Between 1846 and 1940, more than 50 million Europeans moved to the Americas in one of the largest migrations in human history, irrevocably changing both their new homes and the ones they left behind. In this grondbreaking study, Tara Zahra explores the deeper story of this astonishing movement of people - one of the largest in human history. As villages emptied and the fear of depopulation ran rampant, anxiety over "American fever" existed alongside the promise of a brighter social and economic future. On both sides of the ocean lives were transformed by these decades of mass departure.
"Discusses the ways in which material culture affected and reflected how people grappled with social, cultural, and material upheavals during times of war"--
"Before the First World War, enthusiasm for a borderless world reached its height. International travel, migration, trade, and progressive projects on matters ranging from women's rights to world peace reached a crescendo. Yet in the same breath, an undercurrent of reaction was growing, one that would surge ahead with the outbreak of war and its aftermath. In Against the World, a sweeping and ambitious work of history, acclaimed scholar Tara Zahra examines how nationalism, rather than internationalism, came to ensnare world politics in the early twentieth century. The air went out of the globalist balloon with the First World War as quotas were put on immigration and tariffs on trade, not only in the United States but across Europe, where war and disease led to mass societal upheaval. The "Spanish flu" heightened anxieties about porous national boundaries. The global impact of the 1929 economic crash and the Great Depression amplified a quest for food security in Europe and economic autonomy worldwide. Demands for relief from the instability and inequality linked to globalization forged democracies and dictatorships alike, from Gandhi's India to America's New Deal and Hitler's Third Reich. Immigration restrictions, racially constituted notions of citizenship, anti-Semitism, and violent outbursts of hatred of the "other" became the norm-coming to genocidal fruition in the Second World War. Millions across the political spectrum sought refuge from the imagined and real threats of the global economy in ways strikingly reminiscent of our contemporary political moment: new movements emerged focused on homegrown and local foods, domestically produced clothing and other goods, and back-to-the-land communities. Rich with astonishing detail gleaned from Zahra's unparalleled archival research in five languages, Against the World is a poignant and thorough exhumation of the popular sources of resistance to globalization. With anti-globalism a major tenet of today's extremist agendas, Zahra's arrestingly clearsighted and wide-angled account is essential reading to grapple with our divided present"--
Mit Gegen die Welt legt die US-amerikanische Historikerin Tara Zahra eine fantastisch geschriebene Geschichte des antiglobalistischen, antiinternationalistischen Denkens und Handelns in der Zeit zwischen dem Ersten und dem Zweiten Weltkrieg vor. Sie zeigt, wie ein Gemisch aus Nationalismus, Protektionismus und Fremdenfeindlichkeit rund um den Globus die Politik und das Denken eroberte. Ihr ebenso packendes wie bedrückendes Porträt einer Welt im Moment ihres Auseinanderbrechens ist auch eine Warnung: Die Ordnung, die wir für selbstverständlich erachten, kann brüchig sein. Schon während der ersten Welle der Globalisierung bildeten sich gefährliche Unterströmungen. Migration und ökonomische Verflechtung lösten Ressentiments und Existenzängste aus. Nationalismus und Abschottung wurden zum Mantra zahlreicher Politiker. Mit dem Ersten Weltkrieg und der Spanischen Grippe kam die erste Welle der Globalisierung vorerst zu einem Ende. Die Parallelen zur heutigen Zeit sind mit Händen zu greifen: Die Pandemie, die Verwerfungen in der Weltwirtschaft, die Rhetorik des "Take back control" - es scheint, als sei das frühe 20. Jahrhundert zu unserer Gegenwart geworden. "Eine wunderbar geschriebene, fesselnde Geschichte darüber, wie die Globalisierung in der Vergangenheit gescheitert ist, und ein warnendes Beispiel für die Gegenwart. Zahras Rechercheleistung ist hervorragend, ihre Figuren sind unvergesslich." Lea Ypi
