Americanization: Historical Context

The idea of Americanization emerged in the early 20th century in the period just before WWI. During this time, a huge influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe were arriving on America's shores. From the 1890s until the mid 1920s, over 22 million Europeans immigrated to the US from places like Italy, Greece, and Poland. Many Americans were suspicious of these new arrivals that practiced different religions, spoke strange languages, and had very different customs. Others feared that they were simply the criminals and undesirables of other countries. The Americanization process was supposed to remove the immigrant status from these people and replace it with a new American identity.