Date of Award
2023
Degree Type
Open Access Master's Thesis
Degree Name
History, MA
Program
School of Arts and Humanities
Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair
Joanna Poblete
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Romeo Guzmán
Terms of Use & License Information
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Rights Information
© 2023 Enrique Salas-Limon
Keywords
Arab Americans, credit, criminals, fraud, immigrants, racial capitalism
Subject Categories
History
Abstract
This thesis uses the theory of racial capitalism to examine the joined histories of Arab American immigrants and the professionalization of credit management in the early twentieth century. The history of early Arab Americans has previously been told as a clichéd story of upward mobility and financial success without much documented interaction between the Arab immigrant and real economic institutions, such as banks and credit bureaus. This thesis brings to light previously unknown documentations of Arab American and Arab immigrant alleged criminals in the publications of the National Association of Credit Men, or NACM. As the largest credit management and professionalization organization in the United States in the early twentieth century, the NACM conducted millions of credit checks and investigated thousands of cases of fraud per year. During the Progressive Era, organizations like the NACM widely published and spread fear about the rampant epidemic of financial fraud schemes sweeping across the country. According to the NACM, many of these schemes were perpetrated by immigrant groups such as Arabs. This thesis first analyzes the NACM’s own publications to demonstrate the general xenophobic tenor of the organization from roughly 1905 to 1925. This thesis then fuses immigrant, financial, and organizational histories to demonstrate the kind of economic environment Arab Americans would have found themselves in during this time. Next, this thesis surveys instances in NACM publications where alleged Arab and Arab American criminals are named and whose cases are sometimes described in great detail. In order to demonstrate the racial capitalist and xenophobic nature of the organization, stories of supposed Arab criminality are paired with articles documenting supposed Jewish credit fraudsters. The history of the NACM and its Arab targets culminates in one of the largest court cases of criminal conspiracy that took place in the early 1920s. Finally, class differences and strife among Arab Americans are briefly taken into consideration in order to highlight the different ways that Arabs in the United States ascended or descended racial and class hierarchies. Implications for future research and the evolving historiographies of Arab Americans, immigrants, race, and capitalism are also considered.
ISBN
9798342763387
Recommended Citation
Salas-Limon, Enrique. (2023). Overdue Credit: Credit Management, Crime, and Immigrants in Early Twentieth Century United States. CGU Theses & Dissertations, 879. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/879.
