Race and manifest destiny : the origins of American racial anglo-saxonism / Reginald Horsman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Horsman, Reginald.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States--Territorial expansion.

United States.

Territorial expansion.

Manifest Destiny.

Racism--United States.

Racism.

Racism--Great Britain.

Great Britain.

Nationalisme.

Rassendiscriminatie.

Local Subjects:

Nationalisme.

Rassendiscriminatie.

Physical Description:

367 pages ; 24 cm

Other Title:

Anglo-saxonism.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1981.

Summary:

American myths about national character tend to overshadow the historical realities. This book examines the origins of racialism in America to show that the belief in white American superiority was firmly ensconced in the nation's ideology by 1850. The author chronicles the beginnings and growth of an ideology stressing race, basic stock, and attributes in the blood. He traces how this ideology shifted from the more benign views of the Founding Fathers, which embraced ideas of progress and the spread of republican institutions for all. He finds linkages between the new, racialist ideology in America and the rising European ideas of Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic, and scientific ideologies of the early nineteenth century. Most importantly, however, the author demonstrates that it was the merging of the Anglo-Saxon rhetoric with the experience of Americans conquering a continent that created a racialist philosophy. Two generations before the "new" immigrants began arriving in the late nineteenth century, Americans, in contact with blacks, Indians, and Mexicans, became vociferous racialists.

Contents:

I. European and colonial origins. Liberty and the Anglo-Saxons

Aryans follow the sun

Science and inequality

Racial Anglo-Saxonism in England

II. American destiny. Providential nation

The other Americans

Superior and inferior races

The dissemination of scientific racialism

Romantic racial nationalism

III. An Anglo-Saxon political ideology. Racial destiny and the Indians

Anglo-Saxons and Mexicans

Race, expansion, and the Mexican War

A confused minority

Expansion and world mission.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Horsman, Reginald. Race and manifest destiny.

ISBN:

0674745728

9780674745728

067494805X

9780674948051

OCLC:

7459795