This marvelous and insightful immigration history represents cultural history at its finest, with brilliant thoughts on the broader issues of homeland, citizenship and national identity alongside detailed investigations of Polish, Irish, and Eastern European settlers. If only this book was published in paperback, so it would be more accessible in the classroom!

Jacobson's book is at once a painstaking review of original texts and a highly compelling read, no matter how long ago your family arrived. A must read for professional historians and anyone interested in American Studies and Cultural History

Barbarian Virtues is in many ways a brilliant text; it offers a strikingly complete, coherent, and well-written history of U.S. imperialism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Regrettably, this fascinating treatment of American nationalism leaves questions of race only partially examined. Although Jacobson's work highlights the role that the racialization of those bodies making up export and labor markets played in constructions of Americanness, he fails to show how this racialization may have depended on a racial paradigm centered around the devaluation of blackness that already existed by the post-Reconstruction era. Barbarian Virtues covers a period of time in which stereotypes of black savageness formed the basis for white supremacist terrorism, the failure of Reconstruction, and the disenfranchisement of blacks. Can turn-of-the-century elite and popular ideas about immigrants, evolutionary development, and civilization can be read outside of a racial paradigm in which whiteness (and indeed Americanness) came to define itself in opposition to black identity? Can a discussion of racial ideology and U.S. imperialism be complete without any reference to the nation's history of both actual and methaphoric (i.e. political, rhetorical) violence against its African-descended population, especially given that hundreds of thousands of blacks immigrated to the U.S. during the years that Jacobson writes about? If Jacobson succeeds in his goal "to redress two striking failures in our national memory-one regarding immigration; the other, imperialism," he also succeeds in reinforcing a third failure of American collective memory (263). This failure is the inability to conceive of the complex ways in which race--specifically, constructions of black identity--has been central to American imperialist ideology in particular and Western imperial reason in general.

I'm proud to be an American. Over the last month and a half, these six words have echoed through our radios and televisions more times than the latest Brittney Spear's sexy single. Stores are selling out of stars and stripes and CNN's ratings have gone through the roof. The United States was attacked and its' people can do nothing but wave the flag and propagate blame on foreign people.
American citizens have been taught to recognize their culture, their government, and their people as the epitome of what an advanced society can achieve. The ethnocentrism found in America overwhelms its' people and creates the drive to dominate what they perceive to be foreign. The attempt towards domination has been a societal precedent since the beginning of time. As America industrialized around the beginning of the 19th century, the U.S. fought this battle for power with imperialistic vision, expanding global markets and immigration labor. Their power was achieved through the profits of capitalism, at the expense of global human equality.
The strength of the U.S. is rarely questioned by its' citizens. The American people try to ignore the selfish actions that U.S. government and businesses have used to gain and maintain themselves as the world's super power. It's hard to find material that looks deeply into this matter, searching for truth under layers of patriotic dust. Matthew Frye Jacobson disregards the notion of America's rightful warrant of power and exposes the truth that lays beneath the blanket of American ideals in his book Barbarian Virtues: The United States encounters foreign peoples at home and abroad 1876-1917.
Jacobson recognizes this time period as an important era of the establishment of American foreign policy and the domestic thoughts surrounding these events. America's intense industrialization during these years created the need to open the doors of commerce to people around the world, and to open our domestic doors with invitations of immigration. The opportunity for immigrant advancement and the betterment of foreign societies because of U.S. involvement, are the notions that have been written down as facts in American children's history books. The story that Jacobson tells holds harsh truths that have been conveniently overlooked in the writing, or rewriting, of American history. He explores "foreign peoples as imported workers for American factories and as overseas consumers of American products" (4) and recognizes the illiberal nature of American actions.
America was forced to turn to foreign participation in their industrialized world of commerce because "this "nation of customers" did not have the spending power to support its shopkeepers"(16). The shift towards foreign markets and workers created a "deep American dependence upon these foreign peoples (which)seems to have fueled the animus against them"(13).
Foreigners were met with fear when they got off the boats and were manipulated in their own homelands to support the American economy. Their cultures were thought of as inferior and barbaric in comparison to the society of the United States. Immigrants would be bettered as they adapted to the American way of life and foreigners would be aided in their advancement towards civilization by having American goods available.
Exporters reduced the history and cultures of foreign peoples to "a series of wants whose particulars were as easily discerned by the Western eye as they were fulfilled by the Western industry" (26). The government slyly "aided" counties in ways that would establish markets for American goods. All actions were motivated by profit; human exploitation was a common cost and of little concern. Americans convinced themselves that these foreign people were inferior as a mechanism to avoid the guilt that would ensue from their actions in these lands. The inferiority of foreign cultures "provided justification for whatever action or interventionthe United States deemed necessary to exert its will outside its own borders"(49).
The United States not only used foreigners as explanations for their ill actions in world activity, they used them to explain the economic state of people within the U.S. American economists of the time made claims to "immigration intensifying the fatal cycle of "booms" and "depressions"" and declared it the responsible factor for the lowering "standard of living for all American workers" (74). Foreign workers and their homeland markets were completely being taken advantage of, while the American need for them was being ignored. Jacobson recognizes the extreme hypocrisy with which America dealt with foreigners and acknowledges the mistakes that were made and the lasting impact that these mistakes hold.
The exploration of the "white man" developed ways in which the people of the U.S. thought about other parts of the world.
"Entire continents were defined by their presumed emptiness, cultures by their lacks and absences, and peoples by their exemption from the flow of history". The Other, found in these barren spaces, was often sexualized and given an "erotic charge". The "feminized natives" were depicted as naturally and eagerly awaiting the "masculine West's" possession (112). Juxtaposing the idea of a feminine nature against a masculine culture further demonstrates the American tendency to look at these foreign people as uncivilized and barbaric. These erotic images of "otherness" were not too deeply developed by Jacobson and background knowledge of orientalism (Edward Said) would help to further digest these ideas.
I am impressed with Matthew Frye Jacobson's attempt to look past the instilled idea of American History to recognize America's place in world history. Americans must be informed of the past; they must be proud of the accomplishments and made aware of the mistakes. During the years between 1876 and 1917, America's intentions were to "reform a population to suit U.S. needs" (38). They did this in the name of world advancement, but the results were no doubt profitable to the United States and harmful to many foreign people. There is no doubt that both accomplishments and mistakes were made during this era and after reflecting upon Jacobson's revisions to Americas place in history, it's a bit harder to say I'm proud to be an American.

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!

WHITE OF A DIFFERENT COLOR by Matthew Frye Jacobson is an excellent historical summary and deconstruction of the social construct called "the white race." Anthropologists, sociologists, demographers, and historians like Jacobson who study race and ethnicity have suggested over and over that even if race differences exist they are not fixed (the definition of white has changed over time and no consensus has been formed concerning it's constiuent parts). The biological sciences provide no evidence that race exists. Humans with different hair color, skin color, eye color, eye shape, and/or other "race" characteristics straddle all the "race" groups.

Jacobson uses a variety of written sources to make his case --that "non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants and their children were perhaps the first beneficiaries of the modern civil rights movement." He has compiled evidence from many historical legal cases involving various individuals who attempted to establish evidence of "whiteness" in order to obtain U.S. citizenship or some other perq reserved for the "native white race." He points out that the legal evidence is conflicted. Are Armenians white or aren't they? How can Japanese with a white skin be nonwhite and Italians with a dark skin be white in one set of court proceedings and the reverse found in different courts on different days?

Jacobson includes information from literature, news journals, and other written sources to illustrate that authors as diverse as Mark Twain and Joseph Conrad and Mr. Hearst of newspaper fame all offered an opinion about race at one time or another, and that while everyone started out assuming they knew what it meant to be white, most soon discovered the operational definition was another matter. There is not now nor ever has been a consensus on what it means to be white.

I enjoyed Jacobson's book very much and I think it is an excellent qualitative analysis. However, I have a few concerns: 1) Race is a contentious topic, but mixed race is even more troublesome. In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau identified more than 60 race groups in the U.S.; While Jacobson alludes to this issue, he might have discussed it a bit more as it supports his idea that race is a nebulous notion; 2) In discussing the acquisition of civil rights, Jacobson makes the mistake many men make--Black men had the vote and basic rights many years before women of any color; 3) Jacobson begins his history with 1790 and assumes (as did many) that the so-called Anglo-Saxons were a monolithic group--they were not. The early settlers were a diverse lot from many nations and included landed gentry, endentured servents, and prisoners who worked side by side with slaves in Georgia and other colonial penal colonies until the Revolution. I have read that Jews funded the Revolotion, Poles and French trained the military (a highway in VA is named for general Pulaski); and that the first person to die in the Revolution was a free Black man named Crispus Attucks. 4) Jacobson starts the civil rights movement with the acceptance of "non-white" immigrants to "white" privilege, but evidence suggests that the U.S. Revolution was about the rights of the property owners or Aristocracy. Not until Andrew Jackson did the "common" man get the vote. Black men got the vote 30 years later and women got the vote in the 1920s although many rights were not accorded them until recently. The history of the U.S. is the history of the Civil Rights Movement for all human beings and as Americans we should be grateful for our rights.

"Whiteness of a Different Color" is a marvelous work of modern scholarship. In this excellent work of historiography/history, Jacobson explores the American conception of racial "whiteness" and how it has changed over time. This book won virtually every major scholarly award in 1999, most notably the American Studies Association's Award for the best book dealing with American istory and culture.

In the 19th century, "whitness" was reserved for Anglo-Saxons, and descendants of immigrants from the British Isles. Slowly, the concept of whiteness evolved to include Northern Europeans and Scandanavians, then other white gentiles, then Jews. Jacobson traces two major influences for this change -- assimilation into the American mainstream and the need to rectuit other "whites" to help polarize the nation between white and black. The previous was common in northern industrial centers and large cities, while the latter was especially prevalent in the Jim Crowe south.

This is a modern study because it takes unconventional themes such as the arbitrary construction of "whiteness" and explores it, as opposed to the more traditional form of research, which would include choosing an historical event and studying the facts. "Whiteness of a Different Color" is about people's conceptions, and misconceptions, rather than specific facts. Reflecting on that subject, I wonder if that isn't what's most important.

In *Whiteness of a Different Color,* Matthew Jacobson draws upon congressional legislation and discourse, historical documents and memoirs, and popular culture in an attempt to explain racism's affect on immigration, American domestic and foreign policy, and the self-perceptions of various racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Jacobson mentions in the preface that it is his hope to move into the foremost rank of immigration experts with this book, and I think that he accomplished what he set out to do. Eloquently written and thoroughly researched, Jacobson, who is obviously very liberal, argues his points in such a way that any person with common sense would agree with him, given the evidence and excerpts included in the book. Everyone involved in American Studies or American History would be well advised to pick up a copy of this book.