“One of the great misunderstandings of immigration history,” writes Stephanie DeGooyer in her important new book, “is the idea that, before the nineteenth century, America and Europe were lands of open borders and few restrictions, welcoming all who dared to cross rough seas and ragged roads” (33). Redressing a tendency to project nation-based structures of exclusion and belonging back onto earlier periods, Before Borders tracks a different “architecture of immigration,” which “opened up the nation rather than sealed it in hermetic defense” (34). In this context, DeGooyer proposes the term “paranational” to describe the porous and shifting territorial borders of this time when movement was monitored at the parish or city, rather than national, level, and when religion often took priority as the most important form of affiliation. Decoupling the novel from the nation in this way, DeGooyer recovers a complex history of naturalization—including its legal, philosophical, political, and narrative...

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