By Benjamin Bryce, University of Northern British Columbia
In 1869, Buenos Aires was a small city of 178,000 inhabitants. Yet by 1914, it had grown to almost 1.6 million people and become the second largest city on the Atlantic coast (on either side). Much of this growth was fueled by the massive influx of immigrants, mainly from Europe but also from the Middle East and to a lesser extent South and East Asia. All told, from the early 1880s – when a broad wave of emigration from Europe began – and until the early 1930s – when the effects of the Great Depression took their toll on both Argentine immigration and the European outflow of transatlantic emigrants – more than 5.8 million people entered the country.
Arrival of Immigrants in the Port of Buenos Aires, 1904.
Outside the United States, there were clear reasons for people to think in terms that transcended the nation-state. The contributors to the new volume that I’ve co-edited with 
