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The Uprooted
The Uprooted is a rare book, combining powerful feeling and long-time study to give us the shape and the feel of the immigrant experience rather than just the facts. It elucidates the hopes and the yearnings of the immigrants that propelled them out of their native environments to chance the hazards of the New World. It traces the profound imprint they made upon this world and how they, in turn, were changed by it. When first published, The Uprooted won the Pulitzer Prize for history. This second edition is enlarged by a supplemental chapter, in which the author examines the meaning of the immigrant experience in light of more recent decades, and by a brilliant bibliographic essay.
333 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1951
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November 5, 2009
I decided I wanted to read something about the golden age of immigration. Having been born and raised in Southern California, I am already reasonably intimate with the details of the coyote, through the desert, Lou Dobbs style immigration. Rather, I wanted to learn a bit more about the Ellis Island, changed last names, Emma Lazarus era of immigration.
Much to my surprise, this is not a major area of historical inquiry. If you hunt around Amazon, you'll find a slew of books on the politics of contemporary immigration. You will also find a ton of "how to become a US citizen" books. But, you will not find much of a selection when it comes to general histories on the subject. Again, you can do a bit better if you want to focus on a specific ethnicity -- say the Irish. You can also do a little better by limiting your geographic interests to say New York or Boston. But finding a well regarded survey of the subject was surprisingly hard.
So, I was quite gratified to stumble upon the Uprooted by Oscar Handlin. Handlin is a heavy weight scholar, the book is relatively brief, and it won the Pullitzer Prize. Perfect, right? Well, not exactly. Handlin did something extraordinarily unorthodox for an historian. It probably earned him the Pullitzer, but it did not exactly suit my purposes. In the Uprooted, Handlin divorces his tale from evidence. He does not cite specific documents, stories or sources for the narrative tapestry he weaves. His reasons are sound. Most books on immigration tend to focus on nationalities, and emphasize something that appeared clear in 20th Century, but was really quite murkey in the 18th. What was a Pole? A Russian, an Austrian? What about Italians and Germans? These nation states were very late in coming, for most peasants, radical ideas of nationalism were alien. So, the acute sense of nationalism that is passed on to the children of immigrants, is not necessarily reflective of the immigrant experience. So, instead of talking about the Poles, or the Germans or the Irish, Handlin talks about immigrants and peasants. He tries to emphasize the great commonality amongst immigrants, rather than focus on the more trivial distinctions. The problem is, I was kind of looking for those distinctions.
So, instead of a book that collects the tales of the individual circumstances that led to waves of immigration from Ireland, Germany, Italy, Poland and the Balkans, we get a book about the "average immigrant." While it was not exactly the book I was looking to read, that is not to say it was not worth reading.
The Uprooted filled a major gap in my understanding of American history. My own family emigrated from Wales at the turn of the 20th Century, but I had no real sense of why. Like most Americans, I knew that the Pilgrims came for religion, the Mexicans are here for jobs, and everything else is a little blurry. As it turns out, the greatest migration of human beings in human history turned on to interlocking developments. First, medicine began to improve life spans everywhere. Lower infant mortality in the 19th Century means that peasant plots of land (and when we are talking about immigrantion in this period, we are talking about peasants primarily), must be subdivided into smaller and smaller parcels. At the same time medicine is keeping more people alive, the industrial revolution is making the mechanization of agriculture possible. Yet, for mechanization to have its maximum effect and efficiency, larger and larger farms are needed. The first response of the government is to shut down the "swing" spaces -- the commons that had been a shared resource for all. Unfortunately, these swing spaces also provided a bit of insurance for the vagaries of agricultural production. They also provided fuel (trees) at no cost but labor to peasant communities. When they disappeared, the next poor harvest was a catastrophic event. Ireland's potato famines illustrate the problem perfectly. So, peasants have no where to go, they can't make agriculture work for them anymore. They hear about the land of milk and honey in America, and off they go.
The Uprooted does a nice job of telling the truth of this experience without losing the forest for the trees. And the truth is, regardless of the cognitive dissonance we collectively conjure up, the experience of immigrants in this country was extraordinarily difficult. You might imagine, as I did that the immigrants would show up in say New York and start working in our factories -- a cheap source of labor for our new industrial economy. But that would come much later. Immigrantion began in earnest in the 1820's -- long before Henry Ford and assembly lines. Factory workers were a sort of craftsman early on. So, a fresh off the boat peasant was not of much use in this circumstance. One bit of doggrel that Handlin sites captures the reality of new immigrants nicely. First, I learned that the streets of America were not paved with gold. Then, I learned that most of the streets in America were not even paved. Then I learned, I was to pave the streets.
That is where the massive absorbtion of immigrant labor came in -- construction. Canals, railroads, huge dangerous projects of any sort -- it was cheap immigrant labor that made it possible. Most immigrants were never able to recreate their lives in the agricultural village that they were so desperate to reestablish. Most simply got caught up in the challenge of surviving in a strange new metropolis and could not get out.
As the title of the book suggests, this was very hard on people. You take millions of Europeans who have lived a lifestyle unchanged since the Middle Ages and you drop them in New York City. The impacts on familial roles, religion, self-worth were all beyond comprehension. That folks struggled through, and in some cases prospered, is a testament to American stock. Though romanticized it was no fun to be an immigrant to this country in the 19th Century. It may have been better than starving as a peasant in Galacia somewhere, but it was a closer call than most Americans realize.
The book ended on a sour note for me. Handlin spends the last lengthy chapter decrying the end of work in America and upholding ethnic ghettos as preferrable to government provided housing (what with its running water, and humane conditions). Its a conservative rant with heavy handed editorializing that I am not sure ever really bore out to reality. Worse, it was completely unnecessary and was not the way I had hoped for the book to end.
So, all in all. I learned something, the book is well written, but I will need to read more to get what I was after. Not a ringing endorsement, but this honestly may be the best the subject has to offer at this time.
Much to my surprise, this is not a major area of historical inquiry. If you hunt around Amazon, you'll find a slew of books on the politics of contemporary immigration. You will also find a ton of "how to become a US citizen" books. But, you will not find much of a selection when it comes to general histories on the subject. Again, you can do a bit better if you want to focus on a specific ethnicity -- say the Irish. You can also do a little better by limiting your geographic interests to say New York or Boston. But finding a well regarded survey of the subject was surprisingly hard.
So, I was quite gratified to stumble upon the Uprooted by Oscar Handlin. Handlin is a heavy weight scholar, the book is relatively brief, and it won the Pullitzer Prize. Perfect, right? Well, not exactly. Handlin did something extraordinarily unorthodox for an historian. It probably earned him the Pullitzer, but it did not exactly suit my purposes. In the Uprooted, Handlin divorces his tale from evidence. He does not cite specific documents, stories or sources for the narrative tapestry he weaves. His reasons are sound. Most books on immigration tend to focus on nationalities, and emphasize something that appeared clear in 20th Century, but was really quite murkey in the 18th. What was a Pole? A Russian, an Austrian? What about Italians and Germans? These nation states were very late in coming, for most peasants, radical ideas of nationalism were alien. So, the acute sense of nationalism that is passed on to the children of immigrants, is not necessarily reflective of the immigrant experience. So, instead of talking about the Poles, or the Germans or the Irish, Handlin talks about immigrants and peasants. He tries to emphasize the great commonality amongst immigrants, rather than focus on the more trivial distinctions. The problem is, I was kind of looking for those distinctions.
So, instead of a book that collects the tales of the individual circumstances that led to waves of immigration from Ireland, Germany, Italy, Poland and the Balkans, we get a book about the "average immigrant." While it was not exactly the book I was looking to read, that is not to say it was not worth reading.
The Uprooted filled a major gap in my understanding of American history. My own family emigrated from Wales at the turn of the 20th Century, but I had no real sense of why. Like most Americans, I knew that the Pilgrims came for religion, the Mexicans are here for jobs, and everything else is a little blurry. As it turns out, the greatest migration of human beings in human history turned on to interlocking developments. First, medicine began to improve life spans everywhere. Lower infant mortality in the 19th Century means that peasant plots of land (and when we are talking about immigrantion in this period, we are talking about peasants primarily), must be subdivided into smaller and smaller parcels. At the same time medicine is keeping more people alive, the industrial revolution is making the mechanization of agriculture possible. Yet, for mechanization to have its maximum effect and efficiency, larger and larger farms are needed. The first response of the government is to shut down the "swing" spaces -- the commons that had been a shared resource for all. Unfortunately, these swing spaces also provided a bit of insurance for the vagaries of agricultural production. They also provided fuel (trees) at no cost but labor to peasant communities. When they disappeared, the next poor harvest was a catastrophic event. Ireland's potato famines illustrate the problem perfectly. So, peasants have no where to go, they can't make agriculture work for them anymore. They hear about the land of milk and honey in America, and off they go.
The Uprooted does a nice job of telling the truth of this experience without losing the forest for the trees. And the truth is, regardless of the cognitive dissonance we collectively conjure up, the experience of immigrants in this country was extraordinarily difficult. You might imagine, as I did that the immigrants would show up in say New York and start working in our factories -- a cheap source of labor for our new industrial economy. But that would come much later. Immigrantion began in earnest in the 1820's -- long before Henry Ford and assembly lines. Factory workers were a sort of craftsman early on. So, a fresh off the boat peasant was not of much use in this circumstance. One bit of doggrel that Handlin sites captures the reality of new immigrants nicely. First, I learned that the streets of America were not paved with gold. Then, I learned that most of the streets in America were not even paved. Then I learned, I was to pave the streets.
That is where the massive absorbtion of immigrant labor came in -- construction. Canals, railroads, huge dangerous projects of any sort -- it was cheap immigrant labor that made it possible. Most immigrants were never able to recreate their lives in the agricultural village that they were so desperate to reestablish. Most simply got caught up in the challenge of surviving in a strange new metropolis and could not get out.
As the title of the book suggests, this was very hard on people. You take millions of Europeans who have lived a lifestyle unchanged since the Middle Ages and you drop them in New York City. The impacts on familial roles, religion, self-worth were all beyond comprehension. That folks struggled through, and in some cases prospered, is a testament to American stock. Though romanticized it was no fun to be an immigrant to this country in the 19th Century. It may have been better than starving as a peasant in Galacia somewhere, but it was a closer call than most Americans realize.
The book ended on a sour note for me. Handlin spends the last lengthy chapter decrying the end of work in America and upholding ethnic ghettos as preferrable to government provided housing (what with its running water, and humane conditions). Its a conservative rant with heavy handed editorializing that I am not sure ever really bore out to reality. Worse, it was completely unnecessary and was not the way I had hoped for the book to end.
So, all in all. I learned something, the book is well written, but I will need to read more to get what I was after. Not a ringing endorsement, but this honestly may be the best the subject has to offer at this time.
January 22, 2020
Oscar Handlin’s work tells us about the settlement of the New World by immigrants of different nationalities and about the challenges they faced there.
Instead of focusing on the various ethnicities, the author emphasizes what all the immigrants had in common – nostalgia of the life they left behind, difficulty in adjusting to the new circumstances, and endeavors to support their families.
When I picked up “Uprooted”, I expected to read more about the distinctions between the immigrants and the cause of the exodus towards America. Instead, Handlin’s book is more of a generalization, a portrait of the “typical immigrant”.
Although Handlin’s work didn’t exactly live up to my expectations, it gained me an insight into the hardships of all immigrants to the States.
The author has depicted very well the confusion among the European peasants, who, torn away from their village life, found themselves in the whirl of the busy American cities. One cannot adjust himself to such a striking change in a day.
In general, the book is well-written, although, due to the lack of sources, it reminds me of historical fiction.
Instead of focusing on the various ethnicities, the author emphasizes what all the immigrants had in common – nostalgia of the life they left behind, difficulty in adjusting to the new circumstances, and endeavors to support their families.
When I picked up “Uprooted”, I expected to read more about the distinctions between the immigrants and the cause of the exodus towards America. Instead, Handlin’s book is more of a generalization, a portrait of the “typical immigrant”.
Although Handlin’s work didn’t exactly live up to my expectations, it gained me an insight into the hardships of all immigrants to the States.
The author has depicted very well the confusion among the European peasants, who, torn away from their village life, found themselves in the whirl of the busy American cities. One cannot adjust himself to such a striking change in a day.
In general, the book is well-written, although, due to the lack of sources, it reminds me of historical fiction.
June 24, 2017
The Uprooted is a historical novel that tells the story of how the inhabitants of America came to live there. It further tells us the challenges they faced in a land they never knew. They came from Britain, Russia, Ukraine and the larger part of Europe. They are now known as Immigrants.
Immigrants settled in America but it took some time before they could become Americans. They suffered from the nostalgia of their hometown and countrymen who they had left behind. Living in a foreign country is not easy. It becomes worse when you have a family but without the means to support them. If you get something it becomes too little to even share with your parents. They curse you out of bitterness yet it is not your fault.
Immigrants settled in America but it took some time before they could become Americans. They suffered from the nostalgia of their hometown and countrymen who they had left behind. Living in a foreign country is not easy. It becomes worse when you have a family but without the means to support them. If you get something it becomes too little to even share with your parents. They curse you out of bitterness yet it is not your fault.
October 31, 2007
Being the granddaughter of an immigrant, I found this book to be moving. Though it deals largely with immigrants coming to America that stayed in large cities, it does let you into the overall immigrant experience. Handlin is often criticized because he won the Pulitzer Prize for history for a book that has some sections that many historians view as “historical fiction” in that he could not provide sources for them. Regardless, this truly is a masterpiece that exposes the plight of immigrants coming to America. I could not help but feel a connection to various people within the book know that my family went through similar things only a few generations before.
October 7, 2020
Book bordered on prosaic at times but revealed interesting tidbits about 19th century immigration to the states. Modern medicine prolonged lives everywhere and led to overpopulation in Europe leading to over parceling of lands leaving peasants with no option but to seek greener pastures. Conservatism seems to have been carried over by these groups and today US is religiously more conservative than modern day Europe. Lots of other interesting facts in the book related to Germán newspapers, labor contracts, Pulitzer, 1907 and Teutonic beliefs.
July 3, 2012
This book was a real disappointment. It was the winner of the Pulitzer prize in 1952. My grandparents emigrated from Hungary around the turn of the last century so I was very excited to find a book that chronicled what it was like for the millions who did the same.
The author goes through what the European experience was like prior to the 1850s, with the population expanding and the search for land and food making it very difficult for the peasants, or small farmer, as we would call them. This part was interesting and made sense. They left for the Promised Land by the millions and found a very different kind of life than they had expected.
The story from there is one we all know now, but this may not have been the case in the 50s. The author is very, very repetitive, telling the same stories over and over again, chapter after chapter. I kept skimming through to find something new, but never did.
Many of the experiences he relates were common to many of the immigrants, but the stories my grandparents and their Hungarian friends told were quite different. So not nearly all of the immigrants went through the experiences that we're led to believe they did.
There are no references at all in the book, which makes me wonder where the author got his information.
Wish I could say better things about it, but this is probably not the book you want about the lives of immigrants.
The author goes through what the European experience was like prior to the 1850s, with the population expanding and the search for land and food making it very difficult for the peasants, or small farmer, as we would call them. This part was interesting and made sense. They left for the Promised Land by the millions and found a very different kind of life than they had expected.
The story from there is one we all know now, but this may not have been the case in the 50s. The author is very, very repetitive, telling the same stories over and over again, chapter after chapter. I kept skimming through to find something new, but never did.
Many of the experiences he relates were common to many of the immigrants, but the stories my grandparents and their Hungarian friends told were quite different. So not nearly all of the immigrants went through the experiences that we're led to believe they did.
There are no references at all in the book, which makes me wonder where the author got his information.
Wish I could say better things about it, but this is probably not the book you want about the lives of immigrants.
September 15, 2018
A decent read (albeit an evidently aged style) if this had been an attempt at creative nonfiction; not rigorous at all for a History book, even with Handlin's auto-justifications in the enlarged re-edition. I recognize that the book represents something brilliant and new at the time that it was published, but as a reader in 2018 I got through this with some impatience.
November 18, 2017
Read this for a class and enjoyed it but it also kept putting me to sleep. His writing creates an “ideal type” that keeps it general and not too personal and so I felt a little lost in the narrative at times. I think more specifics would have anchored it better.
December 15, 2014
Well, shit. I picked up this book because my grandma died this year, and like most people faced with the sudden loss of a loved one, I had an immediate desire to know much more about the person who I no longer had the opportunity to ask. I would say it more than served that purpose.
Like many Americans my age, I took for granted that I had a grandparent or great-grandparent who had stepped off the boat around 1900 and went to work and here we are. I took for granted the infusion of Slovak language and culture in our lives. I never asked why or how, it was just the way things were.
For us born here, where did our forefathers come from? The first part of Handlin's book beautifully describes village life in the Old Country. Across Europe, people lived as they had for hundreds or thousands of years, clustered in small communities where everyone knew his place in the community and in nature. The land, if cared for, produced good food and strong animals which translated to wealth and comfort. Families, households, weddings and funerals, the church calendar, even the law was driven by the land and its cycle of life and death. Handlin describes it better than me:
"In the fields the grain rises again. Again the leaves break forth. These are not the grain and leaves of last year. The new is not the old. Yet the new and old are related. They are related by the death of the old which was necessary for the birth of the new... What is the religion of men who live through winter and spring? It is the affirmation that life is victorious over death."
How about that for giving meaning to life. But one man's beautiful symbiosis is another man's crippling dependency. External and internal forces were conspiring against the village, especially as industrialization swept across Europe. Internally, the traditional way of passing down land to the oldest or all sons in a family was causing either a shortage of land or a shortage of sons when played out over centuries. Externally, as landless (and therefore worthless) men left to find work, the village became more dependent on outsiders who brought new ideas and opportunities.
So The Great Migration began. For peasants who had never traveled more than a few miles from home, the journey was unimaginably harrowing, dangerous, and probably without any of the opportunistic thrill my generation likes to imagine. Then they arrived in the New World, which bore zero resemblance to anything they knew. Again from Handlin:
"In the Old Country, this house in this village, these fields by these trees, had had a character and identity of their own. They had testified to the peasants "I," they had fixed his place in the visible universe. The church, the shrine, the graveyard, and the generations that inhabited it also had their personality, had testified to the peasant's "I," and had fixed his place in a larger invisible universe. In the New Country, all these were gone. That was hard enough. Harder still was the fact that nothing replaced them. In America, the peasant was a transient without meaning in time and space. He lived now with inanimate objects, cut off from his surroundings. His dwelling and his place of work had no relationship to him as a man."
Now let me say, I've experienced a taste of migration. Growing up I lived in two countries outside the US, and enjoyed all the feelings of culture shock. But most people, native or not, commuted to their jobs, used transportation, used the telephone, and bought their food at stores. Even though we struggled with the language, and social norms, and looked visibly different, we were ultimately just exchanging one modern culture for another. Not so for the immigrants. And so Handlin spends most of the book detailing how the immigrants coped with every aspect of life. In clinging to the Old Ways, they built their own societies to meet others from similar backgrounds, and provide financial assistance to members in a communal way. They built churches to try to replicate the centralized structure within the village. They published their own native-language newspapers and formed communities to preserve traditions. In embracing new American ways, they gave the hardest time to the newest ethnic group, until a newer one came along to replace them and the bullied became the bullies. They commercialized and started buying everything they needed instead of making it. They learned how to use democracy to their advantage by getting elected and wielding power, not like in the Old Country where the feudal state was purely a tool of oppression.
Then of course, babies were born. My grandma, her 9 siblings, and all the kids who were the first American generation of their families were free from knowing village life in its totality, could actually help their parents navigate the New World. And of course with this, came what I can only imagine is a vastly under-appreciated generational difference between the old way and the new. One example: "They would never understand each others conception of marriage. Sure, the parents tried to explain the nature of this most crucial step, that this was a means of extending on in time the continuity of the family, that it involved the sacrifice of personality toward a larger end... The children would not listen. For them, marriage was an act of liberation by which they cast off the family ties and expressed themselves as persons through the power to love."
How modern of them. How un-village-like.
As the immigrants aged and assimilated themselves, each baby born was more American than the last. My baba spoke broken, self-taught English. Her children spoke both Slovak and English. My dad spoke broken Slovak, and I know only bits and pieces.
Handlin originally wrote this work in the 1950s, when millions of immigrants were still alive and able to tell their stories. In that conclusion, he notes the "new" dissolution of barriers between races. How the ethnic groups who once kept to themselves as a matter of national pride and survival can scarcely believe they are genetically related to each other, let alone inter-marrying. He added an afterword in the 1970s reprint, where he notes the continuation of this trend as we complete our evolution into "Americans." Also tellingly, he writes his concern for technology. How when people are made into social security numbers, and post-war governmental services take away the need for work, we become people unrecognizable to our grandparents. Not only separated from our ethnic roots, but separated from our place in the village, from meaning in our labors, and everything that once gave meaning to life.
I can't help but wonder what Mr. Handlin would say about the latest fad in rustic, organic, locally made. After a few generations, have people realized The Village is where we belong? Raising our own chickens and smithing our own metal? Is the Village even possible without a very traditional and restrictive view of family and church? Or will this new generation similarly realize that peasant life in many ways is not sustainable, and migrate to new lifestyle trends?
Giving five stars for all of the above, but giving one star because this is not an easy read. I'm tempted to say the content is so profound, it should be required reading for Americans. But then I remembered the reason I have this book is because it WAS required reading in senior year history. Ha! #sorrynotsorry. So one star for the boredom factor, and Handlin's generic, non-sourced tone which I'm sure was cool 60 years ago. Stick with it though, especially if you remember your Old Country ties.
Like many Americans my age, I took for granted that I had a grandparent or great-grandparent who had stepped off the boat around 1900 and went to work and here we are. I took for granted the infusion of Slovak language and culture in our lives. I never asked why or how, it was just the way things were.
For us born here, where did our forefathers come from? The first part of Handlin's book beautifully describes village life in the Old Country. Across Europe, people lived as they had for hundreds or thousands of years, clustered in small communities where everyone knew his place in the community and in nature. The land, if cared for, produced good food and strong animals which translated to wealth and comfort. Families, households, weddings and funerals, the church calendar, even the law was driven by the land and its cycle of life and death. Handlin describes it better than me:
"In the fields the grain rises again. Again the leaves break forth. These are not the grain and leaves of last year. The new is not the old. Yet the new and old are related. They are related by the death of the old which was necessary for the birth of the new... What is the religion of men who live through winter and spring? It is the affirmation that life is victorious over death."
How about that for giving meaning to life. But one man's beautiful symbiosis is another man's crippling dependency. External and internal forces were conspiring against the village, especially as industrialization swept across Europe. Internally, the traditional way of passing down land to the oldest or all sons in a family was causing either a shortage of land or a shortage of sons when played out over centuries. Externally, as landless (and therefore worthless) men left to find work, the village became more dependent on outsiders who brought new ideas and opportunities.
So The Great Migration began. For peasants who had never traveled more than a few miles from home, the journey was unimaginably harrowing, dangerous, and probably without any of the opportunistic thrill my generation likes to imagine. Then they arrived in the New World, which bore zero resemblance to anything they knew. Again from Handlin:
"In the Old Country, this house in this village, these fields by these trees, had had a character and identity of their own. They had testified to the peasants "I," they had fixed his place in the visible universe. The church, the shrine, the graveyard, and the generations that inhabited it also had their personality, had testified to the peasant's "I," and had fixed his place in a larger invisible universe. In the New Country, all these were gone. That was hard enough. Harder still was the fact that nothing replaced them. In America, the peasant was a transient without meaning in time and space. He lived now with inanimate objects, cut off from his surroundings. His dwelling and his place of work had no relationship to him as a man."
Now let me say, I've experienced a taste of migration. Growing up I lived in two countries outside the US, and enjoyed all the feelings of culture shock. But most people, native or not, commuted to their jobs, used transportation, used the telephone, and bought their food at stores. Even though we struggled with the language, and social norms, and looked visibly different, we were ultimately just exchanging one modern culture for another. Not so for the immigrants. And so Handlin spends most of the book detailing how the immigrants coped with every aspect of life. In clinging to the Old Ways, they built their own societies to meet others from similar backgrounds, and provide financial assistance to members in a communal way. They built churches to try to replicate the centralized structure within the village. They published their own native-language newspapers and formed communities to preserve traditions. In embracing new American ways, they gave the hardest time to the newest ethnic group, until a newer one came along to replace them and the bullied became the bullies. They commercialized and started buying everything they needed instead of making it. They learned how to use democracy to their advantage by getting elected and wielding power, not like in the Old Country where the feudal state was purely a tool of oppression.
Then of course, babies were born. My grandma, her 9 siblings, and all the kids who were the first American generation of their families were free from knowing village life in its totality, could actually help their parents navigate the New World. And of course with this, came what I can only imagine is a vastly under-appreciated generational difference between the old way and the new. One example: "They would never understand each others conception of marriage. Sure, the parents tried to explain the nature of this most crucial step, that this was a means of extending on in time the continuity of the family, that it involved the sacrifice of personality toward a larger end... The children would not listen. For them, marriage was an act of liberation by which they cast off the family ties and expressed themselves as persons through the power to love."
How modern of them. How un-village-like.
As the immigrants aged and assimilated themselves, each baby born was more American than the last. My baba spoke broken, self-taught English. Her children spoke both Slovak and English. My dad spoke broken Slovak, and I know only bits and pieces.
Handlin originally wrote this work in the 1950s, when millions of immigrants were still alive and able to tell their stories. In that conclusion, he notes the "new" dissolution of barriers between races. How the ethnic groups who once kept to themselves as a matter of national pride and survival can scarcely believe they are genetically related to each other, let alone inter-marrying. He added an afterword in the 1970s reprint, where he notes the continuation of this trend as we complete our evolution into "Americans." Also tellingly, he writes his concern for technology. How when people are made into social security numbers, and post-war governmental services take away the need for work, we become people unrecognizable to our grandparents. Not only separated from our ethnic roots, but separated from our place in the village, from meaning in our labors, and everything that once gave meaning to life.
I can't help but wonder what Mr. Handlin would say about the latest fad in rustic, organic, locally made. After a few generations, have people realized The Village is where we belong? Raising our own chickens and smithing our own metal? Is the Village even possible without a very traditional and restrictive view of family and church? Or will this new generation similarly realize that peasant life in many ways is not sustainable, and migrate to new lifestyle trends?
Giving five stars for all of the above, but giving one star because this is not an easy read. I'm tempted to say the content is so profound, it should be required reading for Americans. But then I remembered the reason I have this book is because it WAS required reading in senior year history. Ha! #sorrynotsorry. So one star for the boredom factor, and Handlin's generic, non-sourced tone which I'm sure was cool 60 years ago. Stick with it though, especially if you remember your Old Country ties.
January 28, 2019
Read this years ago and recall liking it.
January 6, 2020
Mentioned by Mark Shields:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/shi...
Thank you, Mark, for the mention. I never would have found this treasure. There were insights into immigration that are still applicable. Understanding the sacrifices made and the terrible adjustments immigrants faced, leaving European villages where people had been farming for many hundreds of years, was nearly overwhelming for them -but they did it, and for us.
My debt to my English, Scottish, and Italian immigrant ancestors can never be fully repaid. We are now responsible to open our arms to immigrants from all over the world. They are the bright future of our nation.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/shi...
Thank you, Mark, for the mention. I never would have found this treasure. There were insights into immigration that are still applicable. Understanding the sacrifices made and the terrible adjustments immigrants faced, leaving European villages where people had been farming for many hundreds of years, was nearly overwhelming for them -but they did it, and for us.
My debt to my English, Scottish, and Italian immigrant ancestors can never be fully repaid. We are now responsible to open our arms to immigrants from all over the world. They are the bright future of our nation.
January 10, 2022
This book has been on my shelf for years. It's considered something of a classic in immigration literature. I finally got around to reading in the New Year and I must say I was disappointed. Handlin writes generally about the immigrant experience in America, focusing on the great trans-Atlantic migration of 1850-1920. He cites very few sources and the first half of the book lacks references to specific people or dates. He also paints a negative picture of the immigrant experience during much of that time, while almost idealizing the peasant village life they left behind in Europe. Yes, life was hard for those "huddled masses" who came to our shores back then, but life was hard for those who stayed behind in Europe, and for many native-born Americans, too. The book doesn't give enough recognition to the great opportunity America offered to those immigrants, and even more so to their children. The book itself seems a lost opportunity to more fully and accurately describe the immigrant experience.
September 2, 2018
I read this for a Grad Class on Immigration History in the USA. This is definitely a book I can pull excerpts from to talk about the immigration from the early 19th Century to the early 20th. It focuses on white immigration from western and central Europe primarily and does a decent job of changing the perspective from the host society to the desperate people that made the journey across the Atlantic. Definitely a book I won't be reselling.
May 8, 2012
This book has been great in helping me understand my family's background and adjustments made as immigrants to the US. A must have for genealogists who have family that immigrated in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
April 10, 2011
3 main thing that I took away from this book is the person as an individual is inherently an American practice as a result of the immigrant experience and the replacing the past social order with a reliance on one skills in the present and ones ability to adapt to a dynamic and ever-changing society. In this way, I doubt any other country in the world can take the place of America in its innovative and entrepreneurial spirit and thus finding new industries from the air. Secondly, immigrants are inherently conservative due to the family-oriented places in which they come from and inherently more religious due to the fact that they cling to religion as a "familiar and safe" place in a strange new world. Lastly, the immigrants of the 19 century to which the majority of white Americans are descended from share the same hardships that todays undocumented Latin Americans who cross the border undergo to get to "the Land of Opportunity.
Handlin starts his book on where most immigrants of European descent came from. We realize that most of these people were peasant. He describes the peasant life was by necessity risk-adverse and extremely conservative favoring stability over change. The reason that peasants were risk-adverse was because the decisions of the individual affected the community even marriage. Thus, there in peasant life, there was no room for individuality and personal wants and needs because everyones actions effect the whole community thus it is the community that decided the fate of everyone. I wonder if this is the reason that in present day traditional societies (Middle East) it is still hard for to grasp the concept of individuality and democracy because their day-to-day life still is heavily dependent on the community from which they came.
I also wonder if this is the reason American liberal democracy is so hard to transplant elsewhere because since America is a country of immigrants, it is the rule of law not tribal customs that hold the community together whereas in these places it is more ethnic, tribal, and religious allegiance that hold these places together. So, perhaps this is the reason why America is unique because it is the country of immigrants and is totally ruled by these immigrants instead of a far away monarch such as what occurred in Canada and Australia.
Chapter 2 deals harshness of emigration experience. Apparently for most of the 19 century the emigrant experience was as harsh as the Latin American emigration experience of border crossing present today. I think this harsh Darwinian experience is what created America to have the entrepreneurial and innovative nature it now possess. This exactly the reason I am for immigration reform for people who are already here because it took a lot of chutzpah for them to get here and thus they have the innate characteristics of an American while at the same time reserving the right to choose immigrants based on specific skills needed in the economy right now.
Chapter 3 deals with immigrant as unskilled worker in construction. Apparently manual labor in America has always been the purview of new immigrants. If this is the case, why is such a controversy now that Latin American and Mexicans make up the majority the manual labor?
Women should thank immigrants for being the trailblazers in the work place because it is through immigrants need to work in order to have the basic necessities for their families that immigrant women first joined the ranks of the employed.
For much of American history, job security was a myth. With the exception of early to mid 20th century corporate office, all immigrants and all Americans need to enterprising in constantly looking for a job. All Americans either need to have transferable skill in case they get fired or super specialized skill that their employers cannot do without them. So the current hoopla of the lack of job security is nothing new in the American economy in which the flow of capital and thus a flexible labor market to meet the flow of capital is paramount. Thus, in America it is always better to work for yourself and to see each employer only in a contractual way instead of the employer be your source of income.
Chapter 4 discusses the social world in which the peasants came from. The social/environmental world tended to be harmonious and always karmic in tendency. That is every action creates a explainable reaction so everyone did their part to keep this balance. I guess if one really depended on nature for their subsistence then it would be easy to understand why these people are ready environmentalist because equilibrium in their environment means life-giving sustenance for them.
Once they go to the New World, the environmental and social equilibrium that they were so used to cease to exist replaced instead with being a dreaded clog in the capitalist machinery whether it be in industry or industrial farming in which crops were made in order to create capital instead for the use of living; and thus total feeling of isolation is the most common feeling that these immigrants will feel.
Because of the lost of equilibrium, these immigrants tend to be more conservative and religious in order to stabilize their lost equilibrium.
And this is the reason Americans tend to be more right-of-center than their European counter parts because of the displacement of immigrant experience makes them more cautious by nature. This the reason, Republicans really need to change their thinking about immigration reform because W is right new immigrants tend to be more socially conservative and the only thing that keeps them voting Democrat a majority of the time is that Republicans tend to be perceived as anti-immigrants.
I think this chapter is interesting in its observation why Americans tend to be more religious than their European brethren because their was no established religion and thus all religions could thrive. Apparently in Europe, the prolitariat who went to the cities to work and felt similarly displaced felt like an outsider in the churches their because it was established churches that did not necessarily cater to the "outsiders" needs, thus after generations Europeans did not go to church anymore. Whereas in America immigrants just started their own churches so it became a place to congregate with the familiar. I think this fact leads to the credence of the founding father's wisdom of the separation of church and state because it is only through the freedom to worship can a man truly have faith.
Chapter 5 further expands to the reason America is unique in its religiosity as a first world nation. For the most part, 1st world nations become less religious as they become materially richer because people become materially secure. America is unique in that it keeps its religiosity despite it being a 1st world nation. This conundrum always intrigued me until now. It makes sense for a country of immigrants who leave their country for a new life to cling to the only that is stable which it turns out to be religion. In a country in which the only certainty is change and movement, the only thing left that is constant has to be internal values such as religion and things that are conservative in nature. That is as much as fast as the external environment changes, the internal individual environment must stay constant thus placing America as socially more conservative than its 1st world brethren.
Chapter 6 deals with the ghettofication due to the influx immigration. Perhaps, this the reason why Americans love their privacy and thus suburbs and small towns as a reaction to the overcrowding of ghettos and isolations of American farms.
Chapter 7 states that immigrant association that was originally created as a means to socialize and as mutual-aid societies to pool resources together to help the immigrants involved probably gave rise to the biggest concentration of non-profit in the world. Once the children of these immigrants have children who are more American than they are these association gradually lose its immigrant flavor but retain the original cause of the association or PAC's thus leading to non-profits. It is interesting to note that some of these sons of immigrants parlayed what worked for the immigrant community into successful immigrant businesses such Met Life which used to be a local insurance company that underwrote Germans pooled money for the purposes of insurance as well as Hearst in creating sensationalist newspapers for the Irish-American press and Pulitzer like wise for the German-American press. Whereas immigrant association predominated the cities, rural America immigrants relied on churches for socialization and a sense of commonality. In todays politics, this is the reason why religion is stronger in rural places than their more cosmopolitan counterparts.
Chapter 8 deals with the rise of ward bosses as protectors of immigrant rights and jobs for the unskilled laborers. Immigrants tend to be generally hostile toward centralized government because it is government in their native countries that tended to be aloof to their needs and oppressive. This is the reason, why for the most part Americans history tended to favor the rhetoric of small government because immigrants generally feel the abstract federal government in general works against immigrants. Whereas immigrants generally distrust government, the late 19th to early 20th century immigrants generally trusted their ward bosses to give them jobs and take care of them. In turn, ward bosses would deliver votes to politicians who gave their immigrant workers jobs. Because these ward bosses would get politicians elected and retain the loyalty of their wards by giving out favors, they generally lived above the law. As such these ward bosses were generally the power behind the power in local politics as well as major players in national politics during the closed party conventions.
It was not until the rise of the New Deal and the realization that naturalized immigrants actually had a voice in politics and thus policy that ward bosses power began to wane.
So I guess for people who are new to democracy the ward bosses and similarly tribal bosses in foreign countries, and its unintended system of corruption, seems to be natural progression toward realizing full liberal democracy in order to fully empower the voting electorate. Only when these tribes or immigrants become full members of the middle class through their own efforts do the hold of ward/tribal bosses wane.
Chapter 9 states that the decrease in family cohesiveness in America is linked to the decrease of the family as an economic unit that produces a product for the family to live on as well as the decrease in external enforcement by the village mores. When these immigrants come into the new world the roles that they previously known, no longer applies here so since people are treated as individuals in the workplace the family as an economic unit no longer makes sense because their sense of mission for survival takes on a more individualistic turn. In terms of marriage, this means that love instead of more practical matters take precedence which I think is a positive thing. But in terms of divorce rates, the ability of each person to be financially independent from the other makes divorce rates hire because the family unit are totally independent from each other. Raising children in an ever changing world also posses a challenge because parents can no longer assure success for their children by prescribing them a specific path to follow. This also leads to increase questioning of authority figures by children when they see that the old ways no longer apply to their ability to succeed. I think the advent of the technology age will only speed up the trend of parents being outmoded in influencing their child's success.
This begs to question, is the advent of individual good for the family as unit? I think yes, because although old bonds of practical knowledge no longer is useful, things like behaviors, Christian values will always be eternal in a sense instilling innate characteristics in kids are like "transferable skill" in the workplace.
Another question is these immigrants only were able to shift to focus in valuing individuality because they came to America so can we transplant American values abroad especially in economies in which family, clan, and tribal ties is still very important to a person's survival? This is the reason why I think multi-nationals corporation is important to the process of democracy good for their country because working in a multi-national corporation dissolves an individual from being dependent on the clan or tribe for their livelihood and thus they can begin to think for themselves instead of having the tribal mentality.
Chapter 10 deals with immigration policy in the US. Up until the late 19th century, immigration policy in the US was welcoming of all foreigners. Not until the advent of ghetto slums in the US metropolitan areas as well as the occasional recessions were immigrants frowned upon. I believe immigration policy should follow that of most of the 19 century America and be welcoming. The only thing that should slow immigration policy is its legality, and enculturation of American beliefs and the ability of the immigrant to communicate in English other than that I think immigrants add to the innovative, dynamic, and innately entrepreneurial quality that makes up the American people.
Although Republicans traditionally tend to be more nativist by nature, I think they should abandon this sectarian viewpoint in favor of their innate conservative ideals which most normal immigrants share with them. For example, my innate social conservative tendency really comes from being born in a Filipino family with its emphasis on the importance of family and religion not from American society.
Chapter 11 deals with the troubling fact that the rise of immigration restriction came during a period of American history in which the racist social Darwinian movement was given scientific credence a la Hitler Nazi Aryan race is superior to all other races. While making sure that the economy of the US can take the in flow of immigrants, I think the US should still welcome all immigrants who want to come and have the necessary skills to contribute to the US economy. As for the unskilled laborer if they got here despite the stringent regulations that the US has, then they have the innate American ambition to stay here and let their children contribute meaningfully to society.
Chapter 12 explains why America's immigrant experience greatly contribute to the idea of individualism. Because the cut family and clan ties makes immigrants rely less on the "social order" of things and allow them to rely more on their own skill. While this trend may be an issue to foreign-born immigrants (ie: mom) because of the huge displacement of social bonds and order of things, it is reassuring to their children who cherish the fact that they are freed from the social order of things and thus free to be who they are born to be as individuals. I actually feel this difference when I go back to the Philippines because everything is related to who your relatives are. As American-raised, this fact can be initially be comforting in that you are a part of a whole that has been present in the Philippines for at least 2 centuries, but as an individual one knows that one cannot truly reach ones potential because social order while providing security acts to bind one to the social order which is hard to break out of (ie: Dingoy).
Chapter 13 deals with 1970 ethnicity revival as looking for the meaning of life in which the process of assimilation and the resulting emphasis on individuality robbed people of knowing the "meaning of life." Also in this chapter, he states the rise of the State as taking care of the general populace corresponds to the decrease in spontaneous volunteerism and pluralism that marked the early immigrant experience.
In the end, this is why I think the decrease in ethnic enclaves can be seen as bad because although everyone is more assimilated, everyone losses its distinctive individualistic culture that makes them unique.
Handlin starts his book on where most immigrants of European descent came from. We realize that most of these people were peasant. He describes the peasant life was by necessity risk-adverse and extremely conservative favoring stability over change. The reason that peasants were risk-adverse was because the decisions of the individual affected the community even marriage. Thus, there in peasant life, there was no room for individuality and personal wants and needs because everyones actions effect the whole community thus it is the community that decided the fate of everyone. I wonder if this is the reason that in present day traditional societies (Middle East) it is still hard for to grasp the concept of individuality and democracy because their day-to-day life still is heavily dependent on the community from which they came.
I also wonder if this is the reason American liberal democracy is so hard to transplant elsewhere because since America is a country of immigrants, it is the rule of law not tribal customs that hold the community together whereas in these places it is more ethnic, tribal, and religious allegiance that hold these places together. So, perhaps this is the reason why America is unique because it is the country of immigrants and is totally ruled by these immigrants instead of a far away monarch such as what occurred in Canada and Australia.
Chapter 2 deals harshness of emigration experience. Apparently for most of the 19 century the emigrant experience was as harsh as the Latin American emigration experience of border crossing present today. I think this harsh Darwinian experience is what created America to have the entrepreneurial and innovative nature it now possess. This exactly the reason I am for immigration reform for people who are already here because it took a lot of chutzpah for them to get here and thus they have the innate characteristics of an American while at the same time reserving the right to choose immigrants based on specific skills needed in the economy right now.
Chapter 3 deals with immigrant as unskilled worker in construction. Apparently manual labor in America has always been the purview of new immigrants. If this is the case, why is such a controversy now that Latin American and Mexicans make up the majority the manual labor?
Women should thank immigrants for being the trailblazers in the work place because it is through immigrants need to work in order to have the basic necessities for their families that immigrant women first joined the ranks of the employed.
For much of American history, job security was a myth. With the exception of early to mid 20th century corporate office, all immigrants and all Americans need to enterprising in constantly looking for a job. All Americans either need to have transferable skill in case they get fired or super specialized skill that their employers cannot do without them. So the current hoopla of the lack of job security is nothing new in the American economy in which the flow of capital and thus a flexible labor market to meet the flow of capital is paramount. Thus, in America it is always better to work for yourself and to see each employer only in a contractual way instead of the employer be your source of income.
Chapter 4 discusses the social world in which the peasants came from. The social/environmental world tended to be harmonious and always karmic in tendency. That is every action creates a explainable reaction so everyone did their part to keep this balance. I guess if one really depended on nature for their subsistence then it would be easy to understand why these people are ready environmentalist because equilibrium in their environment means life-giving sustenance for them.
Once they go to the New World, the environmental and social equilibrium that they were so used to cease to exist replaced instead with being a dreaded clog in the capitalist machinery whether it be in industry or industrial farming in which crops were made in order to create capital instead for the use of living; and thus total feeling of isolation is the most common feeling that these immigrants will feel.
Because of the lost of equilibrium, these immigrants tend to be more conservative and religious in order to stabilize their lost equilibrium.
And this is the reason Americans tend to be more right-of-center than their European counter parts because of the displacement of immigrant experience makes them more cautious by nature. This the reason, Republicans really need to change their thinking about immigration reform because W is right new immigrants tend to be more socially conservative and the only thing that keeps them voting Democrat a majority of the time is that Republicans tend to be perceived as anti-immigrants.
I think this chapter is interesting in its observation why Americans tend to be more religious than their European brethren because their was no established religion and thus all religions could thrive. Apparently in Europe, the prolitariat who went to the cities to work and felt similarly displaced felt like an outsider in the churches their because it was established churches that did not necessarily cater to the "outsiders" needs, thus after generations Europeans did not go to church anymore. Whereas in America immigrants just started their own churches so it became a place to congregate with the familiar. I think this fact leads to the credence of the founding father's wisdom of the separation of church and state because it is only through the freedom to worship can a man truly have faith.
Chapter 5 further expands to the reason America is unique in its religiosity as a first world nation. For the most part, 1st world nations become less religious as they become materially richer because people become materially secure. America is unique in that it keeps its religiosity despite it being a 1st world nation. This conundrum always intrigued me until now. It makes sense for a country of immigrants who leave their country for a new life to cling to the only that is stable which it turns out to be religion. In a country in which the only certainty is change and movement, the only thing left that is constant has to be internal values such as religion and things that are conservative in nature. That is as much as fast as the external environment changes, the internal individual environment must stay constant thus placing America as socially more conservative than its 1st world brethren.
Chapter 6 deals with the ghettofication due to the influx immigration. Perhaps, this the reason why Americans love their privacy and thus suburbs and small towns as a reaction to the overcrowding of ghettos and isolations of American farms.
Chapter 7 states that immigrant association that was originally created as a means to socialize and as mutual-aid societies to pool resources together to help the immigrants involved probably gave rise to the biggest concentration of non-profit in the world. Once the children of these immigrants have children who are more American than they are these association gradually lose its immigrant flavor but retain the original cause of the association or PAC's thus leading to non-profits. It is interesting to note that some of these sons of immigrants parlayed what worked for the immigrant community into successful immigrant businesses such Met Life which used to be a local insurance company that underwrote Germans pooled money for the purposes of insurance as well as Hearst in creating sensationalist newspapers for the Irish-American press and Pulitzer like wise for the German-American press. Whereas immigrant association predominated the cities, rural America immigrants relied on churches for socialization and a sense of commonality. In todays politics, this is the reason why religion is stronger in rural places than their more cosmopolitan counterparts.
Chapter 8 deals with the rise of ward bosses as protectors of immigrant rights and jobs for the unskilled laborers. Immigrants tend to be generally hostile toward centralized government because it is government in their native countries that tended to be aloof to their needs and oppressive. This is the reason, why for the most part Americans history tended to favor the rhetoric of small government because immigrants generally feel the abstract federal government in general works against immigrants. Whereas immigrants generally distrust government, the late 19th to early 20th century immigrants generally trusted their ward bosses to give them jobs and take care of them. In turn, ward bosses would deliver votes to politicians who gave their immigrant workers jobs. Because these ward bosses would get politicians elected and retain the loyalty of their wards by giving out favors, they generally lived above the law. As such these ward bosses were generally the power behind the power in local politics as well as major players in national politics during the closed party conventions.
It was not until the rise of the New Deal and the realization that naturalized immigrants actually had a voice in politics and thus policy that ward bosses power began to wane.
So I guess for people who are new to democracy the ward bosses and similarly tribal bosses in foreign countries, and its unintended system of corruption, seems to be natural progression toward realizing full liberal democracy in order to fully empower the voting electorate. Only when these tribes or immigrants become full members of the middle class through their own efforts do the hold of ward/tribal bosses wane.
Chapter 9 states that the decrease in family cohesiveness in America is linked to the decrease of the family as an economic unit that produces a product for the family to live on as well as the decrease in external enforcement by the village mores. When these immigrants come into the new world the roles that they previously known, no longer applies here so since people are treated as individuals in the workplace the family as an economic unit no longer makes sense because their sense of mission for survival takes on a more individualistic turn. In terms of marriage, this means that love instead of more practical matters take precedence which I think is a positive thing. But in terms of divorce rates, the ability of each person to be financially independent from the other makes divorce rates hire because the family unit are totally independent from each other. Raising children in an ever changing world also posses a challenge because parents can no longer assure success for their children by prescribing them a specific path to follow. This also leads to increase questioning of authority figures by children when they see that the old ways no longer apply to their ability to succeed. I think the advent of the technology age will only speed up the trend of parents being outmoded in influencing their child's success.
This begs to question, is the advent of individual good for the family as unit? I think yes, because although old bonds of practical knowledge no longer is useful, things like behaviors, Christian values will always be eternal in a sense instilling innate characteristics in kids are like "transferable skill" in the workplace.
Another question is these immigrants only were able to shift to focus in valuing individuality because they came to America so can we transplant American values abroad especially in economies in which family, clan, and tribal ties is still very important to a person's survival? This is the reason why I think multi-nationals corporation is important to the process of democracy good for their country because working in a multi-national corporation dissolves an individual from being dependent on the clan or tribe for their livelihood and thus they can begin to think for themselves instead of having the tribal mentality.
Chapter 10 deals with immigration policy in the US. Up until the late 19th century, immigration policy in the US was welcoming of all foreigners. Not until the advent of ghetto slums in the US metropolitan areas as well as the occasional recessions were immigrants frowned upon. I believe immigration policy should follow that of most of the 19 century America and be welcoming. The only thing that should slow immigration policy is its legality, and enculturation of American beliefs and the ability of the immigrant to communicate in English other than that I think immigrants add to the innovative, dynamic, and innately entrepreneurial quality that makes up the American people.
Although Republicans traditionally tend to be more nativist by nature, I think they should abandon this sectarian viewpoint in favor of their innate conservative ideals which most normal immigrants share with them. For example, my innate social conservative tendency really comes from being born in a Filipino family with its emphasis on the importance of family and religion not from American society.
Chapter 11 deals with the troubling fact that the rise of immigration restriction came during a period of American history in which the racist social Darwinian movement was given scientific credence a la Hitler Nazi Aryan race is superior to all other races. While making sure that the economy of the US can take the in flow of immigrants, I think the US should still welcome all immigrants who want to come and have the necessary skills to contribute to the US economy. As for the unskilled laborer if they got here despite the stringent regulations that the US has, then they have the innate American ambition to stay here and let their children contribute meaningfully to society.
Chapter 12 explains why America's immigrant experience greatly contribute to the idea of individualism. Because the cut family and clan ties makes immigrants rely less on the "social order" of things and allow them to rely more on their own skill. While this trend may be an issue to foreign-born immigrants (ie: mom) because of the huge displacement of social bonds and order of things, it is reassuring to their children who cherish the fact that they are freed from the social order of things and thus free to be who they are born to be as individuals. I actually feel this difference when I go back to the Philippines because everything is related to who your relatives are. As American-raised, this fact can be initially be comforting in that you are a part of a whole that has been present in the Philippines for at least 2 centuries, but as an individual one knows that one cannot truly reach ones potential because social order while providing security acts to bind one to the social order which is hard to break out of (ie: Dingoy).
Chapter 13 deals with 1970 ethnicity revival as looking for the meaning of life in which the process of assimilation and the resulting emphasis on individuality robbed people of knowing the "meaning of life." Also in this chapter, he states the rise of the State as taking care of the general populace corresponds to the decrease in spontaneous volunteerism and pluralism that marked the early immigrant experience.
In the end, this is why I think the decrease in ethnic enclaves can be seen as bad because although everyone is more assimilated, everyone losses its distinctive individualistic culture that makes them unique.
June 14, 2024
I actually thought this was a good read. My problem is the title. The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations that Made the American People.
The book is not about uprooted people. The book is not about a large portion of the migrations to America. The immigrants it is about had an impact pact on what is the American people, but the impact was not exclusive. Nor was it greater, culturally, than other migrant groups.
The book is exclusively about white European immigrants. Africans, who conceivably exerted a longer lasting influence on America, are ignored. Asians, particularly Chinese, built the west but are barely mentioned and only as an aside. Lastly, those immigrants from south of the Rio Grande, many of whom resided in the southwest before and after the westward expansion of the 1850’s, are ever less important to the tale presented.
Europeans, by and large, were not uprooted. Hispanic residents (native americans) of the south west essentially were by the westward expansion of the. The Chinese who built the west were, by the method used to bring them to this country, also uprooted. Lastly, no one can sincerely believe that Africans brought to America to be sold into slavery were not uprooted.
Having said all that, if you want an understanding of how European immigrants adapted to America, this a good book.
The book is not about uprooted people. The book is not about a large portion of the migrations to America. The immigrants it is about had an impact pact on what is the American people, but the impact was not exclusive. Nor was it greater, culturally, than other migrant groups.
The book is exclusively about white European immigrants. Africans, who conceivably exerted a longer lasting influence on America, are ignored. Asians, particularly Chinese, built the west but are barely mentioned and only as an aside. Lastly, those immigrants from south of the Rio Grande, many of whom resided in the southwest before and after the westward expansion of the 1850’s, are ever less important to the tale presented.
Europeans, by and large, were not uprooted. Hispanic residents (native americans) of the south west essentially were by the westward expansion of the. The Chinese who built the west were, by the method used to bring them to this country, also uprooted. Lastly, no one can sincerely believe that Africans brought to America to be sold into slavery were not uprooted.
Having said all that, if you want an understanding of how European immigrants adapted to America, this a good book.
August 12, 2020
I have to put this aside for now. I’m not sure I’ll pick it up again in the future. It is the most negative account you can imagine. Maybe later on they’ll be some actual success stories.
My great grandmother was one. They came over from Poland right around 1900. My great grandfather, Jacob, was a fisherman but ended up going into the dark, dirty mines. My very smart great grandmother, Francis, did a lot to aid in supporting the family and continually put away a little money here and there.
She took in borders. During prohibition, she turned the front parlor into a speakeasy where men dressed in suits came and drank hooch out of teacups.
She probably did extra things like wash the borders clothing for money, maybe sell some extra bread she made…
In the end, they owned a two-story house on a bricked lot that had another two-story house in the back. The top floor of the main house was rented out. The house in the back was rented out. And there was a converted garage that was also rented out.
Now, I’m sure that’s not the only success story that could be told. They had a hard, hard life but there were good times too.
Luckily, I was raised by my dear grandmother who told me many wonderful stories about her childhood.
My great grandmother was one. They came over from Poland right around 1900. My great grandfather, Jacob, was a fisherman but ended up going into the dark, dirty mines. My very smart great grandmother, Francis, did a lot to aid in supporting the family and continually put away a little money here and there.
She took in borders. During prohibition, she turned the front parlor into a speakeasy where men dressed in suits came and drank hooch out of teacups.
She probably did extra things like wash the borders clothing for money, maybe sell some extra bread she made…
In the end, they owned a two-story house on a bricked lot that had another two-story house in the back. The top floor of the main house was rented out. The house in the back was rented out. And there was a converted garage that was also rented out.
Now, I’m sure that’s not the only success story that could be told. They had a hard, hard life but there were good times too.
Luckily, I was raised by my dear grandmother who told me many wonderful stories about her childhood.
January 23, 2020
This won the Pulitzer in the early 50's, and is a fascinating meditation on the trials and tribulations of immigrants during the early years of the United States. It contradicts many popular beliefs about the immigrant experience - maybe not so gung-ho and cheerful as we were led to believe in school. There was grinding poverty and a disorienting lack of structure. The writing is very very good, but the general tone is overly bleak - I made it halfway through before it had to go back to the library.
January 27, 2021
He traces immigration from the 1800-1920s while also using an emotional appeal to the reader about what immigrants experienced as well as how emigration affected them. The whole experienced forever changed the newcomer who was coming from the Old World and experiencing the strangeness with the New World. But the authors lack of sources as well as citations is troublesome and questions where his information came from. He tends to focus so much on one particular group, the Eastern And urban immigration not really expanding. Some flaws to mention.
August 31, 2025
I picked this up because I wanted to know more about the “why?” and specifics of the great wave of immigration out of Europe into the United States.
This is a thoroughly original and imaginatively creative narrative of how this played out from a sociological perspective over the span of the early 1800s through early 1900s. While if you are looking for a fact-based history or personal narratives you should look elsewhere, I think most readers will attain great insight as to how this enormous population shift affected immigrants, natives, and the arc of American society.
This is a thoroughly original and imaginatively creative narrative of how this played out from a sociological perspective over the span of the early 1800s through early 1900s. While if you are looking for a fact-based history or personal narratives you should look elsewhere, I think most readers will attain great insight as to how this enormous population shift affected immigrants, natives, and the arc of American society.
January 26, 2021
While I believe Handlin's overall overtly generic impressions of Immigrant life in the United States from 1800 to 1924 to be relatively accurate, his lack of clearly defined sources and citations, his reliance on narrative anecdote, and his broadly proposed commonalities which focus heavily on East Coast urban immigration (again, without sources!) are all major flaws in the work.
March 19, 2021
Interesting view of various aspects of the immigrant experience in the USA in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
January 17, 2021
Many years ago my high school English teacher gave me a list of 100 books I should read. I put this off for decades, and am now so sorry I waited so long! Very informative, well-written non-fiction that reads as easily as fiction. Very impressed.
August 30, 2013
Oscar Handlin’s The Uprooted is not a historical treatment of immigration, but a historically informed sociological and psychological narrative based on the experiences of Europeans migrating to America in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is poetically written—crafted to evoke emotion as much as to inform. Handlin writes that the story of the immigrant is a story of upheaval, tragedy, alienation, and the complete breakdown of traditional and family life from the Old World. The outcome is a generational progress from alienation to freedom, through hardship and loss.
Handlin’s story is universally tragic. It begins in a desperate and rapidly changing Europe, and continues through the difficult process of migration. Several stages of upheaval are described: deciding to leave one’s homeland, the process of finding and enduring difficult passage to the New World, securing and keeping work, rebuilding one’s religious life, finding a new home, building communal life, learning about the American political arena, educating children, and facing discrimination and exclusion from the American public. The final stage of this process of upheaval is Americanization, which most immigrants themselves fail to achieve—though it is not closed to their descendants.
Handlin makes immense generalizations about the immigrant experience. He universalizes peasant life across Europe—unifying disparate group into one amorphous mass. Though he attempts to include a variety of immigrant groups, it is little more than naming them in lists of those that could have been a part of the experience depicted. The story of the immigrant has been highly romanticized for the purpose of fomenting interest in the immigrant experience, and the result is a highly readable, personal, well-informed, emotional, but limited journey.
Handlin’s story is universally tragic. It begins in a desperate and rapidly changing Europe, and continues through the difficult process of migration. Several stages of upheaval are described: deciding to leave one’s homeland, the process of finding and enduring difficult passage to the New World, securing and keeping work, rebuilding one’s religious life, finding a new home, building communal life, learning about the American political arena, educating children, and facing discrimination and exclusion from the American public. The final stage of this process of upheaval is Americanization, which most immigrants themselves fail to achieve—though it is not closed to their descendants.
Handlin makes immense generalizations about the immigrant experience. He universalizes peasant life across Europe—unifying disparate group into one amorphous mass. Though he attempts to include a variety of immigrant groups, it is little more than naming them in lists of those that could have been a part of the experience depicted. The story of the immigrant has been highly romanticized for the purpose of fomenting interest in the immigrant experience, and the result is a highly readable, personal, well-informed, emotional, but limited journey.
May 25, 2011
An interesting look at our immigrant ancestors---boy did they have it hard!
I found it fascinating to discover that "for a thousand years, the number of people on the continent had remained constant. . . Then in the 18th Century came a precipitous rise, unprecedented and, as it proved, cataclysmic. For a hundred years growth continued unabated, if anything at an accelerating rate. Between 1750 and 1850 the population of the continent leaped from about one hundred and forty million to about two hundred and sixty, and by WWI, to almost four hundred million. . . Where one man stood in 1750, one hundred and sixty five years later there were three."
There was not enough land to support all these people, and it finally became a choice between starvation and emigration. "In all, thirty-five million for whom home had no place fled Europe's shores and looked across the Atlantic."
America was by no means the warm, welcoming country they expected. Slums, poverty, and a loss of community were huge burdens.
I skimmed through the last half, but this is a great book to help us understand the beginnings of our country, and how our ancestors might have lived. I'm sure it's required reading for some US family history classes!
I found it fascinating to discover that "for a thousand years, the number of people on the continent had remained constant. . . Then in the 18th Century came a precipitous rise, unprecedented and, as it proved, cataclysmic. For a hundred years growth continued unabated, if anything at an accelerating rate. Between 1750 and 1850 the population of the continent leaped from about one hundred and forty million to about two hundred and sixty, and by WWI, to almost four hundred million. . . Where one man stood in 1750, one hundred and sixty five years later there were three."
There was not enough land to support all these people, and it finally became a choice between starvation and emigration. "In all, thirty-five million for whom home had no place fled Europe's shores and looked across the Atlantic."
America was by no means the warm, welcoming country they expected. Slums, poverty, and a loss of community were huge burdens.
I skimmed through the last half, but this is a great book to help us understand the beginnings of our country, and how our ancestors might have lived. I'm sure it's required reading for some US family history classes!
July 25, 2015
What a grim book.
21 Disaster chained the peasant to his place.
23 Precipitous, unprecedented rise in population in the 18th century contributed to the Exodus of so many people.
45 The transatlantic passage mortality rate was ten percent.
101 The peasants who emigrated to American brought their established religions.
107 It was unthinkable not to be a member of a church.
107 A village religion was a matter of course conservative.
148 Emigrants to went to farms.
21 Disaster chained the peasant to his place.
23 Precipitous, unprecedented rise in population in the 18th century contributed to the Exodus of so many people.
45 The transatlantic passage mortality rate was ten percent.
101 The peasants who emigrated to American brought their established religions.
107 It was unthinkable not to be a member of a church.
107 A village religion was a matter of course conservative.
148 Emigrants to went to farms.
July 15, 2007
I loved reading into the history of the mass emigrations to the New World that occurred in the 1800s to early 1900s. This book describes the typical lifestyle of those who emigrated, the shift in social and political environments in Europe that caused the mass exodus, the leaving of their homes and family, the travels to the New World, and what sort of environment they encountered once here.
Want to read
March 2, 2010My cousin is a History professor/writer, so I asked him which book better grasps the concept of immigration to the New World and the struggles that came with it. He said this is the best introductory book. 333 pages...I have a feeling that if I actually chewed and swallowed the pages one by one, I'd get through it faster. But we'll see!
March 16, 2008
An interesting insight on the mass immigrations from the 1850's to the 1920's. While the book includes select geneological information, the main focus lies with the immigrant experience and the rationale for the move from Europe. Very well written.
February 6, 2021
Handlin takes a good shot at describing the experiences of European immigrants to the US in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.
A good book to read alongside it is The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.
A good book to read alongside it is The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.
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