Atlantic Entanglements: Narratives of Self and Other at the Turn of the 20th Century

Abstract

Although the mobility of populations across the Atlantic has a long history, the decades around the turn of the 20th century witnessed an unprecedented movement of migrants from Europe to the Americas. This increased movement of peoples coincided with the overseas expansion of the United States, in the wake of the Spanish-American War (1898), which led to the acquisition of territories in Central America and the Pacific region. This period, then, is a turning point in the history of US relations with the world, marking the emergence of a new global system in which the US would come to play an increasingly important role. These are some of the significant points that provide the backdrop for the issues I discuss in this paper. The heated debates provoked by the so-called “new immigrants” (i.e. those from southern and eastern Europe) as well as by the “imperial venture” of the US show clearly that significant sectors of US society saw both as threats to the integrity of the nation and to a supposedly pure American identity, based on Anglo-Saxon traditions. I will draw on texts with a variety of viewpoints, from nativists such as Edward A. Ross and Madison Grant to immigrants like Mary Antin, to discuss the reconceptualization of the nation and its identity within the emerging global context that I mentioned above.