The two historiographical articles that will be discussed are “Nationalism, Immigration Control, and the Ethno-racial Remapping of America in the 1920s” by Mae M. Ngai, published in 2007, and “Shifting Perspectives on the 1920’s” by Henry May, published in 1956. With over 50 years between these two articles, it was extremely interesting to see the differences between writing style and content covered.
The main topic of the article, “Nationalism, Immigration Control and the Ethno-racial remapping of America in the 1920’s” was focused on immigration and racism in the United States during this time. Before this time, there was open immigration- no passports, visas, or green cards. After WWI and the Red Scare, there was a huge push for immigration restriction. There were multiple policies and laws made towards anti-immigration in American politics, like quotas and removal of illegal aliens. Racism was rampant, and immigration during this time was at an extreme low. One topic that the article does mention is that when historians were writing during that time, there wasn’t really a mention of other immigrants besides European immigrants until the 1970’s. Now, historians include that Mexicans were treated harshly at the border, with border patrol being established to deter Mexicans from coming to America. They refused visas to laborers, and deported many Mexicans. Another minority group that wasn’t mentioned too often were Asians. They were being excluded from almost everything, like land owning and schooling opportunities. At the time, America radicalized their foreignness, making these minority groups permanent outsiders in the country that one can still see today. It was interesting to see that history during that time just excluded whole groups of people because historians didn’t want to include them.
The second article, “Shifting perspectives on the 1920’s” starts off with May comparing writing about the 1920’s with historians writing about the Civil War. He states that studying this period is not easy because of cultural battles fought over the decade. The article goes on to discuss the social scientists of the time, and how they had different interpretations and wanted to create a new history for themselves. It also discusses how opinions shifted and how there were separate and conflicting loyalties with historians.
Comparing these two articles was interesting because not only are they both focusing on unconnected topics , but the logistics of each article are different. Since “Nationalism Immigration Control, and the Ethno-racial Remapping of America in the 1920s” was more recent, the text is a tad bit easier to understand. The formatting is also different. It has pictures and all of the footnotes at the bottom. “Shifting perspectives on the 1920’s” has no pictures and footnotes at the bottom of each page.
“Shifting Perspectives on the 1920’s” focuses more on historians and their ideas rather than events, and uses many names of the famous historians of the time like Parrington, Beard, Becker and Schlesinger. This article also does not mention any type of racism, since it was written in the 1950’s and many of those practices were still going on. “Nationalism, Immigration Control and the Ethno-racial remapping of America in the 1920’s” shows how racism was so rampant, since it was written in 2007, people recognize now the effects and prominence of racism throughout history, since it is no longer “normalized” like it was in the 1950’s. Shifting perspectives on the 1920’s” is more historiography based because the article is discussing how other historians viewed this time and wrote about it, while the other article is discussing how racism was so rampant during the 1920’s and how many minority groups were left out of the history until recently. It was interesting to read two different articles on two totally different subjects written 50 years apart and place different instances together on a timeline. There was so much going on at the same time, with discrimination on one hand and historiographical battles on the other.
Citations:
Mae M. Ngai, “Nationalism, Immigration Control, and the Ethno-racial Remapping of America in the 1920s,” OAH Magazine of History (July 2007), pp. 11-15
Henry May, “Shifting Perspectives on the 1920s,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review (Dec. 1956), pp. 405-427
