Old and new New Englanders : immigration & regional identity in the Gilded Age / Bluford Adams.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Adams, Bluford.

Contributor:

Michigan Publishing (University of Michigan), publisher.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Group identity--New England.

Group identity.

Regionalism--New England.

Regionalism.

History.

New England--History--19th century.

New England.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor, Michigan : The University of Michigan Press, [2014]

System Details:

text file

Summary:

Although Americans are accustomed to viewing regional identities as the exclusive property of the native born, this book argues that immigrants played a crucial role in reshaping one of the nation's oldest and most prestigious regional identities, New Englander. Old and New New Englanders focuses on the decades at the end of the nineteenth century, the so-called Gilded Age, when all of the nation's regional identities came under intense pressure from the forces of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. Nowhere were those forces stronger than in New England, where an old-stock Yankee population struggling with a declining birthrate and diminishing national influence was swamped by waves of immigrants from Canada and Europe. By the turn of the century, the newcomers so thoroughly pervaded the region that many observers believed its defining characteristics-its values, ethnic cast, customs, and institutions-had been placed up for grabs. Bluford Adams shows how the region's Yankees and immigrants contested the meaning of New England across a series of debates over such controversial issues as Anglo-Saxonist theories of racial superiority, immigration restriction, female education, agricultural reform, and abortion. Drawing on and contributing to work in immigration history, as well as American, gender, ethnic, and New England studies, this book offers both specialist and nonspecialist readers an innovative look into the history of identity construction in the United States. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: Regional identity in an age of immigration

World conquerors or a dying people? Racial theory, regional anxiety, and the Brahmin Anglo-Saxonists

New Ireland, New France, New England: the place of immigrants in American regionalism

New England delicacy: immigration and the regional body

"Rural New England is in a state of transition": immigrants and Yankees on the land

The new New England: Yankees and immigrants in the Old Northwest

Coda: "The pilgrims were illegal aliens".

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on information from the publisher.

ISBN:

9780472072088

9780472052080

9780472029990

Publisher Number:

10.3998/mpub.5820129

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.