How a new American identity was forged by immigration and expansion a century ago. In Barbarian Virtues , Matthew Frye Jacobson offers a keenly argued and persuasive history of the close relationship between immigration and America's newly expansionist ambitions at the turn of the twentieth century. Jacobson draws upon political documents, novels, travelogues, academic treatises, and art as he recasts American political life. In so doing, he shows how today's attitudes about "Americanism" -- from Border Watch to the Gulf War -- were set in this crucial period, when the dynamics of industrialization rapidly accelerated the rate at which Americans were coming in contact with foreign peoples. “A thoughtful analysis of America's uneasy relationship with foreignness.” ― Kirkus Reviews “An excellent look at an aspect of U.S. history not often discussed or studied.” ― Vanessa Bush, Booklist Matthew Frye Jacobson , associate professor of American studies at Yale, is the author of Whiteness of a Different Color and Special Sorrows . He received his M.A. in American Studies from Boston College and his Ph.D. from Brown University. He lives in New York. ". . . [His] reach is ambitious, touching on everything from anti-Chinese legislation to eugenics to the Philippines War." Barbarian Virtues The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917 By Matthew Frye Jacobson Hill & Wang Copyright © 2001 Matthew Frye Jacobson All right reserved. ISBN: 9780809016280 Chapter One Export Markets: The World's Peoples as Consumers A savage, having nothing, is perfectly contented so long as he wants nothing. The first step toward civilizing him is to create a want. Men rise in the scale of civilization only as their wants rise. ? Josiah Strong , Our Country (1886)     I am an exporter, I want the world. ? Charles Lovering, textile manufacturer (1890) We thank thee for national prosperity and progress," intonedBishop Matthew Simpson in his convocation for Philadelphia'sCentennial Exposition in 1876, "for valuable discoveriesand multiplied inventions, for labor-saving machinery relievingthe toiling masses." If progress had become an article of religious faith by1876?discovery, invention, and machinery its miraculous manifestations?thenthe exposition in Philadelphia was its most magnificent temple. Herevisitors could see the splendid Corliss engine, "that giant wonder ..., [propelling]an endless system of belts and wheels," as the centennial commissionerput it; "silent and irresistible," it seemed fully to realize "the fabledpowers of genii and afrit in Arabian tales." Here they could thrill to the roarand the hum of all sorts of technical innovations in the processes of production?shingle-cuttingmachines, quartz mills, sugar mills, harvesting machinery,and printing presses. They could examine great slabs of crude metal,gaze upon the polish of a shiny new railway car, or wonder at the power andthe workings of a hydraulic ram. They could look over a cornucopia of newconsumer items?cutlery, felt hats, silverware, dentifrice, glassware, mince-meat,tobacco, sewing machines, and "show-cases filled with dresses thatwere enough to drive an ordinary woman crazy." They could view the newtools of commerce, innovative technologies of communication and shipping,including telegraphic equipment, lighthouse service and weather equipment,and Alexander Graham Bell's telephone. And here at the fair, not incidentally,they could also become acquainted with what would turn out to beamong the most important tools of all in the quest for worldwide markets?Gatlingguns, projectiles, torpedoes, and twenty-inch Rodman guns.     The idea of the world market was largely the point of this exposition.This national celebration took place, after all, in the midst of a rather severedepression cycle that had begun in 1873. And so, if over the course of 159days the Centennial Exposition introduced nearly ten million visitors toAmerica's wares, as it was meant to do, discussion all around the expositionalso introduced new staples of American economic thought: the fear of domestic"overproduction" and the appetite for foreign markets to absorb theresulting surplus of American goods. "Unquestionably international tradeand commerce will be promoted," declared one orator at the exposition's end."The ingenuity and excellence of our mechanics and inventors will be madebetter known." Throughout the exposition, Philadelphia newspapers had repeatedlyreferred to the saturation of domestic markets and the importanceof cultivating foreign?particularly Asian?markets for American manufacturedgoods in order "to prevent continued depression." Asia, as one newspaperhad it, represented "an almost unlimited field for disposal of manyarticles of American manufacture, where up to this very moment, such goodsare almost unknown."     In the late eighteenth century, Adam Smith had cautioned against creatinga great national e