This week, I made some progress in two areas as I approached Hsu’s book, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home. Since Hsu has framed her book as a transnational work, I first wanted to acquaint myself with transnational theory in greater detail. Second, I started to delve into the immigration historiography that Hsu really adds to with her own research. Therefore, I also looked at a series of articles on the state of the field that Caleb recommended, which is the focus of my next post.
During the week that our class read Paul Quigley’s Shifting Grounds, we had a very interesting discussion that left me with many questions about the methods of doing transnational history and how to reflect the experiences of people who do not operate within a uniform national framework. I had resolved to read Ian Tyrrell’s Transnational Nation this week, but forgetting to pack it in my luggage when I went out of town prompted me to instead read the American Historical Review Forum entitled “American Exceptionalism in an Age of International History.” I have previously read a book he wrote on worldwide missionaries and reformers, which allows me to see how he actually moves his transnational theories into practice in his historical work. Reading this conceptual article and the responses has helped me gauge how successful Hsu is at telling a transnational story of immigration that moves beyond tropes of the old nationalist, American-centric immigrant paradigm.
In the lead article in this AHR forum, Tyrrell decries the growth of comparative history, which was “a product of consensus historians’ preoccupation with American uniqueness” and often allows a “systematic testing of exceptionalist ideas” (p. 1035). In his response, Michael McGerr agrees with Tyrrell’s basic argument that exceptionalist history must be minimized, but he is more wary of transnationalism. He cites the example of Randolph Bourne’s 1916 essay about immigrants who came from around the world to the United States as a way to defend exceptionalism. Bourne believed, as so many other immigration historians have, that the United States was exceptional because it was the only nation that was formed by immigrants. Such a “cosmopolitan enterprise” in America was supposedly due to “the unique liberty of opportunity and traditional isolation for which she seems to stand” (1063).
McGerr argues that this is proof that sometimes exceptionalism could LEAD to transnationalism instead of hinder it, and thus seems to want to prove that 1) sometimes exceptionalism is acceptable, and 2) transnationalism doesn’t always impede exceptionalist story-telling. However, as Donna Gabaccia and Hsu argue, telling an American-centric story of immigration that highlights exceptionalism actually masks much of the immigrant experience. When historians move beyond the earlier immigrant paradigm and access sources from the immigrants’ homelands, the stories become much more complicated and prove just how weak exceptionalist, nation-based conceptions of immigration are.
The forum’s debate goes on and gets more convoluted. Tyrrell clarifies many of his points to make them less bombastic; for instance, he suggests ways to improve but not abolish comparative history. Overall, it was an interesting debate and I don’t think McGerr’s arguments were very convincing. He was understandably nervous about the prospect of completely revamping the way history was typically written until in 1991. Yet, by looking at Hsu’s book, I can recognize her framework of transnationalism as superior to the way the stories of Chinese immigrant workers and their families are usually depicted in history. Her sources and methods move beyond merely comparative, or American-centric, but show the flows between two cities, two regions, two cultural groups, and two nations. Nation-states are still a part of the narrative, just as the differences between these two areas are highlighted. But the new transnational history cannot be reduced to mere comparisons or differentiations that indicate exceptionalism.
AHR Forum:
Ian Tyrrell, “American Exceptionalism in an Age of International History,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 96, No. 4 (Oct., 1991), pp. 1031-1055. Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2164993.
Michael McGerr, “The Price of the New Transnational History”, ibid., 1056-1067, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2164995.
Ian Tyrrell, “Ian Tyrrell Responds,” (pp. 1068-1072), ibid., http://www.jstor.org/stable/2164995.