Molly Jane Thoms \u201817<\/p>\n
From Hartford to World Cities (URST 201)<\/p>\n
Fall 2014<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Before the Modern Period, most cities around the world were largely self-contained in terms of economics and culture. This was because immigration was minimal and communication between faraway places was almost nonexistent. Today, nearly all cities contrast from this state of self-containment as city-to-city interaction increases. This interaction through economics, politics, and sharing of ideologies and traditions is becoming ever more important for cities\u2019 success and growth. The interplay between cities is described by a term used frequently by urban studies (and other) scholars: globalism.<\/p>\n
Hartford, Connecticut has had two distinct historical periods that could be defined as global. The first was between 1850 and 1950, when manufacturing and insurance resulted in Hartford\u2019s global prominence through economic connections. We are currently in the second period, which began in around 1950. This second period is characterized by the deep social and cultural connections that Hartford currently has to other cities and countries. Despite the claims many urban studies scholars may make of economics being central to global city classification, Hartford is more global today than it ever was between 1850 and 1950 due to its unique culture.<\/p>\n
Before 1950, Hartford experienced much that would classify it as a global city by the standards of urban studies scholars such as Peter Hall, Saskia Sassen, and John Friedmann. These scholars emphasize the importance of \u201cnational centers of government, trade, and professional talents\u2026 financial services\u2026 insurance, real estate\u2026 and information processing\u201d as elements necessary for a global city.[1]<\/a> What is distinctive about this definition is its narrow focus on the economic connections and industrial power of a city. Hartford, from roughly 1850-1950, possessed many of these essential elements.<\/p>\n Hartford started out as a small Yankee settlement, but it experienced a period of manufacturing prominence starting in about the mid-nineteenth century and continuing into the first part of the twentieth century. Among the most important companies were Pratt and Whitney, Colt Firearms, Pope Manufacturing, Royal and Underwood typewriter companies, and Stanley Black & Decker, which exported products around the country and the globe. This international exportation certainly fits with some of Hall, Sassen, and Friedmann\u2019s defining characteristics of a global city.<\/p>\n In addition to manufacturing, Hartford developed substantially in the financial sector at this time as well, mostly through insurance. Sometimes referred to as, \u201cthe insurance capital of the world,\u201d or \u201cAmerica\u2019s filing cabinet,\u201d Hartford had many large insurance companies, among them Aetna Life and Travelers Insurance, and had national and international clients.[2]<\/a> Hartford insurance companies established themselves as reliable early on, such as by effectively fulfilling claims made following the Chicago Fire of 1871.[3]<\/a> Partly as a result of its insurance industry, Hartford was also a banking center for New England between 1850 and 1950.[4]<\/a> Hartford\u2019s prominence as an economic center further supports its identity as a global city \u2013 according to the definitions of Hall, Sassen, and Friedmann \u2013 between 1850 and 1950.<\/p>\n Hall, Sassen, and Friedman assert the importance of a global city\u2019s strength in national and international manufacturing and economics industries. However, most of them fail to take into account the demographics of a city when considering its degree of globalism. This is to say, they establish that whether a city is global lies with the way other places in the world rely on it because of its international exportation and prominent financial sector rather than degree of globalism within the culture of the city.<\/p>\n It is important to note here that Hartford did have diverse immigrant populations between 1850 and 1950, but two features, which confound and add to each other, explain why they did not make Hartford as global as it is today. The first is attitudes toward immigration by the immigrants themselves. For most people coming from Ireland and even Eastern Europe at this time who were the majority of immigrants, the move to the United States was permanent because moving home would be costly, possibly dangerous, and very uncertain. People came here with the intent of staying permanently. As a result, they were more likely to convert their mentality to that of Hartford\u2019s culture of the time.<\/p>\n The second feature is the state of communication technology in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Even if immigrants did not embrace assimilation they would have a hard time sustaining connections with family and friends in other countries because letters likely the only form of communication would be slow and barely scratch the surface of truly connecting people in Hartford to Russia, for example. These two features result in Hartford not being classified as a global city between 1850 and 1950.<\/p>\n What scholars Hall, Sassen, and Friedmann partly neglect in their exploration of globalism are the connections of people within the city itself to other places. This interaction seems vastly more important in a place like Hartford, which will never be the most powerful, influential, or lucrative city in the United States. Therefore, scrutinizing Hartford\u2019s globalism can be refocused to see how the people within the city itself relate to many other places in the world, rather than the other way around, which is how Hall, Sassen, and Friedmann define a global city. I would like to call this concept internal globalism.<\/p>\n The definition of internal globalism goes beyond saying that a city has an \u2018international feeling,\u2019 or is \u2018multicultural.\u2019 While these are valid factors in establishing a city as internally global, the most important aspect of internal globalism is that people within the city are strongly connected to other places and people outside it. This new definition is tailored for non-top tier cities like Hartford today and cannot be applied to Hartford between 1850 and 1950.<\/p>\n Hartford today epitomizes internal globalism. The city is currently a minority-majority city with several unique aspects of its diversity. While Hartford has many Black people, who don\u2019t necessarily contribute to the city\u2019s globalism, unless they are Caribbean immigrants (such as Jamaica), the other major minority in Hartford is Latinos. Many of these people, primarily Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Mexicans, likely maintain much of their Latin American culture if not specific transnational ties. Also contributing to Hartford\u2019s unique demographics is its astonishingly high percentage of 21.5 foreign-born residents. Many of these are voluntary immigrants from places like China and Puerto Rico, but many are refugees fleeing unsafe conditions in their home countries.<\/p>\n There are many refugees in Connecticut, about four percent of the total state population, and the largest numbers of them are thought to live in and around Hartford.[5]<\/a> These refugees are of many different cultural groups, among them Russians, Ukrainians, Cubans, Khmer, Bosnians, Kosovar Albanians, Kurds, Afghanis, Somalis, and Nepalis (Bauer 146). Refugees add to diversity even more than traditional immigrants do because they often spend time in other countries before ultimately coming to the United States. These experiences contribute to the internal globalism of Hartford because many refugees will maintain connections they developed with people in \u201cpre-arrival sojourn\u201d places such as Germany in addition to connections with people in their homeland.<\/p>\n The large number of different groups contributes greatly to the diversity of Hartford but also the nature of their arrival. Many faced severe oppression and even torture in their home countries, many didn\u2019t necessarily want to flee, and many still have family and friends at home who they are concerned about. For this reason, these refugees, and even the recent voluntary immigrants contrast from the immigrants who came between 1850 and 1950.<\/p>\n This contrast is due to changes in the two factors preventing previous generations of immigrants from maintaining deep international connections (limited communication technology and mentalities towards the permanence of immigration). For example, it is entirely possible that a Khmer family in Hartford uses video chat on a regular basis to communicate with grandparents back in Cambodia, are actively concerned about conflicts in their home country, and either wish to return or to bring relatives to Connecticut. In this example the family is able to maintain strong connections to former homelands due to advanced communication technology. This is truly what internal globalism means.<\/p>\n Internal globalism in the context of Hartford can be described as emphasizing the importance of the over 70 languages that are spoken in Hartford schools today rather than emphasizing the thousands of Underwood typewriters exported all over the world in the early twentieth century. Certainly for me, someone living in Hartford, the internal globalism is more important. I know that Hartford isn\u2019t well known in other countries or even nationally, so I focus on how I can understand other parts of the world through Hartford. I look to its internal globalism. This can be seen most clearly in the interactions between ethnic communities\u2019 vibrant cultural expression in parades and other celebrations and also their assimilation to Hartford, if not American, culture as their children all attend the same public schools.<\/p>\n I was able to witness some of Hartford\u2019s globalism while interning in an eighth grade Spanish class at Hartford Magnet at Trinity College Academy. There were students in the class who were clearly Latino, but who spoke no Spanish; Latino students who could understand everything the professor said, but who couldn\u2019t formulate their own Spanish; Black students who struggled to speak formally in English; students with distinctly Russian or Bosnian names who were likely the children of immigrants; and Indian students who had just the hint of an accent. This enormous range of students reinforced for me the complex story of Hartford\u2019s diversity. Hartford is not just a city of diverse people living in close proximity. It is a city of people at various points in the immigration and assimilation processes interacting with each other and people in places far from Connecticut\u2019s capitol city.<\/p>\n Hartford still has the economic potency and international significance that it had between 1850 and 1950. For scholars like Hall, Sassen, and Friedman this would be Hartford\u2019s most global period. However, Hartford\u2019s additional layer of internal globalism through the social interconnection of immigrants and refugees to former places makes it more comprehensively global today than ever before.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a>\u00a0Chen, Xiangming, and John Shemo. “Shifting Fortunes: Hartford’s Global and Regional Economic Dimensions.\u201d Pp. 193-218 in\u00a0Confronting Urban Legacy: Rediscovering\u00a0<\/i>Hartford and New England’s Forgotten Cities<\/i>, edited by Xiangming Chen and Nick Bacon. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a>\u00a0Walsh, Andrew. “Hartford: A Global History.” Pp. 21-45 in\u00a0Confronting Urban Legacy<\/i>: Rediscovering Hartford and New England’s Forgotten Cities<\/i>, edited by Xiangming Chen and Nick Bacon. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [3]<\/a> Chen and Shemo, 2013,\u00a0 p. 198.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [4]<\/a> Ibid, p. 198.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [5]<\/a>\u00a0Bauer, Janet. \u201cA Metro Immigrant Gateway: Refugees in the Hartford Borderlands.\u201d Pp. 145-168 in\u00a0Confronting Urban Legacy Rediscovering Hartford and New England’s Forgotten Cities<\/i>, edited by Xiangming Chen and Nick Bacon. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013.( p. 146)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Molly Jane Thoms \u201817 From Hartford to World Cities (URST 201) Fall 2014 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Before the Modern Period, most cities around the world were largely self-contained in terms of economics and culture. This was because immigration was minimal and communication … Continue reading