Barbarian Virtues

Library Journal

Though the growth and prosperity of the United States was made possible by the labor of immigrants and the availability of external markets, foreigners have often been viewed by Americans with ambivalence. In this study, Jacobson (American studies, Yale), the author of Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (LJ 11/1/98) and other works exploring race and the immigrant experience, examines complex political and social views during a period of explosive immigration and overseas expansion. By considering a wide variety of contemporary sources such as newspapers, novels, academic treatises, and political writings, he discovers attitudes that offer striking similarities to those still voiced by politicians and political action groups in the latter part of the 20th century. Based upon a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, this readable and thoughtful work is recommended for large academic libraries.--Theresa McDevitt, Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Booknews

This is a paperbound reprint of a book published in 2000. Jacobson (American studies, Yale U.) considers how the current American attitudes toward foreigners evolved, and why. Drawing on a range of historical and cultural sources, he shows how policies and attitudes formed at the beginning of the 20th century continue to shape views common today. He argues that immigration and foreign policy are intimately linked, and that both are informed by the contradictory needs to exploit the world's peoples as consumers and to characterize them as inferior to Americans. Sixteen pages of black and white illustrations are featured. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Kirkus Reviews

Jacobson (American Studies/Yale) deftly sketches the often-xenophobic US relationship with foreign peoples as it evolved through history, and the sense of a distinctive American nationhood as it developed during an age of massive immigration at home and empire-building abroad. Theodore Roosevelt was no sentimentalist about the decline of Native American `savages.` Yet, in 1899, he decried the disappearance of `barbarian virtues` in an American civilization he saw as increasingly effete. Jacobson takes this as his text, seeing Roosevelt's ironic blend of smug contempt for foreign cultures and self-doubt regarding his own as emblematic of the US approach to foreigners during its `age of empire.` The author first looks at the America's economic relationship to foreign peoples, both as markets for American goods abroad and as workers at home: Americans identified foreign consumers as inferior precisely because their dependence on them, while immigrants, needed for America's industrial labor force, were simultaneously wooed and resented. In both cases, Jacobson argues, America's very dependence on foreigners fueled resentment and contempt of them. He then turns to American perceptions of foreigners, both in popular literature and in the development of the nascent social sciences: literature reinforced notions of American cultural progress and foreign inferiority, while scientific work in psychology and anthropology, shaped and driven by chauvinist and nativist thinking, supplied theories that substantiated white Americans' sense of racial and cultural superiority. Finally, Jacobson shows the political consequences of this thinking: political controversy surrounded America'sacceptance of`un-American,` often politically radical foreigners as future citizens, and sanguinary imperialist wars ensued in Latin America and the Philippines. Jacobson sees enduring lessons in America's experience from this period, arguing that the US survived the diversity from immigration previously and will again, and that it should not forget its imperialist legacy when it intervenes in global affairs. A thoughtful analysis of America's uneasy relationship with foreignness.