Literature, Immigration, Diaspora: A Cultural History of the 1905 Aliens Act

“尽管在二十世纪初之前，英国曾试图阻止某些类型的人进入该国，但其管制准入的法律一直是断断续续和临时的。1905年的《外国人法》是第一部公认的现代法律，旨在根据由包括新成立的移民局官员在内的公职人员管理和解释的系统官僚标准，永久限制移民进入英国。在这样做的过程中，1905年的法案为今天不断收紧的立法网络开创了先例。这项法律的通过对这个国家来说是一个历史性的突破，这个国家曾以向难民提供庇护而自豪，并在上个世纪的大部分时间里促进了行动自由。为了理解这一变化是如何以及为什么发生的，不仅有必要研究促成这项法律的议会舞台，而且有必要研究反移民情绪产生的不同社会和文化环境以及这种信念引起的抵制。在这些环境中，最重要的是维多利亚晚期和爱德华时代印刷文化的复杂和不断扩大的领域。这项研究沿用了1905年法案的大致时间顺序，首先对关键字“外国人”进行了介绍性分析，这个术语逐渐失去了封建和普通法的含义，成为公民语言的一部分，以及一个越来越多地与“犹太人”联系在一起的民族种族主义称谓。第一章考察了乔治·艾略特的小说《丹尼尔·德隆达》(1876)，这是讨论犹太人身份和民族认同的试金石，集中讨论了它在英国和东欧犹太人中的接受情况，并将其主题与入籍法律的变化联系在一起。在这部小说中，自由国家的形象与帝国和原犹太复国主义的历史观形成对比，预见到后来关于移民、殖民定居和英国化的辩论。第二章转向伦敦东区作为反外星人政治熔炉的角色，阅读调查报告和当地小说，展示文明使命的想法是如何与种族、劳工和政治代表问题捆绑在一起的。第三章着眼于将“反犹太主义”的概念引入日常语言，确定了几个不同的记录，并将其与反移民新闻运动、音乐厅、流行戏剧和小说中的“犹太人”形象以及爱德华时代激进右翼的成长联系起来，移民控制运动的领导人大多来自于这些人的队伍。在第四章中，对移民经历的描述，特别是约瑟夫·康拉德作品中的移民经历，构成了分析1902-05年皇家外国人移民委员会和议会辩论中所使用的论点的背景。犹太复国主义替代外国人法案的想法也被考虑，引起了人们对这一主题的小说和短篇小说的注意。最后一章探讨了1905年法案之后出现的围绕外星人犯罪的道德恐慌，对无政府主义暴力的恐惧和对阴谋的焦虑，这种焦虑渗透到了对政治腐败的攻击中，通过惊悚片、入侵叙事和爱德华七世时期的《英格兰的状况》小说反映了不确定性。一个简短的后记回顾了自由党实行的狭隘社会政策的意义，因为爱德华七世时代见证了自由英格兰的死亡这一著名说法。

"Although Britain had tried to prevent certain types of persons from entering the country before the early twentieth century, its laws regulating access had been intermittent and ad hoc. The 1905 Aliens Act was the first recognisably modern law that aimed to permanently restrict immigration into Britain according to systematic bureaucratic criteria administered and interpreted by public officials, including the newly created immigration officer. In so doing, the 1905 Act set the precedent for the ever-tightening web of legislation that is in place today. The passing of this law represented a historic break for a nation that had prided itself on offering asylum to refugees and had promoted freedom of movement for much of the previous century. To understand how and why this change occurred, it is necessary to examine not only the parliamentary arena that brought this law into being, but also the different social and cultural milieux from which anti-immigrant sentiments emerged and the resistance such beliefs aroused. Foremost among these milieux was the complex and expanding field of late Victorian and Edwardian print culture. This study follows a broadly chronological approach to the 1905 Act, starting with an introductory analysis of the keyword ""alien,"" a term that gradually lost its feudal and common law meanings and became part of the language of citizenship, as well as a national-racist epithet increasingly associated with ""the Jew."" The first chapter examines a touchstone for discussions of Jewishness and national identity, George Eliot's novel Daniel Deronda (1876), focussing upon its reception among Jews in Britain and Eastern Europe and linking its themes to changes in naturalisation law. Within this novel, images of the liberal state are set against imperial and proto-Zionist visions of history, anticipating later debates about migration, colonial settlement, and Englishness. Chapter Two turns to the role of London's East End as a crucible for anti-alien politics, reading investigative reports alongside local fiction to show how the idea of a civilising mission was tied to questions of ethnicity, labour and political representation. The third chapter looks at the introduction of the idea of ""anti-Semitism"" into everyday speech, identifying several distinct registers and relating these to anti-immigrant press campaigns, the figure of ""the Jew"" in music hall, popular theatre, and fiction, and to the growth of a Radical Right in the Edwardian era, from whose ranks the leaders of the movement for immigration control were largely drawn. In the fourth chapter depictions of the immigrant experience, especially in the work of Joseph Conrad, form the backdrop to an analysis of the arguments deployed in the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration and in Parliamentary Debates from 1902-05. The idea of a Zionist alternative to an Aliens Act is also considered, drawing attention to novels and short stories that take up this theme. The last chapter explores the moral panics around alien criminality that arose in aftermath of the 1905 Act, a fear of anarchist violence and an anxiety about conspiracy that bleeds into an attack on political corruption, uncertainties that are refracted through thrillers, invasion narratives and the Edwardian ""condition of England novel."" A brief afterword reviews the significance of an illiberal social policy administered by the Liberal Party for the celebrated claim that the Edwardian period witnessed the death of Liberal England."