The Minds of the West: Ethnocultural Evolution in the Rural Middle West, 1830-1917
In the century preceding World War I, the American Middle West drew thousands of migrants both from Europe and from the northeastern United States. In the American mind, the region represented a place where social differences could be muted and a distinctly American culture created. Many of the European groups, however, viewed the Midwest as an area of opportunity because it allowed them to retain cultural and religious traditions from their homelands.
Jon Gjerde examines the cultural patterns, or "minds," that those settling the Middle West carried with them. He argues that such cultural transplantation could occur because patterns of migration tended to reunite people of similar pasts and because the rural Midwest was a vast region where cultural groups could sequester themselves in tight-knit settlements built around familial and community institutions.
Gjerde compares patterns of development and acculturation across immigrant groups, exploring the frictions and fissures experienced within and between communities. Finally, he examines the means by which individual ethnic groups built themselves a representative voice, joining the political and social debate on both a regional and national level.
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The Minds of the West: Ethnocultural Evolution in the Rural Middle West, 1830-1917
In the century preceding World War I, the American Middle West drew thousands of migrants both from Europe and from the northeastern United States. In the American mind, the region represented a place where social differences could be muted and a distinctly American culture created. Many of the European groups, however, viewed the Midwest as an area of opportunity because it allowed them to retain cultural and religious traditions from their homelands.
Jon Gjerde examines the cultural patterns, or "minds," that those settling the Middle West carried with them. He argues that such cultural transplantation could occur because patterns of migration tended to reunite people of similar pasts and because the rural Midwest was a vast region where cultural groups could sequester themselves in tight-knit settlements built around familial and community institutions.
Gjerde compares patterns of development and acculturation across immigrant groups, exploring the frictions and fissures experienced within and between communities. Finally, he examines the means by which individual ethnic groups built themselves a representative voice, joining the political and social debate on both a regional and national level.
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The Minds of the West: Ethnocultural Evolution in the Rural Middle West, 1830-1917

The Minds of the West: Ethnocultural Evolution in the Rural Middle West, 1830-1917

by Jon Gjerde
The Minds of the West: Ethnocultural Evolution in the Rural Middle West, 1830-1917

The Minds of the West: Ethnocultural Evolution in the Rural Middle West, 1830-1917

by Jon Gjerde

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Overview

In the century preceding World War I, the American Middle West drew thousands of migrants both from Europe and from the northeastern United States. In the American mind, the region represented a place where social differences could be muted and a distinctly American culture created. Many of the European groups, however, viewed the Midwest as an area of opportunity because it allowed them to retain cultural and religious traditions from their homelands.
Jon Gjerde examines the cultural patterns, or "minds," that those settling the Middle West carried with them. He argues that such cultural transplantation could occur because patterns of migration tended to reunite people of similar pasts and because the rural Midwest was a vast region where cultural groups could sequester themselves in tight-knit settlements built around familial and community institutions.
Gjerde compares patterns of development and acculturation across immigrant groups, exploring the frictions and fissures experienced within and between communities. Finally, he examines the means by which individual ethnic groups built themselves a representative voice, joining the political and social debate on both a regional and national level.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780807861677
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date: 11/09/2000
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 442
Lexile: 1580L (what's this?)
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

Jon Gjerde, author of the award-winning From Peasants to Farmers, is professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“An excellent job of tying together demography and intellectual history to explain ethnic voting patterns on issues like woman suffrage, mandatory schooling, and temperance.”The Canadian Review of American Studies

“A challenging work by a writer conversant with the latest trends in immigration history. . . . Rich in original insights.”The Catholic Historical Review

“Gjerde has injected an important, well-crafted, and much needed argument into the analysis of the immigrant experience in the United States. It is, in many ways, ground-breaking.” — Rural History

“This sparkling book is must reading for all students of ethnicity and immigration.” — Annals of Iowa

“A powerful story of mitigating the distance between tradition and assimilation, of keeping culture and ethnicity vibrant in a social environment often changing for the better, but away from the ways of the past. The Minds of the West is tip of an intellectual iceberg that merits much greater exploration. . . . Gjerde’s book belongs on the shelf of anyone who seriously wants to understand how some immigrants became cultural Americans and why others did not. Its lens gives a more complicated, more interesting West and nation.” — Southwestern Historical Quarterly

“This is a book of wide sweep, of sophisticated and multilayered analysis, and of broad significance for American historical scholarship. . . . [Gjerde] has brought together themes and arguments and mixed them with his own prodigious research in primary sources to create a book that is surely among the very best studies of ethnicity we have.” — Reviews in American History

“An important book, an exemplary melding of intellectual and social scientific history.” — Journal of Interdisciplinary History

“Based on impressive research in a wide range of primary sources and on evident familiarity with an expansive secondary literature, this volume provides a complex and sensitive analysis of the differing cultural patterns that influenced the social, economic, and political development of the Upper Midwest during the nineteenth century. . . . This is a valuable contribution to ethnic, social, and regional history and should receive a wide audience.” — Western Historical Quarterly

“Gjerde has indeed made a groundbreaking and highly thought-provoking contribution to American history.” — American Historical Review

“Sophisticated and well written. . . . It will be of interest not just to historians of the Midwest or of rural society but to all those interested in the immigrant experience in the United States.” — Journal of American History

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