Papers presented by Grace Dutt since 2019

2024 Providence, Rhode Island

"“Finance Cosmopolitans: Black Mobility, the Travelers Cheque, and European Racism in the Inter War Years.”"

Abstract:

While the American Express company shaped early twentieth-century culture, few scholars have considered this company outside of business history. For instance, Peter Grossman’s American Express (1987) was solely an economic history. The other exception is Merve Emre. Her consideration of the role of American Express is brief and limited to expatriate literary productions. My project builds upon this work by considering how American Express shaped early twentieth-century culture. At the start of the century, the company played an important role in facilitating the international movement of Americans for both employment and leisure, and in providing an infrastructure for communication and finance. By the 1920s and 1930s, Europe presented an attractive destination for all Americans, regardless of race. I argue that the launch of the American Express Travelers cheque in 1891 marked a new era, particularly for Black Americans. While escaping racial tensions at home, Black artists engaged with American Express in ways that influenced their cultural experiences and also shaped the role of American Express globally. I will demonstrate how Black American newspapers, such as The Chicago Defender, were instrumental in romanticizing Europe as an idyll for Black Americans. Essentially, American Express played an inadvertent role in enabling Black mobility by providing a seemingly non-discriminatory and practical service while also fostering, unintentionally, the myth of a color-blind Europe. With the endorsement of the Black press, American Express became integral to a story of Black freedom and success that was only perceived achievable in Europe. Ultimately, my project reveals how the culture of empire is produced through the relationship between marginalized individuals and powerful institutions. The US would in the twentieth century evolve into a new kind of empire—a global financial empire. And American Express would become both an instrument for and a cultural symbol of that new regime.

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