Roughly 2,000 American fugitives fled to Canada in the 1880s—mostly clerks, cashiers, and bank tellers charged with embezzlement. This article argues that these “boodlers,” as they were popularly called, were symptomatic of a late-nineteenth-century crisis of mobility. Embezzlement was a function of new kinds of mobility: migration to cities, the rise of an upwardly mobile middle class, the fungibility of greenbacks, and the growth of international transportation networks. The boodlers were some of the earliest white-collar criminals. By focusing on their unexplored story, this article contributes to the growing literature that presents the clerk as an important figure in nineteenth-century labor history. Still, the boodlers also had a more unexpected impact on the evolution of the United States' international borders, both in the popular imagination and in actual surveillance and law enforcement techniques. Through the figure of the boodler, this article examines the links between the growth of capitalism and the development of the United States–Canada border in the late nineteenth century.

Tarpon fishing offers the opportunity to pursue a narrative of environmental and sport history that focuses on the mutuality between ecology and development. Angling for tarpon illustrates the capacity of an offshore, sporting species to alter the landscape and growth of an entire region. Tarpon fishing reshaped the southwest coast of Florida. In the Charlotte Harbor region, the confluence of human and nonhuman species catalyzed a sporting enterprise that grew dramatically in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Fishing for tarpon in the Gulf of Mexico was almost exclusively a sporting pursuit, because the unpalatable tarpon had little commercial value. The convergence of the sporting and environmental histories of southwest Florida, the demographics of fishermen and fish, and the development of sporting industries regionally and nationally all provide evidence of the close ecological mutuality that defined tarpon angling during its peak years. On account of features of the fish's annual and life cycle, the region, and the sport, this fishing seemed not to overtax populations of the fish themselves.

The 1919 Chicago race riot sparked a contentious debate among African Americans over the future of antiracist politics. Previous scholars have argued that the actions of “New Negroes” who took up arms in the riot represent a rejection of the politics of respectability dominant among black elites in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. This article argues that African American actions in the riot are more complex than previously understood. African Americans participated in the riot in a myriad of ways, and events were fluid and unpredictable. Violent acts spanned a continuum from spontaneous responses to more organized interventions. Moreover, African Americans not only committed aggressive violence, but also fought among themselves about the boundaries of legitimate violence. Based on their divergent interpretations of the events of the riot, black leaders found ample support for different and even contradictory political programs. Black radicals argued that armed defense exposed the irrelevance of established black leaders. Chicago's black elite, however, used riot narratives to create a new vision of respectable politics, in which the willingness to use force both defined and demonstrated manhood and equal citizenship.

The influence of John Higham and Strangers in the Land on the fields of immigration, ethnic, social, and intellectual history remains unquestionable. Nativism is as relevant to the study of American history in the twenty-first century as it was in 1955, when the book first appeared. Strangers in the Land has endured as an inspiring work of scholarship not only for its substance, but also for the author's commitment “to join historical scholarship with contemporary social concern.” Although he became interested in and wrote about many other subjects after the publication of Strangers in the Land, Higham continued to be concerned about the ebb and flow of nativism in the United States throughout his life. As Michael Kammen pointed out, Higham “remained exceedingly serious about the state of the nation and American society, sometimes verging upon gloom if not despair.” This sense of urgency about the pervasiveness of history in the present emerged in his prologue to the 2002 edition of his book, when he wrote that he feared there was “an acrid odor of the 1920s.” Fifty-five years after its publication, Strangers in the Land still conveyed the importance of its subject and inspired readers to seek an answer to Higham's fear of a resurgence of nativism.

My task for this retrospective was to discuss John Higham's treatment of region in Strangers in the Land, with particular reference to the American West. My analysis looks especially at race and imperialism. These choices reflect in part the interests and approaches of John Higham, but also the general direction of the field of western history in the twenty-first century.

I first read John Higham's book in an immigration history seminar in my first semester of graduate school at the University of Wisconsin. In fact, Higham visited campus that fall to present the Merle Curti lecture, named for his mentor. Higham's influence has remained significant: like many historians of immigration and ethnicity, I have often returned to his book during the course of my own teaching and research, whether on American Catholic history or U.S. immigration policy. My remarks focus on gender issues and immigration policy history in Strangers in the Land.

In April 2002, the Immigration and Ethnic History Society (IEHS) made its first lifetime achievement award. It was my honor to be president of the IEHS at that time, and I can recall the pleasure and unanimity of board members in designating John Higham the first recipient of that honor. It was a special pleasure for me to notify John and to present the award to him because over the years John had become both a personal friend and a powerful intellectual influence. When I called him at his home in Baltimore, he accepted with delight but as always with the soft-spoken graciousness that was his way. We chatted about the fact that initially he had not defined himself as an immigration scholar, yet in 1967, more than a decade after the publication of Strangers in the Land had found himself one of the founding members of what was then called the Immigration History Society and later one of its presidents. As we often did, we also talked about our hometown, New York. John had grown up in Queens, while I had grown up in the South Bronx. On many occasions we discussed how our New York roots had lured us into thinking and writing about immigration and ethnicity.