Liberty, Coercion, and the Making of Americans

Gerstle, Gary

From the author: "In this essay, I test the Crièvecoeurian myth of Americanization against the rich body of work produced by historians and other students of European immigration in the twentieth century. The myth consists of four distinct claims: first, that European immigrants wanted to shed their Old World ways and to become American, second, that Americanization was quick and easy because the immigrants found no significant obstacles thrown in their path, third, that Americanization 'melted' the immigrants into a single race, culture, or nation, unvarying across space and time, and fourth, that immigrants experienced Americanization as emancipation from servitude, deference, poverty, and other Old World constraints....I focus on literature generated since World War I on European immigration from 1880 to 1920, the era of the so-called new immigrants."

1997-09

en

Journal Article

1880-1920; United States

The Journal of American History

84