This article examines colonial legal categories such as “national status” and “coastwise shipping” that shaped the movement of goods and people between U.S. colonies and the metropole. Focused on the case of Puerto Rican migration to the U.S. mainland in the early twentieth century, it argues that these legal categories conditioned migration patterns and that migrants, in turn, actively shaped new legal categories. Drawing on sources from both U.S. and Puerto Rican archives, this article contributes to an emerging body of literature on U.S. imperialism, law, and migration in the Americas. It shows that colonial legal categories are critical to understanding enduring migration streams to the United States that have long been embedded in imperial relationships.

At the start of the twentieth century, U.S. citizens began settling and investing on the Isle of Pines off the coast of Cuba. U.S. entrepreneurs who believed the Isle was or would become U.S. territory bought vast tracts from Spanish and Cuban landowners. They then subdivided the land and marketed it to farmers and middle-class Americans still in search of opportunity on a disappearing frontier. These landholding companies' promotions helped shape the assumptions and expectations of thousands of Americans who settled on the Isle over the next few decades. Companies portrayed the Isle as a tropical paradise safe for white settlement and ripe for development. They promised high returns-on-investment for those looking to engage in citrus production for export, as well as a healthful climate for those plagued by chronic illness. Some of these settlers publicly echoed landholding companies' portrayal and remained on the Isle for years. Others found the Isle's promise to be grossly exaggerated and returned to the United States feeling swindled by unscrupulous entrepreneurs. Although set in a foreign land, U.S. interest in the Isle reveals much about life in the United States, including the changing nature of expansion, the growing power of advertising, and middle-class discontent.

The influence of John Higham and Strangers in the Land on the fields of immigration, ethnic, social, and intellectual history remains unquestionable. Nativism is as relevant to the study of American history in the twenty-first century as it was in 1955, when the book first appeared. Strangers in the Land has endured as an inspiring work of scholarship not only for its substance, but also for the author's commitment “to join historical scholarship with contemporary social concern.” Although he became interested in and wrote about many other subjects after the publication of Strangers in the Land, Higham continued to be concerned about the ebb and flow of nativism in the United States throughout his life. As Michael Kammen pointed out, Higham “remained exceedingly serious about the state of the nation and American society, sometimes verging upon gloom if not despair.” This sense of urgency about the pervasiveness of history in the present emerged in his prologue to the 2002 edition of his book, when he wrote that he feared there was “an acrid odor of the 1920s.” Fifty-five years after its publication, Strangers in the Land still conveyed the importance of its subject and inspired readers to seek an answer to Higham's fear of a resurgence of nativism.

My task for this retrospective was to discuss John Higham's treatment of region in Strangers in the Land, with particular reference to the American West. My analysis looks especially at race and imperialism. These choices reflect in part the interests and approaches of John Higham, but also the general direction of the field of western history in the twenty-first century.

I first read John Higham's book in an immigration history seminar in my first semester of graduate school at the University of Wisconsin. In fact, Higham visited campus that fall to present the Merle Curti lecture, named for his mentor. Higham's influence has remained significant: like many historians of immigration and ethnicity, I have often returned to his book during the course of my own teaching and research, whether on American Catholic history or U.S. immigration policy. My remarks focus on gender issues and immigration policy history in Strangers in the Land.

In April 2002, the Immigration and Ethnic History Society (IEHS) made its first lifetime achievement award. It was my honor to be president of the IEHS at that time, and I can recall the pleasure and unanimity of board members in designating John Higham the first recipient of that honor. It was a special pleasure for me to notify John and to present the award to him because over the years John had become both a personal friend and a powerful intellectual influence. When I called him at his home in Baltimore, he accepted with delight but as always with the soft-spoken graciousness that was his way. We chatted about the fact that initially he had not defined himself as an immigration scholar, yet in 1967, more than a decade after the publication of Strangers in the Land had found himself one of the founding members of what was then called the Immigration History Society and later one of its presidents. As we often did, we also talked about our hometown, New York. John had grown up in Queens, while I had grown up in the South Bronx. On many occasions we discussed how our New York roots had lured us into thinking and writing about immigration and ethnicity.