Marcus Lee Hansen (December 8, 1892 – May 11, 1938) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian. He won the Pulitzer Prize for History for The Atlantic Migration, 1607–1860.
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Hansen was born at Neenah, Wisconsin,[1] the son of Scandinavian immigrants.[2] He received a BA from Central College, an MA from the University of Iowa, and a PhD from Harvard University. He was Associate Professor of History (1928–30) and Professor of History (1930–38) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[1]
Dr. Hansen was a member of the Board of Editors of the Norwegian-American Historical Association.[3]Hansen conducted research on the history of immigration to the United States. After winning a two-year grant, he studied migration records in Europe for several years.[1]
He died on May 11, 1938 at the age of 45 in Redlands, California of chronic nephritis.[4]
Hansen was an important historian of American immigration. In a 1938 essay, "The Problem of the Third Generation Immigrant", he first presented "Hansen's Law": "What the son wishes to forget the grandson wishes to remember". This law predicts that ethnicity is preserved among immigrants, weakens among their children, and returns with the grandchildren. Children of immigrants tend to reject the foreign ways of their parents, including their religion, and want to join the American mainstream, but the next generation wants to retain the values of their ancestors. The religion of the first generation immigrant, which the second generation rejects, may be reaffirmed by the third generation.[5]
Hansen provided little evidence for his law, making historians and sociologists skeptical of it. Will Herberg helped to popularize this law.[2]
Although he specialized in American immigration history, Hansen wrote on many subjects, including Old Fort Snelling, 1819–1858 (1918), Welfare Campaigns in Iowa (1920), Welfare Work in Iowa (1921), The Immigrant in American History (posthumous, 1940), The Mingling of the Canadian and American Peoples (posthumous, 1940), and The Atlantic Migration, 1607–1860: A History of the Continuing Settlement of the United States (posthumous, 1940).[1]
Hansen was posthumously awarded the 1941 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Atlantic Migration, 1607–1860: A History of the Continuing Settlement of the United States,[6] which was published after his death. Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. turned the rough draft developed by Hansen into a polished manuscript, and the book was published by the Harvard University Press in 1940.[7]
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