Northwestern European Americans

Northwestern European Americans are Americans of Northwestern European ancestry. Northwestern European American people can usually trace back all or some of their heritage to Great Britain, Ireland, Northern Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Northern France, and other nations connected to Northwestern Europe geographically or culturally.

As Northwestern Europe is also a cultural region, this group often includes American people with descent from other Germanic regions, such as Austria, Southern Germany, and Switzerland, as well as regions strongly influenced by Germanic culture, such as Finland and Southern France. The category is a subgroup of the diasporic panethnic grouping of European Americans, which includes Eastern European Americans and Southern European Americans.

Background

Northwestern European Americans have been researched academically,[1] reported on in journalistic works,[2] and are widely considered as a distinct panethnic group. The grouping is based on the identification of descent from one or more nations located in Northwestern Europe or a country that is ethnoculturally related with the area.[3] The group can be subdivided into national subgroups, including Welsh Americans, Swedish Americans, and French Americans.

History

In the territories that would become the Thirteen Colonies (which would become the US), Northwestern European people colonized large coastal areas of North America, creating farms and plantations.[4] The New World culture of the group contributed to the creation of early modern slavery, which "juxtaposed west and central Africans with northwest Europeans in the Americas."[5] Although these Dutch, French, and British settlers were broadly from the same region of Europe, there was intragroup hostility and prejudice between them. In 1751, Benjamin Franklin, an Old Stock American and Founding Father of the US, expressed cultural and racial concerns about German immigration to the United States. Historian Thomas Borstelmann noted that within a few decades, "the idea of Germans having a different complexion than other northwestern European Americans came to seem peculiar".[6]

Northwestern European immigration

Large numbers of Irish, German, French, and British people emigrated to the East Coast of the US from 1821 to 1880. This period has been described academically as the "Northwest European Wave".[7] According to Professor Vincent N. Parrillo, "By 1890, the 'mainstream American' ingroup did not yet include many other northwest European Americans. Although some multigenerational Americans of non-British ancestry had blended into the mainstream, millions of others had not."[8] Between 1880 and 1920, immigration to the United States from Eastern and Southern Europe increased greatly. Despite this, historian Paul Spickard noted that in this period, "Northwest Europeans continued to come and stay in very large numbers."[9]

There were various prejudices among them, sometimes attributed to them being the dominant ethnic group, which found expression in the general view that the newer arrivals would never assimilate to their majority culture.[10] This view was held, particularly by those of "colonial background", up until World War I, who believed there was a "deep divide" between Southern or Eastern Europeans and what were regarded as Northwest European Americans.[11]

By 1914, "terms denoting a common northwest European consciousness, such as 'American race stock'", became significantly more inclusive to incorporate increasingly large numbers of Germans. Northwestern European heritage began to be equivocated with the founding myth of the nation, utilized by nativists to include "northwest Europeans who shared the common racial 'stock' of 'our forefathers'".[12] Even with gradual inclusion, sociologist Stanley Lieberson noted that in the early 20th century, Northwestern Europeans were one of the slowest immigrant groups to apply for US citizenship.[13]

Use of the category for racism

Although not explicitly racial, 19th-century American historians, such as George Bancroft, Francis Parkman, and William H. Prescott, often wrote with a presumption of "a genetic trait, a germ, genius, or creative spark found in northwest Europeans", which, as a narrative, contributed towards bias and preferential treatment towards the group in the United States.[14] Towards the late 19th and early 20th century, American eugenists, such as Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard,[15] were utilizing the ethnic category for supremacism, denigrating immigration into the US from other ethnic groups,[16] and popularizing ideas that Northwestern Europeans were being genetically diluted;[17] they also suggested, along with the likes of Thomas Bailey Aldrich and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, that a race suicide of the group was occurring.[18]

Works from academics such as William Ripley, while more subtle in their terminology, referenced the panethnic grouping in a discriminatory manner compared with other peoples: "If not overtly stated, the superiority of the Teutonic race (blond-haired, pale-skinned, blue-eyed northwestern Europeans) was implied, an assumption welcomed by writers like Madison Grant."[19] Professor Ruth Clifford Engs analyzed the 1972 essay Genetics, Eugenics, and the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 by historian Kenneth Ludmerer and its in-depth exploration of "the interrelationship of eugenic and anti-immigrant sentiments based upon the supposition that Northwestern Europeans were more 'genetically fit' than southern and eastern Europeans".[20]

National Origins Act

The Immigration Act of 1924 significantly favored Northwestern Europeans, with its reference to the 1890 United States Census, due to the 2% immigration (based on the number of foreign-born residents) allocated by the National Origins Quota.[21] This act almost restricted meaningful immigration from any grouping other than Northwest Europeans.[22]

Climatologist and eugenics advocate Robert DeCourcy Ward had served as a key witness to Congress, in favor of passing the legislation. The co-founder of the Immigration Restriction League, Ward wrote in 1924 regarding the Act:[23]

There was no question of the racial superiority of Northwestern Europeans or of the racial inferiority of Southeastern Europeans. It was simply a question as to which of these two groups of aliens is, as a whole, best fitted, by tradition, political background, customs, education, and habits of thought to adjust itself to American institutions and to American social and economic conditions – to become, in short, an adaptable, homogeneous, and helpful element in American national life.

Modern period

As part of the wider group, Irish immigrants held a uniquely complex route to inclusion within a greater Northwestern European identity, partly due to their predominantly Catholic faith, in contrast with the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant establishment in 19th- and 20th-century America.[24] During the 1940s, assimilated Catholic German Americans created "common ground" with Irish Americans while they also "cooperated with other northwest Europeans and echoed the behavior of such other 'Nordic' groups as Norwegian Americans".[12] By 1960, the United States had shifted significantly from relying on native-born or immigrant Northwestern Europeans, with large increases in the labor force from Hispanic and Latino Americans.[25]

Academic research

A 2009 Population and Development Review study by professor Steven Ruggles compared the demographic structure of Northwestern European families in Europe and North America.[26] Published in the American Journal of Human Genetics in 2011, genetic data was analyzed for the pan-ethnic group. The research, conducted by Dr. Evan E. Eichler with multiple other scientists, compared copy-number variation in the genomes of various ethnic groups including Northwestern European Americans, Yoruba people, and Han Chinese.[27]

See also

• European Americans
• Northwestern European Australians
• Northwestern European Canadians

References

1. Aviva Ben-Ur. "Ethnicity and Immigration". Department of Sociology: Princeton University. Week 4: Northwest European Americans 6. Schneiderman, Howard G. "The Protestant Establishment: Its History Its Legacy-Its Future?" Ch. 10 in (PR).
2. "Boise State University ScholarWorks - Student Newspapers (UP 4.15) - University Documents - Arbiter, January 18". Boise State University. January 18, 1995. Perhaps Mr. Zangwill saw races and ethnic heritage as negative elements much in need of a good melting. But did he feel that the white, Anglo culture should be melted as well? Logic would seem to dictate that Northwest European-Americans would go into the pot along with everyone else.
3. Paul R. Spickard; Rowena Fong (1995). "Pacific Islander Americans and Multiethnicity: A Vision of America's Future?". Social Forces (Volume 73 ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 1365-1383. In the assimilationist view, nearly every person who comes to America (as well as those native peoples who preceded northwest European Americans on the continent) at first possesses an identity different from what the assimilationists regard as the American norm.
4. P Bernardini; N Fiering (2001). "The Jewish Moment". The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450-1800. Berghahn Books. p. 503. ISBN 978-1571814302. In the New World, however, the Northwest Europeans were able to duplicate the Iberian policy of founding settlement colonies. As in Spanish America, the settlers in British, French, and Dutch North America were mainly interested in subsistence farming and interregional trade ... In addition to trade and settlement, the Northwest Europeans also developed a plantation zone, situated in the southeast of North America
5. "The Question of Race in ancient Egypt". University College London. 2003.
6. Thomas Borstelmann (2016). "Inside Every Foreigner: How Americans Understand Others". Diplomatic History (Volume 40 ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 1–18. Benjamin Franklin’s warning that colonial Pennsylvania was becoming “a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them and will never adopt our Language or Customs any more than they can acquire our Complexion.” But just as the idea of Germans having a different complexion than other northwestern European Americans came to seem peculiar, so, too, did mainstream public attitudes about race and discrimination
7. Jesse O. McKee (2000). "Humanity On The Move". Ethnicity in Contemporary America: A Geographical Appraisal. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 20. ISBN 978-0742500341. Table 1.1 Immigration Periods ... 1821-1880 Northwest European Wave. Heavily Irish, German, British, French, and other northwest Europeans, together with a complement from Canada, China and the West Indies.
8. Vincent N. Parrillo (2012). Diversity in America. Routledge. ISBN 978-1612052540.
9. Paul Spickard (2007). "The Great Wave, 1870-1930". Almost All Aliens: Immigration, Race, and Colonialism in American History and Identity: Race, Colonialism, and Immigration in American History and Identity. Routledge. p. 176. ISBN 978-0415935937. Although many histories of immigration describe this period from the 1870s to the 1920s as one when the sources of migrants shifted from Northwest Europe to Southern and Eastern Europe - “Old Immigration” versus the “New Immigration,” Northwest Europeans continued to come and stay in very large numbers.
10. Benjamin Bailey (2002). "Introduction". Language, Race, and Negotiation of Identity: A Study of Dominican Americans. University of Massachusetts Amherst. p. 15. During the heightened immigration associated with the 1880-1920 period, many doubted that the largely Southern and Eastern European newcomers would ever assimilate to the culture of the dominant groups, who were of predominantly Northwestern European origin ... Social differences between these immigrants and European Americans who were already in America were perceived as insurmountable.
11. Russell A. Kazal (2004). "Fate of German America". Becoming Old Stock: The Paradox of German-American Identity. Princeton University Press. p. 279. ISBN 978-0691050157. Nativists largely of colonial background popularized the idea of a deep divide between northwest-European "Americans" and southeast European immigrants before the First World War.
12. "Introduction" (PDF), Introduction - Princeton University, Princeton University Press, p. 6-9, 1914 ... Now, within Anglo-America and under the impress of an increasingly racialized nativism, there arose terms denoting a common northwest European consciousness, such as “American race stock”and “old stock.” ... Groups such as the Americanization Committee of Germantown drew on the language of racialized nativism to cast their members—including those of German background—as northwest Europeans who shared the common racial “stock” of “our forefathers.” ... During the 1940s ... Chicago’s working-class and Catholic Germans thereby helped to create a common ground that necessarily influenced the identities of their Irish and new immigrant collaborators. Similarly, when middle-class Germans took refuge in a racial nationalism, they cooperated with other northwest Europeans and echoed the behavior of such other “Nordic” groups as Norwegian Americans.
13. Stanley Lieberson (1981). "Structural Background". A Piece of the Pie: Blacks and White Immigrants Since 1880. University of California Press. p. 26. ISBN 978-0520043626. But when comparisons are made between immigrants with comparable periods of residence in the United States, there is some reason to believe that the Northwestern Europeans were slower than the new groups to become United States citizens (Gavit, 1922, chapter 8; Liberson 1963a, pp. 141-146).
14. Thomas Powell (1993). "Scholarly & Christian Racism". The Persistence of Racism in America. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 113. ISBN 978-0822630227. Why did Americans assume that behavior expresses race traits? ... the public embraced the works of historians like Bancroft, Parkman, and Presscot, who accepted prevailing ideas of inherent inclinations ... the idea of a genetic trait, a germ, genius, or creative spark found in northwest Europeans, which led to high civilization.
15. Beret E. Strong (2008). Seeking The Light: The Lives of Phillips and Ruth Lee Thygeson, Pioneers in the Prevention of Blindness. McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0786436736. Unfortunately, in the American version of the eugenics argument, articulated by Madison Grant in his 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race, the gene pool of descendants of northwestern Europeans was considered strong and worthy, while the southern and eastern Europeans were considered a threat to the gene pool and a source of overpopulation.
16. Susan R. Burgess; Kathryn C. Leeman (2016). CQ Press Guide to Radical Politics in the United States. CQ Press. ISBN 978-1452292274. At the same time, eugenics was gaining populariy, and scholars such as Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant were publishing books on the superiority of northwestern Europeans and the potential problems caused by the increased immigration of other groups to the United States
17. Elspeth Reeve (October 9, 2016). "Alt-right trolls are getting 23andme genetic tests to 'prove' their whiteness". Vice Media. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, American eugenicists worried that immigrants of “inferior stock” from Southern and Eastern Europe would dilute the old stock of Northwestern Europeans, and argued for sterilization.
18. David Hollinger (May 24, 2019). "When the government used bad science to restrict immigration". The Washington Post. Okrent enlivens his narrative with vivid portraits of Aldrich, Lodge and other prominent figures active in the campaign to avoid the “race suicide” said to follow from allowing the northwestern European population of the United States to be overwhelmed by ostensibly inferior groups.
19. Robert Jarvenpa (2018). "Native Americans and Eugenics". Declared Defective: Native Americans, Eugenics, and the Myth of Nam Hollow. University of Nebraska Press. p. 34. ISBN 978-1496202000.
20. Ruth Clifford Engs (2014). "Eugenics, Immigration Restriction, and the Birth Control Movements". In Katherine A.S. Sibley (ed.). A Companion to Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover (Wiley Blackwell Companions to American History). John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1444350036.
21. Victor C. Romero (2014). "The Criminalization of Undocumented Migrants". In Lois Ann Lorentzen (ed.). Hidden Lives and Human Rights in the United States (3 volumes): Understanding the Controversies and Tragedies of Undocumented Immigration. Praeger Publications. p. 16. ISBN 978-1440828478. The 1924 act also sought to curtail the large number of eastern and southern European migrants who began entering the United States in 1890. Through the National Origins Quota formula, the act pegged future immigration at up to 2 percent of the number of foreign-born persons from a particular country already in the United States as of the 1890 census. Through race-neutral in language, the formula favored northwestern Europeans by using the 1890 census as its referent
22. Jacky Turner (2010). "Eugenics, Commerce and Control in Human and Animal Reproduction". Animal Breeding, Welfare and Society. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 978-1844075898. The 1924 Immigration Act in effect restricted the immigration of people other than north-western Europeans.
23. Robert DeCourcy Ward (September 1, 1924). "Our New Immigration Policy". Foreign Affairs.
24. David Ward (2004). "Population Growth, Migration, and Urbanization, 1860-1920". In Thomas F. McIlwraith (ed.). North America: The Historical Geography of a Changing Continent. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 299. ISBN 978-0742500198. Originally, these temporary migrants from southern and central Europe were distinguished from northwest Europeans who came to the United States as families with every intention of permanent settlement ... The initial experience of the Irish in the New World was somewhat exceptional among northwest Europeans, but just as the new immigration included some families, the old included some labor migrants.
25. Elizabeth F. Cohen (March 13, 2019). "What Immigration Restrictionists Can't Foresee". The Atlantic. By 1960, the population of the United States that had been born in Mexico and other Latin American countries had increased to 2.5 times its former size, despite the fact that the total population of foreign-born persons had gone down by 40 percent. Instead of engineering a population of highly educated, northwestern Europeans, the authors of the legislation created new immigrant communities that persist to this day.
26. Steven Ruggles (2009). "Reconsidering the Northwest European family system: Living arrangements of the aged in comparative historical perspective". Population and Development Review (Volume 35 ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. p. 249-273. The results show that with simple controls for agricultural employment and demographic structure, comparable measures of the living arrangements of the aged show little systematic difference between nineteenth-century Northwest Europe and North America and twentieth-century developing countries. These findings cast doubt on the hypothesis that Northwest Europeans and North Americans had an exceptional historical pattern of preference for nuclear families.
27. Catarina D. Campbell; Evan E. Eichler (2011), "Population-Genetic Properties of Differentiated Human Copy-Number Polymorphisms", American Journal of Human Genetics (Volume 88 ed.), Cell Press, p. 317–332, The samples studied are cohorts of Northwestern European Americans from the Centre d'Etude du Polymorphisme Humain collection (CEU), Yoruba from Ibadan, Nigeria (YRI), Han Chinese from Beijing (CHB), Japanese from Tokyo (JPT), and Maasai from Kinyawa, Kenya (MKK) (Table 1).