First, I will argue for the importance of studying Americans abroad as a social, political, and economic category. They have gone abroad for a number of disparate reasons, but looking at Americans as emigrants provides a new way of thinking about the notion of the U.S. as a nation of immigrants. Those who have left the U.S., temporarily or for good, are an important part of the story of America’s “globalization.”
Second, we can use the elite migration of Americans to ask questions about community formation of migrants in general. By looking at the Americans who settled in Paris in the first half of the century, we can see how they constructed what they unabashedly called a “colony” with major institutions: two churches, a library, a hospital, etc. The concept of community was itself discussed along with the idea that “colonies are inharmonious.”
Third, beyond the well known literary expatriates of the Left Bank who came to Paris to criticize American commercialism, there were ten times more businessmen and rentiers, who came to Europe to sell or to buy. Yet, as law firm and consular archives show, it was not always easy. In this pre-Marshall Plan period, manufacturers’ representatives and overseas executives had to battle both what they considered iniquitous practices of the French administration and the “vexatious visa” policy of the United States.
Fourth, by looking at two case studies, that of an American winegrower and that of a divorced legatee in France, we can see how Americans could try to muster resources on both sides of the Atlantic, but with difficulties inherent in the transnational experience itself.