Mormons and Mohammedans
Race, Religion, and the Anti-Polygamy Bar in US Immigration Law
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11699677 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Julian Lim (0000-0002-1214-6758, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 41 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 5-49 |
| Publication date | 2021-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American Ethnic History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0278-5927 • E-ISSN: 1936-4695 |
| Publisher | University of Illinois Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.5406/jamerethnhist.41.1.0005 |
| OpenAlex | W4210777797 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 26 |
This article explores the history of the little-known polygamy exclusion in the 1891 Immigration Act. Tracing the development of this polygamy restriction in the late nineteenth century, the article shows how anxieties about the European migration of Mormon converts shaped immigration legislation, which was then almost immediately redirected to regulate the migration of Turkish immigrants by the early 1900s. Racialized as “American Mohammedans,” Mormons came to embody a foreign, “uncivilized,” and semi-imperial threat for many nineteenth-century Americans. As the persecution of Mormons receded in the 1890s, however, the increasing visibility of Muslim immigrants from the Ottoman Empire fed new fears about religious difference, racial inferiority, and sexual and marital deviance. US immigration officials addressed such concerns by attempting to apply the polygamy exclusion on Turkish immigrants, but soon found themselves at the center of diplomatic tensions between US and Ottoman officials. Analyzing the imperial negotiations at play as US immigration law ran up against the power of the Ottoman Empire, the article brings deeper attention to the ways in which the policing of polygamy and “proper” marital formations were ultimately shaped by anxieties over race, religion, and empire
Criminology · Deportation · Empire · Immigration · Immigration law · Persecution · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Turkish · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law · Marriage and Sexual Relationships · Race, History, and American Society
America Classifies the Immigrants
Relational Formations of Race
Legislative History of American Immigration Policy, 1798-1965
Imaginary Lines
Marking Mormon Difference
Lunatics, Idiots, Paupers, and Negro Seamen—Immigration Federalism and the Early American State
Immigrant Religion in the U.S. and Western Europe
Calling upon the Sacred
Racial Borderlines
Cultural "Encystment" as a Cause of the Mormon Exodus from Mexico in 1912
The Mormon Church and the Spanish-American War
Transforming an Empire
Ottoman Street” in America
The Ottoman Emigration to America,1860–1914
Travel Documents, Mobility Control, and the Ottoman State in an Age of Global Migration, 1880–1915
European Immigration to America's Great Basin, 1850-1870
Migration to and from Turkey, 1783-1960
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2024 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |