Americans Abroad and the Uses of Citizenship: Paris, 1914-1940

Abstract

AMERICANS, QUINTESSENTIALLY described as belonging to a nation of immigrants, are rarely seen as emigrants. Yet large numbers of American citizens have settled abroad, increasingly so since World War II. Today, the Association of Americans Resident Overseas estimates that over five million Americans live outside of the United States. A transatlantic flow eastward began in the nineteenth century and picked up with earnest after the Civil War. Paris was one of the prime destinations for those who went to Europe for work or play, and by the late nineteenth century, Americans had created a large resident “colony,” as they called it, the largest group of Americans abroad. Although Americans abroad have never considered themselves immigrants and do not fall under our usual conception of the immigrant and ethnic history of the North American people (the Journal of American Ethnic History’s raison d’etre), they are a fitting topic for immigration historians in several ways. First, they push us to think of ourselves as we think of others who have come to American shores. The history of Americans in Paris, with their clubs and churches, is a study of community formation and interaction with the locals that is familiar to all historians of immigration. But the experience of those who left the United States may also, in turn, be used to ask questions about immigrants to the United States (and elsewhere). In particular, by focusing on their relation to the consulate, we can ask new questions about citizenship and transnationalism. To what extent do citizens abroad call upon their home states in time of need? By looking at the U.S. Consulate in Paris and examining a particularly insistent transnational use of citizenship from afar, we can suggest the importance for more comparative historic research on the consular intersection for other nationals within the United States or elsewhere. Americans abroad are not your average immigrant largely because of the way we have defined immigrants as impoverished workers. Those Americans who go abroad for substantial periods of time, from months to years to a lifetime, may be called elite emigrants, a category that in itself deserves