Northwestern European Americans have been researched academically, reported on in journalistic works, and are widely considered as a distinct panethnic group. The grouping is based on the identification of descent from one or more nations located in Northwestern Europe or a country that is ethnoculturally related with the area. The group can be subdivided into national subgroups, including Welsh Americans, Swedish Americans, and French Americans.
History
In the territories that would become the Thirteen Colonies, Northwestern European people colonized large coastal areas of North America, creating farms and plantations. The New World culture of the group contributed to the creation of early modern slavery, which "juxtaposed west and central Africans with northwest Europeans in the Americas." Although these Dutch, French, and British settlers were broadly from the same region of Europe, there was intragroup hostility and prejudice between them. In 1751, Benjamin Franklin, an Old Stock American and Founding Father of the US, expressed cultural and racial concerns about German immigration to the United States. Historian Thomas Borstelmann noted that within a few decades, "the idea of Germans having a different complexion than other northwestern European Americans came to seem peculiar".
Northwestern European immigration
Large numbers of Irish, German, French, and British people emigrated to the East Coast of the US from 1821 to 1880. This period has been described academically as the "Northwest European Wave". According to Professor Vincent N. Parrillo, "By 1890, the 'mainstream American' ingroup did not yet include many other northwest European Americans. Although some multigenerational Americans of non-British ancestry had blended into the mainstream, millions of others had not." Between 1880 and 1920, immigration to the United States from Eastern and Southern Europe increased greatly. Despite this, historian Paul Spickard noted that in this period, "Northwest Europeans continued to come and stay in very large numbers." There were various prejudices among them, sometimes attributed to them being the dominant ethnic group, which found expression in the general view that the newer arrivals would never assimilate to their majority culture. This view was held, particularly by those of "colonial background", up until World War I, who believed there was a "deep divide" between Southern or Eastern Europeans and what were regarded as Northwest European Americans. By 1914, "terms denoting a common northwest European consciousness, such as 'American race stock'", became significantly more inclusive to incorporate increasingly large numbers of Germans. Northwestern European heritage began to be equivocated with the founding myth of the nation, utilized by nativists to include "northwest Europeans who shared the common racial 'stock' of 'our forefathers'". Even with gradual inclusion, sociologist Stanley Lieberson noted that in the early 20th century, Northwestern Europeans were one of the slowest immigrant groups to apply for US citizenship.
Use of the category for racism
Although not explicitly racial, 19th-century American historians, such as George Bancroft, Francis Parkman, and William H. Prescott, often wrote with a presumption of "a genetic trait, a germ, genius, or creative spark found in northwest Europeans", which, as a narrative, contributed towards bias and preferential treatment towards the group in the United States. Towards the late 19th and early 20th century, American eugenists, such as Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard, were utilizing the ethnic category for supremacism, denigrating immigration into the US from other ethnic groups, and popularizing ideas that Northwestern Europeans were being genetically diluted; they also suggested, along with the likes of Thomas Bailey Aldrich and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, that a race suicide of the group was occurring. Works from academics such as William Ripley, while more subtle in their terminology, referenced the panethnic grouping in a discriminatory manner compared with other peoples: "If not overtly stated, the superiority of the Teutonic race was implied, an assumption welcomed by writers like Madison Grant." Professor Ruth Clifford Engs analyzed the 1972 essay Genetics, Eugenics, and the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 by historian Kenneth Ludmerer and its in-depth exploration of "the interrelationship of eugenic and anti-immigrant sentiments based upon the supposition that Northwestern Europeans were more 'genetically fit' than southern and eastern Europeans".
National Origins Act
The Immigration Act of 1924 significantly favored Northwestern Europeans, with its reference to the 1890 United States Census, due to the 2% immigration allocated by the National Origins Quota. This act almost restricted meaningful immigration from any grouping other than Northwest Europeans. Climatologist and eugenics advocate Robert DeCourcy Ward had served as a key witness to Congress, in favor of passing the legislation. The co-founder of the Immigration Restriction League, Ward wrote in 1924 regarding the Act:
There was no question of the racial superiority of Northwestern Europeans or of the racial inferiority of Southeastern Europeans. It was simply a question as to which of these two groups of aliens is, as a whole, best fitted, by tradition, political background, customs, education, and habits of thought to adjust itself to American institutions and to American social and economic conditions – to become, in short, an adaptable, homogeneous, and helpful element in American national life.
Modern period
As part of the wider group, Irish immigrants held a uniquely complex route to inclusion within a greater Northwestern European identity, partly due to their predominantly Catholic faith, in contrast with the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant establishment in 19th- and 20th-century America. During the 1940s, assimilated Catholic German Americans created "common ground" with Irish Americans while they also "cooperated with other northwest Europeans and echoed the behavior of such other 'Nordic' groups as Norwegian Americans". By 1960, the United States had shifted significantly from relying on native-born or immigrant Northwestern Europeans, with large increases in the labor force from Hispanic and Latino Americans.
Academic research
A 2009 Population and Development Review study by professor Steven Ruggles compared the demographic structure of Northwestern European families in Europe and North America. Published in the American Journal of Human Genetics in 2011, genetic data was analyzed for the pan-ethnic group. The research, conducted by Dr. Evan E. Eichler with multiple other scientists, compared copy-number variation in the genomes of various ethnic groups including Northwestern European Americans, Yoruba people, and Han Chinese.
