Colonial Laws of Motion: Coastwise Shipping and U.S. National Status in Puerto Rico and the Mainland United States, 1898–1948

While social theorists have long suggested that foreign policy shapes immigration patterns, U.S. historians are just beginning to explore these connections as dynamic, contingent processes that changed over time. My paper, "Colonial Laws of Motion: Coastwise Shipping and U.S. National Status in Puerto Rico and the Mainland United States, 1898-1948," examines how U.S. colonial laws shaped the movement of Puerto Rican goods and peoples across oceans, islands, and continents. It argues that the definition of Puerto Rico as “coastwise” in U.S. trade law contributed to the collapse of the island’s coffee economy and the large-scale migration from the island to the U.S. mainland and Hawaiian islands. Coastwise was a nineteenth century term used to describe commerce that was not “interior” to the continental United States but, instead, “so near thereto and belonging to the several States, as properly to constitute a part of the coast.”  At the same time that Puerto Rico was understood as coastwise, Puerto Ricans were categorized as “nationals,” a new legal category that defined Puerto Ricans as neither national citizens nor foreign aliens. I argue that both of these colonial legal categories of inbetween status—that is, coastwise (neither domestic nor foreign), and national (neither citizen nor alien)—profoundly shaped Puerto Rican migration to the mainland in the early twentieth century.
    By identifying such legacies of imperialism and their effects on the mobility of goods and people, this work demonstrates how colonial law and migration were intertwined. Such research not only contributes to a developing literature on the history of U.S. empire, immigration, and the links between the two, but also responds to urgent calls from both inside and outside the profession to “internationalize” the study of American history.