A Distinct Alien Race

The Untold Story of Franco-Americans: Industrialization, Immigration, Religious Strife

David Vermette, David G. Vermette

• Publisher: Baraka Books
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781771861687
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Social Sciences

In the later 19th century, French-Canadian Roman Catholic immigrants from Quebec were deemed a threat to the United States, potential terrorists in service of the Pope. Books and newspapers floated the conspiracy theory that the immigrants seeking work in New England's burgeoning textile industry were actually plotting to annex parts of the United States to a newly independent Quebec. Vermette's groundbreaking study sets this neglected and poignant tale in the broader context of North American history. He traces individuals and families, from the textile barons who created a new industry to the poor farmers and laborers of Quebec who crowded into the mills in the post-Civil War period. Vermette discusses the murky reception these cross-border immigrants met in the USA, including dehumanizing conditions in mill towns and early-20th-century campaigns led by the Ku Klux Klan and the Eugenics movement. Vermette also discusses what occurred when the textile industry moved to the Deep South and brings the story of emigrants up to the present day. Vermette shows how this little-known episode in U.S. history prefigures events as recent as yesterday's news. His well documented narrative touches on the issues of cross-border immigration; the Nativists fear of the Other; the rise and fall of manufacturing in the U.S.; and the construction of race and ethnicity.

Table of contents

• INTRODUCTION
• PROLOGUE A Sprint Through 250 Years of History
• SECTION ONE FROM SHIPS’ CAPTAINS TO CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY
• CHAPTER ONE Head of the Mercantile Community of Boston
• CHAPTER TWO A Textile Industry for New England
• CHAPTER THREE Enter The Cabots
• CHAPTER FOUR Textiles in Brunswick The First Half-Century
• SECTION TWO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COTTON
• CHAPTER FIVE Franco-Americans Rescue King Cotton
• CHAPTER SIX Franco-Americans Come to Brunswick
• CHAPTER SEVEN The Case of the Cabot Mill
• CHAPTER EIGHT A Rich Uncle from the States?
• CHAPTER NINE Who Were the Immigrants?
• CHAPTER TEN They Came from L’Islet
• SECTION THREE THE RECEPTION OF FRANCO-AMERICANS
• CHAPTER ELEVEN Franco-Americans and Americanism
• CHAPTER TWELVE Fears of Franco-American Conspiracy
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN Eugenics and the Alien in Our Midst
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN A Klan For New England
• SECTION FOUR
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN Textiles Go South
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN Drifting Away from Little Canada in Body and Mind
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN A Distinct Alien Race No Longer
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Franco-Americans and Québécois
• EPILOGUE Back to the Cemetery
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS