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A DANGEROUS MASS OF ALIEN STOCK: IMMIGRATION LAW, FEDERAL INDIAN LAW, AND CONTINENTAL IMPERIALISM DURING THE LONG ASSIMILATION ERA (1870-1924)
Dissertation

A DANGEROUS MASS OF ALIEN STOCK: IMMIGRATION LAW, FEDERAL INDIAN LAW, AND CONTINENTAL IMPERIALISM DURING THE LONG ASSIMILATION ERA (1870-1924)

Kyle Serrott
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
2026
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Abstract

Assimilation Colonialism Continential Imperialsim Federal Indian law Immigration law settler colonialsim Native American studies
This dissertation examines the development of federal Indian law and immigration and naturalization law during what I have termed the long assimilation era, 1870-1924, and argues that these bodies of law were co-constructed to extend the continental imperialism of the United States. Continental imperialism is the transplanting of European imperial systems onto the North American continent, ultimately to be adopted by the United States. U.S. continental imperialism, I argue, is about maintaining territorial and racial dominance of the continent, and thus in its pursuit of continental imperialism the United States enacted various laws and policies aimed at entrenching the white ethnostate. Examining the intersections of immigration law, allotment law, naturalization law, the law of the territories, and Indian assimilation and citizenship law reveals the systemic nature and interconnectedness of these laws in expanding and protecting the category of white citizenship. The assimilation era is not one of expanding multiracial democracy and the inclusion of racial and political minorities within American cultural citizenry. Rather, I argue the assimilation era was “long”, a culmination of a half-century of policy aimed at entrenching territorial and white racial control of the North American continent, ending with the passage of the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act and the 1924 Immigration Quota Act.

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