Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewKenny brings a fresh and insightful look at changing 19th-century immigration law in this crisp legal history... Based on a close reading of key immigration law cases and other primary sources, this erudite study sheds light on the long and complicated history of immigration law. * Library Journal *
One can't fully understand the origins of US immigration policy without knowing the history of slavery and Native American removal. In this beautifully written book, Kevin Kenny shows how these painful histories laid the groundwork for the barring, policing, detaining, and expelling of immigrants and shaped American understandings of federal plenary power, citizenship, and sovereignty. This book shows why Kenny is one of the most insightful historians of the nineteenth-century United States. * María Cristina García, author of State of Disaster: The Failure of US Migration Policy in an Age of Climate Change *
From Kevin Kenny, eminent scholar in immigration history, comes a timely reminder that slavery once touched every aspect of American life, including border control. He makes a powerful case that today's immigration policies still bear the scars of the slaveholding republic. * Beth Lew-Williams, author of The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America *
In a bold and sweeping reinterpretation, Kenny convincingly places slavery and its legacy at the heart of the US immigration history. The Problem of Immigration in a Slaveholding Republic is a must read for students of either field. * Sam Erman, author of Almost Citizens: Puerto Rico, the U.S. Constitution, and Empire *
The most comprehensive and penetrating analysis of nineteenth-century US immigration policy that I have read. Kevin Kenny's brilliant reconstruction of the intersecting efforts to police the movement of enslaved, immigrant, and indigenous populations will change the way we think about the history—and the current state—of America's immigration regime. * Gary Gerstle, University of Cambridge *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Part One: Sovereign States Chapter 1: Foundations Chapter 2: Police Power and Commerce Power Chapter 3: The Threat to Slavery Chapter 4: The Boundaries of Political Community Part Two: Immigration in the Age of Emancipation Chapter 5: The Antislavery Origins of Immigration Policy Chapter 6: Reconstruction Chapter 7: Immigration and National Sovereignty Epilogue Chronology Notes Bibliography Index
