Jacobson, Matthew Frye. Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Aboard, 1876-1917. Hill and Wang, 2001.

== Summary ==
Jacobson’s
book examines American conceptions of peoplehood, citizenship and national
identity against the backdrop of growing economic and military involvement
abroad and massive population influxes at home. Between 1876 and the beginning
of World War I, when America became fully integrated into the world economic
system and rapidly reorganized labor migration and export, Americans
(at an accelerating rate) came into contact with foreign peoples, both inside
and outside U.S. borders. This contact led to two extremes (barbarian virtues): '''
extraordinary self-certainty and contempt for national outsiders, combined with a
sense of self-doubt. “It was the combined imperatives
of production (the need for reliable workers and markets) and governance (the
need for citizens deemed reliable) that gave the notions of barbarism and virtue
their powerful, if multivalent, currency.” (5) The scale of encounter – as a
result of industrialization and the growth of the American empire (from the
‘victory’ at Wounded Knee to the conquering of Hawaii, Cuba, and Puerto Rico) –
“served up images of the world and its people that at once naturalized ‘large
policies’ and gave voice to the anxieties engendered by these grand designs.”
(6) American nationalism was thus born in the context of immigration and
imperialism; it drew upon charged encounters with disparaged peoples whose
presence was reviled in the political sphere as it was inevitable in the
economic.
Example: 1870-1920 - Half the years were depresison years. "Overproduction thesis" argued that economic engines of capitalism moving too fast. Further market expansion abroad (and imperialism), led to influx of immigrants: 26 Million in the same years. Immigration and imperialism two sides of the same coin.
See also: Vivek Bald, Lara Putnam, and Thomas Guglielmo