Excerpted from Huntington, Samuel P.: Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity, translated by Cheng Kexiong, Beijing: Xinhua Publishing House, 2010, pp. 30-35.
For most of American history, the majority of Americans were not friendly toward immigrants nor did they consider their country a "nation of immigrants." However, attitudes began to shift after the ban on large-scale immigration in 1924. This was evident in President Franklin Roosevelt’s famous 1938 remark criticizing the Daughters of the American Revolution: "Remember, always remember, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descendants of immigrants and revolutionists." President Kennedy quoted this line from Roosevelt in his posthumously published book A Nation of Immigrants. Scholars and journalists have consistently invoked this statement both before and after the book’s publication. Oscar Handlin, the renowned historian of American immigration, declared, "The immigrant is the American story." Robert Bellah, the prominent sociologist, echoed Roosevelt, stating: "Except for the Indians, all Americans are immigrants or descendants of immigrants."
These claims contain a partial truth, but not the complete truth. Roosevelt was partially wrong in saying everyone is descended from "revolutionists," and entirely wrong in asserting that members of the Daughters of the American Revolution (at least by their family surnames) are descendants of "immigrants." Their ancestors were not immigrants but settlers—people who came to the New World in the 17th and 18th centuries to form one (or several) societies in a land that was not yet a nation of immigrants. The origins of this society of Anglo-Protestant settlers have shaped American culture, institutions, historical development, and identity more profoundly and persistently than any other factor.
There is a fundamental distinction between settlers and immigrants. Settlers leave an existing society, usually in groups, to establish a new community—a "city upon a hill"—in a new, often distant territory. They are driven by a collective sense of purpose and explicitly or implicitly adhere to a covenant or charter that forms the foundation of the community they build and defines their relationship with their homeland. In contrast, immigrants do not establish a new society but move from one society to another, typically as individuals or with their families, defining their ties to both their country of origin and their new home on a personal basis. In the 17th and 18th centuries, settlers came to North America because it was a blank slate—a land without established societies (apart from Native American tribes that could be killed or pushed westward). They arrived to build societies that reflected and reinforced the culture and values they brought from their homeland. Later, immigrants came to join the societies already established by the settlers. Unlike settlers, immigrants and their children experienced "culture shock" as they attempted to absorb a culture vastly different from their own. The settlers created America first; immigrants then came to America.
Americans commonly refer to those who won independence and framed the Constitution in the 1770s and 1780s as the "Founding Fathers." Yet there must first be pioneering settlers before there can be "Founding Fathers." The history of American society does not begin in 1775, 1776, or 1787, but with the first groups of settlers in 1607, 1620, and 1630. It was during this intervening century and a half that the Anglo-American Protestant society and culture were established, and the events of the 1770s and 1780s were rooted in and products of this society and culture.
The men who created independent America clearly recognized the distinction between settlers and immigrants. As John Higham noted, prior to the Revolution, English and Dutch colonists "thought of themselves as founders, settlers, or pioneers—the shapers of colonial societies—not as immigrants. The polity, language, work and life patterns, and many customs were theirs, and immigrants had to adapt to them." The term "immigrant" entered the English language in the United States in the 1780s to refer to newcomers, distinguishing them from the earlier settlers.
America’s core culture has always been, and remains today, primarily the culture of the settlers who founded American society in the 17th and 18th centuries. The key components of this culture include Christianity, Protestant values and ethics, the work ethic, the English language, British legal and judicial traditions and the tradition of limiting governmental power, and European literary, artistic, philosophical, and musical traditions. Upon this cultural foundation, the settlers developed the "American Creed" in the 18th and 19th centuries, with principles of liberty, equality, individualism, representative government, and private property. Generations of subsequent immigrants were assimilated into this culture, contributing to and modifying it but never fundamentally altering it. This is because, at least until the late 20th century, it was Anglo-Protestant culture—and the political freedom and economic opportunity it created—that attracted immigrants to America.
Thus, in its origins and enduring core, America was originally a colonial society, in the strict original sense of the term "colony"—a new society established by people settling in a distant land far from their homeland. The meaning of "colony" later shifted to denote a region and its indigenous population ruled by a foreign power. These two meanings of "colony" are entirely distinct.
The settlers who founded colonies exerted a decisive and lasting influence on the culture and institutions of those colonial societies. Historian John Porter noted that these people were privileged groups who, as "de facto owners," had the "greatest say" in the subsequent development of the society. Cultural geographer Wilbur Zelinsky termed this phenomenon the "Doctrine of First Effective Settlement": in a new territory, "the first group to establish a viable, self-perpetuating society imparts its characteristics to the region’s subsequent social and cultural geography, regardless of the size of the initial settlement... In terms of lasting impact, the activities of the original settlers—even if only a few hundred or dozens of people—may be far more significant for the cultural geography of the area than the contributions of tens of thousands of new immigrants generations later."
The earliest settlers brought with them their own culture and institutions, which persisted in the new region even as they changed in their homeland. Ronald Syme observed of Roman colonists in ancient Spain: "A new country is not entirely new in all respects. Over a long period afterward, one can observe the phenomenon where colonists preserve living habits or languages that are no longer prevalent in their homeland. Spanish and French both derive from Latin, but Spanish can trace back to an older form of Latin than French. The Romans in Spain (it seems) prided themselves on their loyalty to ancient Roman traditions. On the other hand, their brilliant achievements demonstrate that they were enthusiastic, ambitious, and innovative." Tocqueville expressed a similar sentiment about Quebec:
The true face of a government can be most clearly evaluated in its overseas colonies, where its characteristics are magnified and made more evident. When I wish to study the merits and faults of Louis XIV, I must go to Canada, where I can observe his flaws as if through a microscope. We contemporary French are received everywhere there... as they say, as children of old France. I find this description inappropriate. Old France is in Canada; our France is new.
In America, David Hackett Fischer argued in his scholarly magnum opus that the settlers who came from Britain to America in the 17th and 18th centuries can be divided into four major groups based on their region of origin in England, socioeconomic status, church affiliation, and time of settlement. Yet all spoke English, were Protestant, adhered to British legal traditions, and cherished English liberties. This culture and its four subcultures have persisted in America. Fischer stated: "Culturally, most Americans, regardless of their ancestry, are descendants of the British... In today’s voluntaristic American society, the legacy of the four folkways of the early English settlers remains the most powerful determining factor." Wisconsin historian Rogers Hollingsworth echoed this view: "The most important fact to remember when studying political change in America is that America is the product of a settler society." The way of life of the original English settlers "evolved into an entire society" and "gave rise to the dominant political culture, political institutions, language, work and residential patterns, and many customs to which later immigrants had to adapt."
Like settlers elsewhere, the first settlers to arrive in the land that would become America were not representative of the entire population of their homeland but came from specific segments of it. They left their homes to settle far away because they were oppressed in their native land and saw opportunities in a new place. Europeans who settled in North America, South America, South Africa, and the South Pacific brought with them the ideas and ideologies of their respective social classes, including feudalism, liberalism, and working-class socialism. However, in the new lands, lacking the class antagonisms required for European class consciousness, these ideas evolved into nationalism in the new societies. Settler societies lacked the dynamic forces for change present in the original complex societies and thus preserved the institutions and changes of the parent society.
Settler societies are newly founded societies with a clear starting point in time and place. As such, their founders felt the need to define their institutions and formulate their development plans in the form of charters, agreements, and statutes. The first Greek code of laws was not created in Greece itself but in a Greek colony founded in Sicily in the 7th century BCE. The earliest systematic legal codes in the English-speaking world were formulated in Virginia (1606), Bermuda (incorporated into Virginia’s public laws in Chapter 3, 1612), Plymouth (1636), and Massachusetts Bay (1648). The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, adopted in 1638 by citizens of Hartford and surrounding towns, was "the first written constitution of modern democracy." Settler societies tend to be explicitly planned societies, with plans incorporating the experiences, values, and aspirations of their founders.
The process by which settlers from Britain and several other Northern European countries established new societies in the New World was repeated two and a half centuries later, as Americans moved west in groups to establish new frontier settlements. Settlement was central not only to the creation of America but also to its development until the late 19th century. Frederick Jackson Turner stated in 1892: "Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West." He noted: "Up to and including 1880, the nation had a frontier of settlement, but now the unsettled area has been broken into by isolated bodies of settlement, and there can hardly be said to be a frontier line." Unlike Canada, Australia, or Russia, America’s frontier lacked effective government governance at the time. The first to arrive were individual hunters, prospectors, adventurers, and merchants, followed by settlers who established towns along waterways and later along planned railroads. There was both settlement and population movement, with people constantly moving westward.
In 1790, America’s population (excluding Native Americans) totaled 3.929 million, of whom 698,000 were slaves and not considered members of American society. Among whites, 60% were English, and together with people from other parts of Britain, Britons accounted for 80%. The remaining whites were primarily Germans and Dutch. Religiously, 98% were Protestant. Excluding blacks, America was at that time a highly homogeneous society in terms of ethnicity, national origin, and religion. John Jay once said: "Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people—a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence."
From 1820 to 2000, approximately 66 million immigrants came to America, making it ethnically and religiously diverse. Yet the population growth brought by immigrants was only slightly higher than the population growth of settlers and their slaves in the 17th and 18th centuries. Before the large-scale influx of immigrants, America experienced an unprecedented population explosion in the late 18th century, with an exceptionally high birth rate and a large proportion of children in the northern states reaching adulthood. In 1790, America’s birth rate was approximately 55 per thousand, compared to 35 per thousand in European countries at the time. American women married four to five years earlier on average than European women. The average fertility rate for American women was about 7.7 children per woman in 1790 and 7.0 in 1800—far exceeding the 2.1 children needed to maintain population stability. Fertility rates remained above 6.0 until the 1840s and did not drop to 3.0 until the start of the Great Depression in the 1930s. America’s total population increased by 35% from 1790 to 1800, 36% from 1800 to 1810, and 82% from 1800 to 1820. During this period, Europe was engulfed in the Napoleonic Wars, and immigration to America was minimal. Four-fifths of this population growth came from natural increase—a phenomenon one congressman described as the "American multiplication table." Demographer Campbell Gibson concluded after careful analysis that in 1990, 49% of the American population was descended from the original settlers and blacks of 1790, and 51% from immigrants arriving after 1790. America’s population in 1990 was 249 million; without immigration, it would have been 122 million. In short, by the end of the 20th century, roughly half of America’s population was descended from early settlers and slaves, and half from immigrants who joined the society created by the settlers.
In addition to immigrants and descendants of settlers, slaves, and immigrants, contemporary Americans include descendants of peoples conquered by the United States. These include Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, Hawaiians, and descendants of Mexicans originally living in Texas and parts of the Southwest seized from Mexico in the mid-19th century. Native Americans and Puerto Ricans are distinctive in that they are within the United States but not fully equivalent to ordinary Americans, due to arrangements such as reservations, tribal self-governance, and Puerto Rico’s commonwealth status. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens but do not pay federal taxes, do not vote in national elections, and use Spanish (not English) for official purposes.
Large-scale immigration has been an intermittent phenomenon in American life. Before the 1830s, immigration numbers and proportions were small; they then rose before declining in the 1850s. There was a sharp increase in the 1880s, followed by a decrease in the 1890s. Immigration numbers were high in the decade before World War I but dropped drastically after the 1924 Immigration Act, remaining low thereafter. A new wave of immigration emerged after the 1965 Immigration Act. During these years, immigrants played an important role in America’s development, some out of proportion to their share of the population. Yet from 1820 to 2000, foreign-born individuals averaged only slightly more than 10% of the total population. Describing America as a "nation of immigrants" exaggerates a partial truth into a misleading fallacy and ignores the fundamental fact that America originated as a settler society.
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