On this episode of Repeating History, our guest is Dr. Junko Takeda, Daicoff Faculty Scholar  and professor of History at Syracuse University. She has written two books, “Between Crown and Commerce: Marseille and the Early Modern Mediterranean” (Johns Hopkins, 2011), and “The Other Persian Letters: Iran and a French Empire of Trade, 1700-1808” (Liverpool University Press, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2020).

Bob and Professor Takeda discuss America’s immigration history from the very first Naturalization Act in 1790. Using her and her family’s harrowing ordeal as undocumented immigrants from Japan, the conversation touches on the persistence of racism and exclusion throughout American history, including the quota system and other significant pieces of legislation in the 19th and 20th centuries.