American Immigration

The growing study of American immigration has brought a new cosmopolitanism into the writing of our social history. For the history of immigration to the United States is always the history of emigration from somewhere else. Unless we understand why they left we cannot understand what they wanted to make of America. Mr. es's book helps us see American immigration as a two-sided phenomenon, for he sees the newcomer both as emigrant and as immigrant. He shows us how deeply our own history has been affected by the coincidences of life elsewhere: by the European industrial and agricultural revolutions, by famines, by political uprisings, and by wars for national independence. He also suggests how the surge of immigrant waves, the lingering loyalties to distant places, and the problems both of living in an American ghetto and of assimilating into the American mainstream-how all these have affected presidential elections, the declaration (or non-declaration) of wars, and the character of American labor movements. He reminds us that the immigrant, by providing a scapegoat for recurrent nativist movements, has deflected the issues of domestic politics. Immigrants have been attracted here by the improvements in transatlantic shipping, by the building of American railroads, and by the growth of Ameri can industry. They have also helped make all these possible.

American history is the story of how this gathering of immi grants from many nations became unified into a new nation. Yet, until recently, our historians have done little with the subject. We have had numerous popular and readable sagas of individual immigrant adventure-the life of a Thomas Cooper, a Carl Schurz, an Andrew Carnegie, an Edward Bok, or an Enrico Fermi. In some parts of the country there has been a fervent personal interest in genealogy. From time to time we have heard bitter debate over whether the newcomer from this or that country was an "undesirable" citizen. But only within the last generation have some of our ablest historians begun to describe immigration as an American institution.
Our many different kinds of immigration, as Mr. Jones ex plains, have given a spice, an unpredictableness, and a motley ness to American life which have been mising from nations with more homogeneous or more stable populations. As a Briton, he writes from the vantage point of the emigrant con tinent, and he reminds us that the newcomer to America (ex cepting those who were transported as punishment for crime or who were brought as slaves) was making a choice During much of American history, great numbers of Europeans were moving also from one to another European country, or to other parts of the world. Knowing intimately the American documents and American life, Mr. Jones is especially well situated to see our immigration in its world perspective and so to give us a less provincial definition of what has been pe vculiarly American about it. The "Chicago History of American Civilization" aims to make each aspect of our culture a window to all our history. The series contains two kinds of books: a chronological group, which provides a coherent narrative of American history from Ets beginning to the present day, and a topical group, which Heals with the history of varied and significant aspects of American life. This book is one of the topical group.