Land of Opportunity?

Abstract

The idea of America as a place where men and women might find not only freedom but also the opportunity for a prosperous life is as old as the European discovery of the New World. It transposed secular aspirations for material success onto a millennialist template that conceived of America as a providentially blessed place. Images of material abundance, freely available land, and an absence of artificial restraints on human endeavor fused to generate an idea of the United States as a new order in which the poor could actually inherit the earth. Yet counterimages of exploitation and hierarchy were present throughout, inflecting the positive vision of American opportunity with notes of ambiguity. Any reckoning with the image of the United States in Latin America and Europe during the late nineteenth century must account for the powerful appeal of the “land of opportunity” motif, and explain its limits.

America, with all its difficulties and defects, is the most prosperous and highly favoured country … on the habitable globe. There can be no place where the poor working man can so easily obtain subsistence for himself and his family, and where the intellect of all classes is, or may be, highly cultivated, or where man is more highly appreciated according to his real value. Success is certain to the man of energy and good repute.

Sheffield and Rotherham, Independent, March 22, 1869.