Irish-Americans, Baseball, Whiteness

Here's my first discussion post for HIS-200: Applied History.

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The selection from the text that I've chosen to discuss is the following:

In contrast, the other main non-English immigrant group of the period, the Germans (Cohn 1995), assimilated much more easily. While language was a problem, they were more highly educated and skilled than the Irish. In 1860 German men were most highly concentrated in skilled crafts, in contrast to the Irish, who were disproportionately made up of unskilled laborers (Conley and Galenson 1998: 471). Also, German immigrants had been preceded by numerous fellow "countrymen" during the previous century who had paved the way by establishing themselves economically and socially in America. The stereotypical German was hardworking, disciplined, earnest, and frugal (Gerlach 2002: 39).[1]

I chose this passage because it demonstrates to me not only aspects of the change over time in perceptions of the Irish, but also of the Germans. On the one hand, as the readings and common sense indicate, the Irish were grossly and negatively stereotyped, and this perception of the Irish -- and, in fact, their "acceptance" into the larger American "white race" -- changed radically as immigration from other parts of Europe increased and as emancipation of African Americans resulted in increased competition for unskilled labor. The case of Germans reflects even more changes. For some Americans, their initial interaction with Germans was in the form of Hessian mercenaries who fought for the British in the War for Independence. While this experience might have cast Germans in a negative light initially, the passage makes it clear that the economic circumstances of German immigrants, as well as the Lutheran faith of many (but not all) of them, eased their transition despite the language barrier that they faced. Germans ultimately came to make up the majority of Midwesterners and Plains residents owing to the Homestead Act, and even with periods of negative perceptions of Germans during both world wars, Germans now make up a plurality of all white Americans, indicating a highly successful immigration experience overall.

As indicated above, part of the integration of Irish Americans is the process of their being made "white" by the surrounding society and culture. As I already noted, much of this transition involved not only the economic upward mobility of Irish Americans, but also the immigration of other, presumably even less "white" people from southern and eastern Europe and competition between Irish and African Americans post-Civil War. The article on Irish players in baseball offers addition, econometric and statistical information to substantiate how Irish Americans were mainstreamed. By proving statistically, including in tables,[2] that Irish American players were essentially forced to be better players in order to overcome discrimination, the visibility of Irish American players increased in the public eye and normalized Irish Americans among non-Irish fans. Interestingly, the author also shows that German players were comparatively less talented than Irish players,[3] demonstrating less of a need to overcome prejudice in hiring. In any case, the Irish overcame prejudice in the United States through a variety of means, and mainstreaming via major league baseball played a not insignificant role.

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     [1] E. Woodrow Eckard, "Anti-Irish Job Discrimination circa 1880: Evidence from Major League Baseball," Social Science History, 34, no. 4 (Winter 2010): 410.
     [2] Ibid, 425, 427.
     [3] Ibid, 432.

WWII: Race and the Pacific War

To determine the extent to which racial identity played in a role in combat in the Pacific theater in World War II, it is necessary to examine the question from both sides of the conflict, i.e., from the standpoint of both the Japanese and the Allies. On the latter point, it is necessary to consider not only the racial attitudes of the U.S. military but also those of the British, French, and Dutch colonial authorities, Australian and New Zealand forces, and the Asian and Pacific Islander populations who found themselves under Japanese occupation. The conclusion can be drawn that, while not the primary factor driving the conflict, racial identity was an immensely complicating factor in an already complicated conflict.

From the Japanese side, the rise of ethnic nationalism in Japan has been well attested. Ronald Spector details this ascendance in his book on the Pacific war, referring for example to the concept of kokutai and how it permeated the Japanese military.[1] Assassinations politically motivated by nationalists occurred against the foreign minister in May 1932[2] and the prime minister by likeminded assailants two years earlier.[3] Once the war began, and Japanese ultranationalism was given free rein, its expression took two forms. On the one hand, violence in the form of atrocities committed against non-Japanese enemies, whether Chinese in the Rape of Nanjing or Americans in the Bataan Death March, was a clear enunciation of the superiority the Japanese felt over other peoples. On the other hand, as pointed out by Millett and Murray in the case of the Japanese conquest of Malaya, a British colony, the Japanese could act as "liberators" of fellow Asian peoples by ousting militarily the colonial rulers.[4]

From the Allied side, there was the obvious factor that certain Asian and Pacific populations were eager to collaborate with the Japanese because they were not the traditional colonial oppressor. More importantly, however, was the pre-existing conceptions that American, British, French, Dutch, Australia, and New Zealand forces had of Asian and Pacific peoples. In the case of the United States, these prejudices had been reinforced by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, with its subsequent renewal every 10 years until 1942, not to mention the sporadic violence committed against Asian and Asian-American communities along the West Coast of the United States and the internment of Japanese Americans during the war itself. As a result, as noted by Craig M. Cameron, atrocities committed by American soldiers against Japanese surrendering soldiers or POWs was very widespread. In dissecting John A. Lynn's quasi-defense of this behavior, Cameron notes that "the apologist notion that Allied soldiers acted only in response, in retribution, is one of the great fallacies to attaches to racist brutality: the displacement of brutality onto the victim."[5]

Perhaps no point of comparison regarding how race was a factor in the war is that with the European theater, particularly as fought between the Allies and Germany. Whereas Germany fought a war of extermination on the Eastern front, on the Western front, Germany abided by international treaties (with a few notable exceptions) in fighting the British and Americans, and the Allies conducted themselves correspondingly. In the same way that German soldiers felt free to commit atrocities in the east because of racist doctrine, American soldiers felt the same comparative freedom when fighting the Japanese. At least in the case of the Pacific war, race was not the cause of the war, but it was undoubtedly a factor.

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     [1] Ronald Spector, Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan (New York: Free Press, 1983), Epub edition, 101-02.
    [2] Ibid, 109
    [3] Ibid, 123.
    [4] Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War, 1937-1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2001), 198.
    [5] Craig M. Cameron, "Race and Identity: The Culture of Combat in the Pacific War," International History Review, 27, no. 3 (2005): 558.

Japanese Victories from China to Midway

Understanding why the Japanese were so successful in the early years of World War II requires a thorough exploration of the several campaigns in which Japan was involved during that period. Although period began with occupation of and campaigns against China, later actions undertaken against the European anti-Axis countries and finally the United States had their own explanations for the early successes. Japan owed its success in China to the lack of government unity in that country, while Japan's success in Hong Kong, Indochina, Indonesia, and elsewhere in the Far East resulted from the colonial powers of these countries being either occupied by or at with war with Germany. Finally, Japan's success against the United States resulted from lack of preparedness and the element of surprise.

Japan had already established a colony in Korea and an occupation government in Manchuria by 1937. Thus, with the invasion of the Chinese heartland, war against China began in earnest. Although China had become a republic in 1911 under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen, following Sun's death in 1925, power over the country had fallen into the hands of multiple warlords. In addition, civil war began in 1927 between nationalist forces led by Sun's Kuomintang political party and General Chiang Kai-shek and the Communist Party ultimate led by Mao Tse-tung. It was with the country being torn apart that the Japanese invaded China. As Millett and Murray point out, although Chiang and Mao entered a truce to resist the Japanese, the Japanese were able to exploit non-communist opposition to Chiang to strip him of power.[1] In addition, almost four years into the Japanese occupation, Chiang actually turned on the communist military units rather than concentrate on fighting the Japanese.[2]

Oddly, the key power supporting Chiang in 1937 was the Soviet Union, which supported him rather than the Chinese Communist Party, but the Soviets were unable to come to China's aid in 1941. This is a factor that was of enormous importance, since the Soviets had routed the Japanese in 1939 at Khalkin-Gol. According to historian Amnon Sella, the Japanese lost mainly because they had underestimated the Soviets in believing that the Purges of the 1930s had left the Red Army weak: "But as it turned out, the Red Army was better equipped than ever before, and quite prepared to improvise ingenious solutions to unaccustomed difficulties."[3] If the absence of the Soviets as a force to intervene in China was important, so was the inability of the British to adequately defend Hong Kong, Singapore, or Malaya. The former, for instance, had to be defended in part because of civilian volunteers.[4] Finally, given the ongoing military occupations of French and the Netherlands by the Nazis, the ability of these countries to defend their colonies were severely compromised.

In the case of the United States, the reason for Japanese success really seems to have been the element of surprise. Since the goal of the Japanese in attacking Pearl Harbor was prevention of the U.S. ability to intervene in the defense of the Philippines and other Pacific possessions, as well as to assist the British and Australians in defending their territories, the attack can be considered a major success. Ultimately, only Wake Island among the initial attacked areas was successfully defended, mainly because, unlike other U.S. territories, it been recently fortified in anticipation of such an attack.[5] The Philippines were comparative less defended and relied heavily on the Philippine Army; Guam was not defended at all.[6]

Thus, the reasons for Japanese success varied on the basis of time, place, and enemy. The Chinese, although perhaps providing the largest possible resistance, was politically the weakest and thus was easily exploited. The war in Europe left European colonial possessions in the Pacific comparatively weakly defended, and even the U.S., which had not yet entered the war, had uneven defenses in place, which were fully exploited by the Japanese using the element of surprise at Pearl Harbor. Tellingly, once the U.S. entered the war with full resource commitment and awareness, the tide turned quickly against the Japanese.

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     [1] Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War, 1937-1945(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2001), 159.
     [2] Ibid, 164.
     [3] Amnon Sella, "Khalkhin-Gol: The Forgotten War," Journal of Contemporary History, 18, no. 4 (1983): 680.
     [4] Ronald Spector, Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan (New York: Free Press, 1983), Epub edition, 331.
     [5] Ibid, 265-66.
 b  [6] Ibid, 266.

On the Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution had an enormous impact on the world's economies. However, it is clear from looking at the economies of the world today that some countries were impacted less than others, and some not at all. However, not all of the countries that did not industrialize failed in undertaking the process; rather, some of these countries opted out of the process entirely. By examining three countries that succeeded, failed, and opted out of the industrialization process -- the United States, India, and the Netherlands, respectively -- we can determine the factors that determined these outcomes.

The United States offers an example of successful industrialization, and the key factors in this success appear to be combined aspects of population and economics. Fernandez-Armesto notes that, despite very large-scale immigration to the United States over the course of the 19th century, the U.S. nevertheless remained underpopulated, and countries with small workforces are more conducive to industrialization. The remaining factors of industrialization in the U.S. were chiefly economic. Industrialization increases supply, and as economists are wont to say, "supply creates its own demand."[1] Part of this demand in the United States was the government itself, which funded public projects that relied on industrialization -- e.g., the railroads -- and to fund these projects, the U.S. government increased the money supply. As Fernandez-Armesto notes further, the key factor that prevented such a monetary policy from becoming grossly inflationary was probably increased production and trade. Thus, industrialization in the United States was successful finally because it became a self-perpetuating process.

In India, the chief force preventing successful industrialization was colonialism. By the 19th century, India had already been in the process of being colonized by the United Kingdom, and this process would intensify over the course of the century with power transferred from the British East India Company to the government. However, the reasons for failed industrialization in India were ultimately also economic. Because the British expropriated goods produced in India, it had the effect of decreasing demand for those goods, thus depriving India of a key factor that drove successful industrialization in the United States. Moreover, Fernandez-Armesto reports, the British laid a heavy tax burden on India, thereby decreasing the money in circulation among Indians, entered into direct competition with Indian-owned textile mills that were less industrialized, thereby driving down the price of textiles, and finally passed protectionist tariffs on Indian-produced goods, thereby eradication any remaining demand for Indian-produced textiles. Fernandez-Armesto links these policies to a mass exodus of Indian laborers to elsewhere in the British Empire for work, causing native Indian owned and run businesses to collapse. Clearly, industrialization in India for the Indian economy failed -- although just as clearly it did not fail the British.

Finally, in the Netherlands, industrialization was largely avoided. Fernandez-Armesto offers the Netherlands as the quintessential example of a country that largely did not industrialize because it did not have to. While its neighbor Belgium became arguably the most industrialized country in Europe, the Netherlands continued through much of the 19th century to be a primarily agrarian economy. Fernandez-Armesto reports that the Netherlands retained an agrarian position despite having an empire (in Indonesia) and having extensive long-range trade -- two factors that should have favored industrialization. Ultimately, the Netherlands opted out because it worked in a sort of economic partnership with Belgium, with the former supplying food to the latter, and the latter supplying industrial goods to the former. Thus, the Netherlands'  position of opting out, like the success and failure of the United States and India, respectively, is informed by economics also -- here, the case of economic cooperation yielding a sort of symbiosis between the two countries. 

In conclusion, we can see that economics was the chief driver in how well, how poorly, or whether at all countries adopted industrialization. The United States, although blessed with the idea situation of underpopulation of workers, truly benefitted from a self-perpetuating system of industrialization driving demand and vice versa. India failed in industrializing because its economy was exploited to the greatest extent possible by its colonizer, the United Kingdom. Finally, the Netherlands opted out of industrializing because it could rely on the economic symbiosis it enjoyed with Belgium. While these conditions would ultimately change in the 20th century, with service economies largely replacing industrial economies, by the end of the 19th century, clear patterns of industrialization had emerged worldwide that would persist for some time. 

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[1] John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, University of Missouri-Kansas City Web site, accessed November 19, 2015, http://cas.umkc.edu/economics/people/facultypages/kregel/courses/econ645/winter2011/generaltheory.pdf, p. 22