurrent within that society. One final point requires attention: the special value of Sl-TB type conceptual generalizations for the sociologist. S3-TB type concepts, those which are spatially applicable to all societies and temporally representative of that which is historically recurrent, are, of course, recog41 Bendix, op. cit., p. 532. NATIVISM 415 nized as highly important by generalizing sociologists, especially those in search of universal social systems or a general theory of action. S1-TA type concepts, those which are spatially applicable to one society and temporally representative of a single or isolated occurrence, are constantly being produced and put forth in the spatially-temporally limited formulations of both historical research about the past and sociological research about the contemporary. S2-TA and S2-TB concepts are the current goals and products of comparative studies. S1-TB type concepts, like nativism, have a special importance which sociologists must explicitly recognize. Realistically, much if not most of sociological inquiry is spatially confined to one society. If sociologists are to go beyond S1-TA type concepts and generalizations, and toward S1-TB type ones, they must actively confront the material of history, both in its primary and secondary source forms, in their quest for generalization and conceptual clarification. There must be persistent interplay between sociology and history, between the particular and the general, with the sociologist not only approaching the past of a society with his concepts, but, in the manner suggested in this paper, considering, examining, and assessing conceptual generalizations arrived at by historians of that society. Such two-sided efforts, though perhaps lacking in global universality, nevertheless lead to the sometimes productive and often fascinating insights that come from the "dialectical tension" 46 in work which combines both a spatially limited generalizing impulse and a vividly concrete temporal perspective of the human condition. 42 David Reman, "The Study of National Character: Some Observations on the American Case," Harvard Library Bulletin, XII (Winter, 1959), 8-9. Cycles of Nativism in U.S. History As a nation of immigrants, the United States has also been a nation of nativists. At times we have offered, in Tom Paine's words, "an asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty" from all parts of the world. At other times Americans have done the persecuting--passing discriminatory laws against the foreign-born, denying their fundamental rights, and assaulting them with mob violence, even lynchings. We have welcomed immigrants in periods of expansion and optimism, reviled them in periods of stagnation and cynicism. Our attitudes have depended primarily on domestic politics and economics, secondarily on the volume and characteristics of the newcomers. In short, American nativism has had less to do with "them" than us. Fear and loathing of foreigners reach such levels when the nation's problems become so intractable that some people seek scapegoats. Typically, these periods feature a political or economic crisis, combined with a loss of faith in American institutions and a sense that the national community is gravely fractured. Hence a yearning for social homogeneity that needs an internal enemy to sustain itself: the "alien." Nativists' targets have reflected America's basic divisions: class, race, religion, and, to a lesser extent, language and culture. Yet each anti-immigrant cycle has its own dynamics. ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS. Few immigrants arrived in the nation's infancy, but among them were European radicals who caused great alarm among the ruling Federalists. Worried that excessive democracy posed a threat to property and stability, the Adams administration regarded politically active immigrants as subversives, not to mention partisan adversaries--most were aligned with Jefferson's Democratic-Republican clubs. In 1798, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, giving the President arbitrary powers to exclude or deport foreigners deemed dangerous and to prosecute anyone who criticized the government (used mainly to imprison immigrant editors and pamphleteers). A new Naturalization Act sought to limit immigrants' electoral clout by extending the waiting period for citizenship to 14 years. PROTESTANT CRUSADE. Immigration grew sharply in the 1830s-40s and became increasingly Roman Catholic, with the arrival of large waves of Irish and Germans. Simultaneously a Protestant revival flourished in a climate of economic change and insecurity. Evangelists demonized Catholics as "Papists" who followed authoritarian leaders, imported crime and disease, stole native jobs, and practiced moral depravities. A barrage of such agitation led Protestant workingmen to burn the Ursuline Convent near Boston and to riot in several cities--30 were killed and hundreds injured in Philadelphia in 1844. By the mid-1850s the nativist American Party (a.k.a. "Know-Nothings") won six governorships and controlled legislatures in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and California. They enacted numerous laws to harass and penalize immigrants (as well as newly annexed Mexicans), including the first literacy tests for voting, which were designed to disfranchise the Irish in particular. Attacking the "un-American" foreigner served as a diversion for those unwilling to acknowledge America's own irreconcilable difference--slavery versus abolition--which also split the nativists themselves. As sectional conflict sharpened, Know-Nothingism faltered; by 1860, the party had virtually collapsed. CHINESE EXCLUSION. Nativists in the West singled out Chinese immigrants for violence and legalized discrimination, claiming that white wage-earners could never compete with "coolies" willing to live in squalor. The nativist Workingmen's Party led a movement for a new state constitution in 1878-79, which adopted pro-visions banning Chinese from employment by corporations or state government, segregating them into Chinatowns, and seeking to keep them from entering the state. One delegate to the constitutional convention summed up the prevailing mood: "This State should be a State for white men . . . We want no other race here." Under pressure from California and other Western states, Congress passed the nation's first wholesale immigration restriction, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. RETURN OF ANTI-CATHOLICISM. Wealth and poverty both intensified during the post-Civil War era, setting the stage for class conflict between unregulated capitalists and a militant labor movement led largely by immigrants. Amid the violent strikes of the 1870s-80s came predictions of an apocalyptic struggle between American democracy and the forces of European socialism. The American Protective Association organized as a secret society dedicated to eradicating "foreign despotism," and that, in the public mind, included Catholics. One of its campaigns sought to ban German-language instruction, then wide-spread in the Midwest, as a way to harass parochial schools. But the idea backfired after Illinois and Wisconsin adopted such laws in 1889, prompting immigrant voters to turn incumbent Republicans out of office. AMERICANIZATION CAMPAIGN. By the turn of this century, public attention began to focus on the poverty, disease, and crime rates of immigrant ghettos, as well as the cultural distance between newcomers and native-born. Around 1890, the source countries of immigration had begun to shift from Ireland, England, Germany, and Scandinavia to Italy, Greece, Poland, Hungary, and Russia. In 1911, a federal commission issued a 42volume study of the foreign-born population alleging that the "new immigrants" were less skilled and educated, more clannish, slower to learn English, and generally less desirable as citizens than the "old immigrants." An alarmed establishment responded with a campaign to "Americanize" these Eastern and Southern Europeans, seeking to change their cultural traits, civic values, and especially their language. The U.S. government's Bureau of Americanization encouraged employers to make English classes compulsory for their foreign-born workers. Most states banned schooling in other tongues; some even prohibited the study of foreign languages in the elementary grades. TRIUMPH OF ANGLO-SAXON RACIALISM. Labor strife following World War I, often led by foreign-born activists, brought on a backlash culminating in the Palmer Raids of 1920, in which the FBI deported "alien subversives" without trial. The hysteria strengthened the hand of those who had argued all along that Americanization was futile because Eastern and Southern Europeans could not--indeed, should not--be assimilated because they were genetically inferior. Anglo-Saxon heredity was credited for the American genius for self-government. Letting in "lower races" would thus threaten not only the nation's gene pool but its democratic institutions and "way of life." Congress embraced this reasoning in 1921 and 1924 legislation creating the national-origins quota system. ENGLISH ONLY MOVEMENT. An end to racial quotas in the 1965 Immigration Reform Act opened the United States to Third World peoples and brought an explosion of demographic, cultural, and linguistic diversity. Americans who felt unsettled by these changes found a symbolic target for their discontent: "bilingualism." In the early 1980s they launched a movement to restrict the language of government--and, in some cases, the private sector--to "English only." The campaign won broad support among Americans who merely hoped to stir the melting pot, to encourage immigrants to learn English "for their own good." But the legislative means were punitive and mean-spirited, seeking to terminate essential rights and services in other languages from 911 operators to driver's license exams. CALIFORNIA SETS A NATIVIST TREND. In the early 1990's, America entered another period of anti-immigrant activism, with increasing complaints about the costs of diversity. The political conditions driving the new nativism were historically familiar: economic stagnation (in California), a widening gap between rich and poor, concerns about crime and moral breakdown, rising racial tensions, the dissolution of community ties, and widespread cynicism about social and political institutions. Anti-immigrant activists successfully capitalized on public fears. In California, voters approved Proposition 187 which would have forced public agencies, such as schools, law enforcement, social service agencies, and health care facilities to determine the immigration status of those they serve (or arrest), deny services to those they suspect (or confirm) are undocumented, and report them to the INS. (The initiative was tossed out by the courts.) Congress enacted sweeping legislation toughening immigration enforcement laws and cutting government benefits to non-citizens. The nativist successes spurred a backlash among new Americans. Naturalization rates reached historically high levels. New Americans voted in record numbers, punishing those responsible for anti-immigrant legislation. NATIVISM IN THE NEW MILLENIUM. The 2000 Census confirmed America's unprecedented diversity. After years of sustained economic growth, many Americans feel comfortable with this diversity, but some, reacting to immigrants who have by-passed traditional gateway cities to settle in traditionally white rural and suburban communities, are uncomfortable with the changing demographics. Anti-immigrant groups have capitalized on this discomfort with negative advertising sometimes targeting proimmigrant politicians. Meanwhile, as the birthrate of natives declines, the economic well- being of cities and states becomes increasingly reliant on the influx of new immigrants. Census data confirmed that cities where immigrants settled grew and prospered; others were left scrambling to find ways to attract newcomers. Nativists, reacting against the increasing immigrant population, have tried to blame immigrants for suburban sprawl and environmental degradation. SOURCES: David Bennett, The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988). Ellis Cose, A Nation of Strangers: Prejudice, Politics, and the Populating of America (New York: Morrow, 1992). James Crawford, Hold Your Tongue: Bilingualism and the Politics of "English Only" (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1992). Roger Daniels, Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States Since 1950 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988). Oscar Handlin, Race and Nationality in American Life (Boston: Little, Brown, 1957). John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925, 2d ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988). Maldwyn Allen Jones, American Immigration, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Revised August 2001. Originally prepared by James Crawford for the National Immigration Forum
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