Barbarian Virtues : The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and well-written--required reading for Americans
Review: "At its core 'civilization' was an economic concept" (p. 50). So shows Jacobson, in his wonderful book, _Barbarian Virtues_.
Vile racial hatreds define these hegemonic notions of "civilization." Jacobson's extensive research shows persistent and everyday racism operating in the daily discourse of American power. Presidents McKinley and (Teddy) Roosevelt, as well as major newspapers and magazines, spew a stream of racism, and show it as a basic part of elite common sense at the time.

I want to second the reviewer from Durham, who found this book short on Blackness. (Jacobson's excellent _Whiteness of a Different Color_ helps somewhat.) One might add that this book only skims over the important experience of the violent conquest of the West and the Indians, in shaping "civilization" and "savage" during these years. (Drinnon's _Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building is a larger and longer contribution in this regard.)

The book could be faulted for lingering on the Tarzan novels, for example, when more pressing political issues ruled the day. And I was hungry for a more sustained discussion of the colonization of the Philippines.

But Jacobson is in pursuit of "civilized" ideas in everyday American thought--that's his safari here and, as such, he pursues his subject with great talent. _Barbarian Virtues_ is a fast and gripping read. And it exposes what school textbooks and the mass media forget so well: America has a long and viscious history of racial hatred. When our politicians today speak of "civilization," we ought to remember its deep, poisonous roots, and its longstanding use to justify the most brutal exertions of capitalist greed.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and well-written--required reading for Americans
Review: "At its core 'civilization' was an economic concept" (p. 50). So shows Jacobson, in his wonderful book, _Barbarian Virtues_.
Vile racial hatreds define these hegemonic notions of "civilization." Jacobson's extensive research shows persistent and everyday racism operating in the daily discourse of American power. Presidents McKinley and (Teddy) Roosevelt, as well as major newspapers and magazines, spew a stream of racism, and show it as a basic part of elite common sense at the time.

I want to second the reviewer from Durham, who found this book short on Blackness. (Jacobson's excellent _Whiteness of a Different Color_ helps somewhat.) One might add that this book only skims over the important experience of the violent conquest of the West and the Indians, in shaping "civilization" and "savage" during these years. (Drinnon's _Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building is a larger and longer contribution in this regard.)

The book could be faulted for lingering on the Tarzan novels, for example, when more pressing political issues ruled the day. And I was hungry for a more sustained discussion of the colonization of the Philippines.

But Jacobson is in pursuit of "civilized" ideas in everyday American thought--that's his safari here and, as such, he pursues his subject with great talent. _Barbarian Virtues_ is a fast and gripping read. And it exposes what school textbooks and the mass media forget so well: America has a long and viscious history of racial hatred. When our politicians today speak of "civilization," we ought to remember its deep, poisonous roots, and its longstanding use to justify the most brutal exertions of capitalist greed.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent work but somewhat incomplete
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent work but somewhat incomplete
Review: 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 intervention the 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.

Rating:
Summary: Barbarian Virtues
Review: 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.