Preface and Introduction

Abstract

There are so many textbooks for undergraduate history courses currently on the market that authors and editors offering yet another for the consideration of instructors and students are under an obligation to explain what they have in mind. In the case of the present volume, the editors feel confident that we are able to make a strong case for the usefulness of this volume, especially at this moment in both national history and in the development of the writing of American immigration history. Our justification will bring together immigration history and the ways in which it has been conceived, exploring the interface of historiography and the past as people in history have lived it, and demonstrating the consequences for our national self-understanding of how we think along that interface. In this way, we are going to merge a “Preface,” in which we explain our editorial choices, with an “Introduction,” in which we review the development and significance of immigration in the American past and present.