Upcoming Books by Annandale History Professors
Congratulations to Dr. Nathaniel Green and Dr. John Schmitz of the History Department at NOVA’s Annandale Campus on the upcoming publication of their books. These volumes not only reflect the scholarly distinction and academic prowess of Professors Green and Schmitz, but also their ongoing commitment to bringing such scholarship to the classroom. There is a discernible currency of these volumes in American life. Congratulations to John and Nate!
Dr Nate Green’s volume, to be published by the University of Kansas, fall 2020, is titled The Man of the People: Political Dissent and the Making of the American Presidency.
Beginning with the public debate over whether to ratify the Constitution in 1787 and concluding with Andrew Jackson’s own contentious presidency, Nathaniel C. Green traces the origins of our conception of the president as the ultimate American: the exemplar of our collective national values, morals and “character.” The public divisiveness over the presidency in these earliest years, he contends, forged the office into an incomparable symbol of an emerging American nationalism that cast white Americans as dissenters—lovers of liberty who were willing to mobilize against tyranny in all its forms, from foreign governments to black “enemies” and Indian “savages”—even as it fomented partisan division that belied the promise of unity the presidency symbolized. With testimony from private letters, diaries, newspapers and bills, Green documents the shaping of the disturbingly nationalistic vision that has given the presidency its symbolic power.
This argument is about a different time than our own. And yet it shows how this time, so often revered as a mythic “Founding Era” from which America has precipitously declined, was in fact the birthplace of the president-centered nationalism that still defines the contours of politics to this day. The lessons of The Man of the People contextualize the political turmoil surrounding the presidency today. Never in modern American history have those lessons been more badly needed.
Dr. John Schmitz’s volume, to be published by the University of Nebraska, is titled Enemies Among Us: The Relocation, Internment, and Repatriation of German, Italian, and Japanese Americans During the Second World War.
Enemies Among Us is a comparative analysis of the relocation, internment and repatriation of German, Italian and Japanese Americans during the Second World War. Dr. Schmitz investigates the causes, conditions and consequences of America’s selective relocation and internment of its own citizens and enemy aliens and examines the experiences of all three major groups of relocatees and internees. He analyzes policy making from the local to the national level and then places internment in an international context. The book also recounts the repatriation and exchange of thousands of internees and discusses America’s leading role in these endeavors. Dr. Schmitz uses numerous secondary sources, but incorporates new findings from archival documents—including personal papers, diaries, films, memoirs, camp newspapers, letters and oral testimonies. Together, remarkable consistencies are revealed in the nation’s treatment of all its enemy aliens and citizens, regardless of race.
The federal government’s perception of domestic and hemispheric threats, coupled with military fears and economic concerns, heavily influenced dual-coast relocation policies while political, social and diplomatic considerations guided the selective, nationwide internment of enemy aliens and citizens. Underlying both processes was a tremendous fear of Fifth Columnists. Ultimately, Americans accepted relocation and internment as necessary expedients in dealing with those officially categorized, indeed ubiquitously called, enemies among us. The tens of thousands of German, Italian and Japanese Americans who experienced relocation or internment personified the deeper social and cultural rifts of a democracy under stress.