The Other Americans in Paris: Businessmen, Countesses, Wayward Youth, 1880–1941. By Nancy L. Green (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2014) 352 pp. $40.00

Abstract

From beneath the shadow cast by the mythologized lives of American literature’s “Lost Generation,” this volume offers a refreshing portrait of the American expatriate colony that thrived in Paris and a compelling methodology for examining the United States’ emigrant diaspora. In eight thematic chapters, focusing on the first half of the twentieth century, the book weaves the threads of economic, business, legal, and cultural approaches through the transnational social history of Paris’ “American Colony.” Through the Colony, Green seeks to uncover both the “willing and unwitting participants in the story of America’s global reach” (5). In the process, Green makes a compelling case not only for the inclusion of “elite” emigrant communities into the framework of U.S. migration history but also demonstrates the centrality of expatriate communities to the trajectory of American transnational exchange (6–7).Through a close reading of overlooked sources—including the census, police records, residence directories, and American business archives—Green uncovers a diverse Parisian American world. The Parisian American Colony was comprised of a variety of social groups, ranging from businessmen and women to musicians, nightclub owners, criminals, and stranded indigents. Green compares the social, legal, and cultural identities of those in this self-described “American Colony” with those of the “other Americans” congregated in Paris (41). These expatriates “re-created an image of America for themselves” in dialogue with each other’s identities, with French attitudes toward themselves, and with the “skepticism” of Americans across the Atlantic (256).Parallel to the creation of American social institutions and an offshore civic life, Americans in Paris also constructed the mechanics of Franco-American commerce. The American Chamber of Commerce in Paris, founded in 1894, created and mediated Franco-American markets. For Green, the Chamber represented an “almost missionary view of American business,” acting as the conduit through which ideologies of American power were transmitted (137). Green thereby points economists and political scientists to the vibrant world of non-state actors and institutions that structured global trade during the first half of the twentieth century and to the role of international society in spreading germane knowledge of markets and investments worldwide.The question of Americanization therefore looms large throughout. Scholars from a wide range of disciplines will be interested in Green’s attempt to provide an account of American economic expansion overseas that “lies between isolationism and conquering expansion” and highlights the contestations that characterized the process (144). At its most robust, Green’s American Colony was a “frontier outpost” of a U.S. empire (141). Yet, Green’s work parallels Brooke Blower’s Becoming Americans in Paris: Transatlantic Politics and Culture between the World Wars (New York, 2013) in revealing the protean, context-dependent framework of French anti-Americanism (222). The contingencies of this intra-French debate about economic nationalism, rather than the United States’ surging power, dictated the rhythm of American expansion during the first half of the twentieth century.The Other Americans is an incisive work of transnational social history that blends a variety of conceptual approaches to study the United States’ global interconnections. As scholars seek to internationalize the study of U.S. history, Green’s fine volume will undoubtedly serve as a model, suggesting that further analysis of how American communities coalesced around the world will also plot the diverse locales of the United States’ global footprint.