While the number of works on migration continue to expand, it is rewarding to receive one to review that, though brief, approaches the study of the subject from a new angle. In Changes in Attitudes to Immigrants in Britain, 1841–1921: From Foreigner to Alien, Ben Braber charts the patterns of immigration into Britain and the processes of integration and marginalization through the lens of the changing nomenclature and social responses to the migrant presence. The nouns under Braber's microscope are those by which newcomers to Britain were referred to and recorded as, predominantly those that represent outsiders, particularly foreigner and alien. Braber focuses on Britain, not the United Kingdom, thus excluding Ireland. However, he provides no explanation for this omission, one that would have been welcomed.
Braber's time frame of 1841 to 1921 is significant: 1841 was the year the Decennial Census first recorded numbers of foreigners in Britain, and 1921 represents the date when the new media of the radio became an outlet of information in addition to the print newspaper. Newspapers are a major source of Braber's research—so readily accessible in archives, even more so since digitization. Early radio left no such archival sources. Perhaps equally as relevant, 1921 is the year when the noun alien took on a new meaning, that of an extraterrestrial being, adding a new dimension to the language describing outsiders.
As noted, Braber's primary sources are newspapers—national, regional, and local. These include the Times, London Evening Standard, Daily Mail (from 1896), Glasgow Herald, and Nottingham Evening Post. He also uses a range of dictionaries and the Historical Thesaurus of English to trace the varying nouns by which newcomers to Britain have been identified over the centuries. For those keen to do further research on the countries of birth of migrants to Britain, the reader is provided with a guide for accessing the sources and a table showing numbers of recorded foreigners in total, including the specific countries in the period under examination. Braber also gives considerable space to the noun alien. It first appeared in Britain in 1330 and gained use in a political and legalistic context as early as the beginning of the eighteenth century, when an Aliens Act directed at the Scots was proposed (this Act became redundant when England, Wales, and Scotland were unified in 1707.
Under the heading of “Quantitative Research,” Braber explores a selection of sources used to trace the varied uses of the noun alien. These include Google Books, a relatively recent asset for the historical researcher, one that facilitates a printed word count covering a specified period. Despite increased usage in the press and politics from the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a reaction to the large-scale arrival of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, the nomenclature was rarely used in the census records for those born overseas. In 1841, for those completing the census there were boxes to be ticked for those born in “Foreign Parts,” while in 1901 a tick box was provided for those originating from “Foreign Countries.” In addition to his text, Braber provides an impressive selection of tables and charts that illustrate the linguistic changes in the use of the word alien in the eighty years he covers in his book.
Braber's qualitative research was an in-depth literary survey of the variations in the use and meaning of alien in the form of a noun or adjective; rarely was it used as a verb. Not surprisingly, Braber finds that usage accelerates from the last quarter of the nineteenth century. During that period, the number of Eastern European Jews making their way west, either in the search of economic opportunity or to escape the pogroms, resulted in what Braber refers to as the “spectacular rise of alien” (42) in contemporary written and oral political and social responses to the arrival of the “pauper” migrants (64). Rarely were the incomers referred to as “Jews.” Though many of the anti-immigrant commentators were anti-Semitic, this was not the language of their condemnation. Arnold White, an intensely anti-Semitic journalist, rarely used the noun “Jew” or adjective “Jewish,” as his infamous letter published in the Times in July 1890 so clearly illustrates with its heading, “The Invasion of Pauper Aliens.” Two years later, in 1892, W. H. Wilkins published his book The Alien Invasion, and in 1895, the Jewish trade unionist and socialist Joseph Finn picked up the cudgel and produced a defensive pamphlet, A Voice from the Alien. By 1903, the noun alien was in common use as a pejorative for unwanted immigrants. That year marked the establishment of the Royal Commission on Aliens, and in 1905, the Aliens Act was passed, the first peacetime act to impose controls on immigrant entry to Britain.
It was in the latter period that Braber covers that the noun alien became associated with other newcomers, such as the Chinese and, following the outbreak of the First World War, the enemy. During the war, despite the additional terms friendly alien and neutral alien, alien became a synonym for a German—one viewed as dangerous and threatening. After the war, alien continued to be used in the title of Bills and Acts of immigration control.
One correction to the text: Braber refers to the sociologist Beatrice Webb and states that she used the pseudonym Beatrice Potter (78). Potter was in fact her maiden name and the one used when she carried out her research into the alien presence in London's East End in the 1880s
As Braber explains on page 89, his book is not intended as an end itself, but rather as a means of encouraging others to explore the processes of immigration and settlement through the interrogation of linguistic evolution. He has succeed in this goal.
