Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917 [Hardcover]

Matthew Frye Jacobson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0809028085 | ISBN-13: 978-0809028085 | Publication Date: April 12, 2000 | Edition: 1st

A brilliant examination of national identity in a crucial period

The United States first announced its power on the international scene at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876 and first demonstrated that power during World War I. The years in between were a period of dramatic change, when the dynamics of industrialization rapidly accelerated the rate at which Americans were coming in contact with foreign peoples, both at home and abroad.
In Barbarian Virtues, Matthew Frye Jacobson shows how American conceptions of peoplehood, citizenship, and national identity were transformed in these crucial years by escalating economic and military involvements abroad and by the massive influx of immigrants at home. Drawing upon a diverse range
of sources--not only traditional political documents but also novels, travelogues, academic treatises, and art--Jacobson demonstrates the close relationship between immigration and expansionism. By bridging these two areas, so often left separate, he rethinks the texture of American political life in a keenly argued and persuasive history. Barbarian Virtues shows how these years set the stage for today's attitudes and ideas about "Americanism" and about immigrants and foreign policy, from Border Watch to the Gulf War.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A sense of moral outrage simmers throughout Barbarian Virtues, an outrage that tacitly informs Jacobson's exploration of U.S. attitudes toward immigration and foreign policy (which he sees as two sides of the same coin) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but which is kept from boiling over until the last page. There, Jacobson concludes: "Despite some opposition, the United States consciously chose imperial power along with the antidemocratic baggage and even the bloodshed that entailed; and many Americans liked it." This is not really news. But Jacobson, a professor of American Studies at Yale and author of Whiteness of a Different Color, does have an interesting thesis: at a time when America depended on nonwhite foreigners as both reliable consumers of American products abroad and industrious workers in the U.S., it also reviled them as "primitives" in need of civilization and as potential threats to the national order. The strength of his book is the wealth of evidence it provides; referring to a wide range of documentation--from journalism to literature, political rhetoric to pseudo-scientific studies, Tarzan to Teddy Roosevelt--Jacobson explores every conceivable nuance of his thesis. He might have written a book with far greater resonance, however, had he devoted more than a few pages to sketching out how his thesis also applies to America today. Still, Jacobson succeeds in presenting an analysis of a crucial period in the development of American identity as forged in the simultaneous "crucible of immigration" at home and "empire-building" abroad. 24 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From 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 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Hill and Wang; 1st edition (April 12, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809028085
• ISBN-13: 978-0809028085
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,019,266 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary, October 18, 2000

By A Customer

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This review is from: Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917 (Hardcover)

This is an extraordinary book. It traces the intersecting lines of
the American imperial drive for markets during this period, with the
push for immigration as a source of cheap labor. Interwoven with both
policies was an unremitting ethnocentrism and racism. This book
explains the relationship between these factors, and how they helped
shaped American nationalism and consciousness during the period. One
can also recognize the roots of recent American history in this
earlier period.... The book is brimming with startling and
thought-provoking information. Even one familiar with this period of
American history will find much that is new. The quotations in the
book are worth the price alone: almost every page contains a quotation
to make the jaw drop! This book is exceptionally well written, and
extremely fascinating. It's one of the rare books that had me
grabbing my friends and urging them to read it!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gets it right, November 16, 2006

By 

Professor Brizz (KCK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917 (Paperback)

As an historian who teaches about the Progressive Era, i've been waiting for a book like this for years. It's simply the best book written on America's peculiar fascination with race and the obsession with defining a hierarchy of races in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There has certainly been enough attention paid to Spencer et al and the progression of thought on how intellectuals confronted the problem of race in the late 19th century, but no book has ever treated the subject with such acumen. Jacobson joins David Roediger as the preeminent writers on America's struggle to reconcile it's claim to being the world's melting pot with the reality of it's ongoing propensity to relegate "savages" and lesser races/ethnicities to the margins of society.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and well-written--required reading for Americans, November 29, 2003

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Quickhappy "quickhappy" (Big city, big country) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917 (Paperback)

"At its core 'civilization' was an economic concept" (p. 50). So shows Jacobson, in his wonderful book, _Barbarian Virtues_.
Vile racial hatreds define these hegemonic notions of "civilization." Jacobson's extensive research shows persistent and everyday racism operating in the daily discourse of American power. Presidents McKinley and (Teddy) Roosevelt, as well as major newspapers and magazines, spew a stream of racism, and show it as a basic part of elite common sense at the time.

I want to second the reviewer from Durham, who found this book short on Blackness. (Jacobson's excellent _Whiteness of a Different Color_ helps somewhat.) One might add that this book only skims over the important experience of the violent conquest of the West and the Indians, in shaping "civilization" and "savage" during these years. (Drinnon's _Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building is a larger and longer contribution in this regard.)

The book could be faulted for lingering on the Tarzan novels, for example, when more pressing political issues ruled the day. And I was hungry for a more sustained discussion of the colonization of the Philippines.

But Jacobson is in pursuit of "civilized" ideas in everyday American thought--that's his safari here and, as such, he pursues his subject with great talent. _Barbarian Virtues_ is a fast and gripping read. And it exposes what school textbooks and the mass media forget so well: America has a long and viscious history of racial hatred. When our politicians today speak of "civilization," we ought to remember its deep, poisonous roots, and its longstanding use to justify the most brutal exertions of capitalist greed.