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World Conquerors or a Dying People? Racial Theory, Regional Anxiety, and the Brahmin Anglo-Saxonists1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2010

Bluford Adams
Bluford Adams
Affiliation:
University of Iowa
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Abstract

This essay focuses on an influential group of New England patrician intellectuals, including Henry Cabot Lodge, James K. Hosmer, and John Fiske. It argues that the New England backgrounds of these men informed their thinking about race, distinguishing them from their Anglo-Saxonist colleagues from other regions. Specifically, the Anglo-Saxonist triumphalism of the Brahmins was undercut by their anxieties about the fate of their race in New England, where they faced a number of daunting challenges. The result was the unique mixture of power and impotence, arrogance and despair, expansionism and defensiveness that distinguishes the Brahmins from other Anglo-Saxonists. The internal contradictions of the Brahmins are particularly evident in their commentary on immigration, an area where, because of their prestige and political influence, they wielded an outsize influence over federal policy.

Type
Essays
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 189 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2009

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References

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