settled in the towns where they preferred to
join their countrymen who had kept close
together in the cities and found unskilled indus-
trial work. Immigrants contributed significantly
to the growth of major cities, reinforced eco-
nomic expansion and helped to bring about the
mass market which is characteristic of twentieth-
century America. Of the 13 million, more than a
million were Jews leaving the pogrom-ridden
Russian Empire; they helped to make New York
into one of the great clothing manufacturing
centres of America.
The rich cultural variety of the US, the diver-
sity of ethnic groups from the West and the East,
as well as the sheer numbers of immigrants, are
among the unique features of America’s national
growth. America, as one historian put it, was less
a ‘melting pot’ – intermarriage and common alle-
giances did not speedily obliterate national differ-
ences of origin – than a ‘salad bowl’. All the same,
the fusion of peoples of every national origin and
religion and, over a much longer period, the
fusion of races black and white, Asian and
Hispanic into a national community has proved a
more powerful force than national and racial dif-
ferences and conflict.
In the twentieth century the shared experi-
ences of two world wars were powerful influences
in making for more toleration and mutual accep-
tance – one of the most significant aspects of the
development of the US for world history.
The immigrants added immensely to the vital-
ity of the US. Starting from nothing, they and
their descendants acquired new skills and an edu-
cation. The US was the country where the acci-
dent of a father’s social status mattered least in the
Western world. As far as the African Americans
were concerned, this generalisation did not hold
true. As long ago as 1868 some of the framers of
the fourteenth amendment of the constitution
sought to protect the rights of black people. The
amendment declared that Americans enjoyed
equal rights and equality before the law, and
specifically laid down that no state could ‘deprive66 BEYOND EUROPE: THE SHIFTING BALANCE OF GLOBAL POWER
Immigrants waiting in America. © Bettmann/Corbis