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The Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World
"Zahra handles this immensely complicated and multidimensional history with remarkable clarity and feeling." ―Robert Levgold, Foreign Affairs Between 1846 and 1940, more than 50 million Europeans moved to the Americas in one of the largest migrations of human history, emptying out villages and irrevocably changing both their new homes and the ones they left behind. With a keen historical perspective on the most consequential social phenomenon of the twentieth century, Tara Zahra shows how the policies that gave shape to this migration provided the precedent for future events such as the Holocaust, the closing of the Iron Curtain, and the tragedies of ethnic cleansing. In the epilogue, she places the current refugee crisis within the longer history of migration.
416 pages, Paperback
First published March 21, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews
January 30, 2022
This was a follow-up read to my visit to the awesome Tenement Museum earlier this month where I realized that I knew next to nothing about the 19th and 20th century mass emigration from Eastern Europe to the US and elsewhere (fun fact: between 1846 and 1940, more than 50 million Europeans moved the Americas!).
What was particularly interesting was the book's focus on how the migration policies in Eastern Europe already anticipated the Holocaust and the Iron Curtain - from the beginning, this mass migration took place within the context of efforts to engineer ethnic homogeneity in the emerging and newly established nation states in Eastern Europe, anti-Semitism and of course being one of the main dynamics at play (I wasn’t aware of the scale of the policies and efforts of 'Jewish evacuation' in Eastern Europe pre Nazi occupation).
There were also some interesting parts on Eastern European emigration and settler colonialism as a substitute for colonial conquest for those a little late in the colonial game, such as Polish and other colonies in South America but also, more generally, settler colonialism as a strategy against decolonization (obviously, this is its own rabbit hole). Also something I didn't really know is the questioning of the 'racial value' of migrants from Southern and Eastern Europe and how Eastern European officials struggled to guarantee that their citizens would be recognized and treated as "white Europeans" in the new world.
The book also makes some interesting points on the 'political philosophy' of migration - how abolitionists helped to consolidate the link between free labour and freedom in America and how the ideal of the free migrant, defined in opposition to the slave or indentured servant, has been a corner stone of global migration politics (and capitalism) since the area of abolition. From there, it's a fairly straight line to the post WW and the Geneva Convention (and its implicit concept of human rights) which explicitly privileges political freedoms and civil liberties over economic rights - i.e., the differentiation between 'economic migrants' and 'genuine' political refugees.
The last chapter "Against the World" which is trying to draw some implications for the 2st century and with some Hannah Arendt references here and there is a little weak. But then I read in the acknowledgement that the author dedicates her book to a guy who 'burst into her life' while working on the last chapter and who 'made her happier than she ever imagined ' she could be. So, yeah, fair enough, it's a very thoroughly researched and well-written book and who needs a strong last 'outlook' chapter if you have a new boyfriend!
What was particularly interesting was the book's focus on how the migration policies in Eastern Europe already anticipated the Holocaust and the Iron Curtain - from the beginning, this mass migration took place within the context of efforts to engineer ethnic homogeneity in the emerging and newly established nation states in Eastern Europe, anti-Semitism and of course being one of the main dynamics at play (I wasn’t aware of the scale of the policies and efforts of 'Jewish evacuation' in Eastern Europe pre Nazi occupation).
There were also some interesting parts on Eastern European emigration and settler colonialism as a substitute for colonial conquest for those a little late in the colonial game, such as Polish and other colonies in South America but also, more generally, settler colonialism as a strategy against decolonization (obviously, this is its own rabbit hole). Also something I didn't really know is the questioning of the 'racial value' of migrants from Southern and Eastern Europe and how Eastern European officials struggled to guarantee that their citizens would be recognized and treated as "white Europeans" in the new world.
The book also makes some interesting points on the 'political philosophy' of migration - how abolitionists helped to consolidate the link between free labour and freedom in America and how the ideal of the free migrant, defined in opposition to the slave or indentured servant, has been a corner stone of global migration politics (and capitalism) since the area of abolition. From there, it's a fairly straight line to the post WW and the Geneva Convention (and its implicit concept of human rights) which explicitly privileges political freedoms and civil liberties over economic rights - i.e., the differentiation between 'economic migrants' and 'genuine' political refugees.
The last chapter "Against the World" which is trying to draw some implications for the 2st century and with some Hannah Arendt references here and there is a little weak. But then I read in the acknowledgement that the author dedicates her book to a guy who 'burst into her life' while working on the last chapter and who 'made her happier than she ever imagined ' she could be. So, yeah, fair enough, it's a very thoroughly researched and well-written book and who needs a strong last 'outlook' chapter if you have a new boyfriend!
Read
September 4, 2021Despite how ridiculously long it took me to complete, I promise this book is actually very readable! Really interesting look at the propaganda of migration and immigration, learned a lot never discussed in most mainstream world history courses. A great lens through which to view Jewish migration, which the authored incorporated very thoroughly. The last few chapters on contemporary European migration drew some great connections to present day.
April 6, 2017
Impressive work of transnational history. Highly recommended.
[The following summary/review borrowed from my graduate school writing]
Mass migration from Eastern Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries counts as one of the great population movements in world history. However, scholars who study this specific migration usually do so from the “receiving end”—from the perspective of the nations and regions which received those Eastern European immigrants, particularly the United States. Zahra chooses to study this population movement from the opposite end: through the perspective of the nations/governments which these migrants left behind. Zahra argues that migration—more specifically, control over migration—was a central, defining element of statehood in Eastern Europe from the late nineteenth century until the end of the twentieth century. This control over migration took many forms; encompassing everything between (and including) the two extremes of violent expulsion of “unwanted” national minorities to the forcible retention of “valuable” ethnic or racial groups. Furthermore, in the process of controlling and attempting to control population movement in and out of their countries, Zahra argues, these Eastern European states provided the conceptual foundation for the competing visions of the “free world” which ultimately came to characterize the twentieth century.
[The following summary/review borrowed from my graduate school writing]
Mass migration from Eastern Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries counts as one of the great population movements in world history. However, scholars who study this specific migration usually do so from the “receiving end”—from the perspective of the nations and regions which received those Eastern European immigrants, particularly the United States. Zahra chooses to study this population movement from the opposite end: through the perspective of the nations/governments which these migrants left behind. Zahra argues that migration—more specifically, control over migration—was a central, defining element of statehood in Eastern Europe from the late nineteenth century until the end of the twentieth century. This control over migration took many forms; encompassing everything between (and including) the two extremes of violent expulsion of “unwanted” national minorities to the forcible retention of “valuable” ethnic or racial groups. Furthermore, in the process of controlling and attempting to control population movement in and out of their countries, Zahra argues, these Eastern European states provided the conceptual foundation for the competing visions of the “free world” which ultimately came to characterize the twentieth century.
December 14, 2019
In this book, The Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World by Tara Zahra, she provides many facts and examples of immigrants leaving their old country for expectations of more opportunities in the new world. For many people this worked out and they became very successful. Some were not so lucky (or ambitious) and often migrants ended up returning to their home country to try to move on with their lives. The author breaks down these migrations by different countries and ethnic groups and analyzes why some are more successful than others in adapting to their new homes. Much has to to with their ability to assimilate into the culture of their new home. The more they are able to fit in, the quicker they will feel a part of their new country and their chances of success increase as well. This was very well written and an interesting read. Anyone wishing to improve insight into immigration policies and the effects on those looking for a better life should read this book.
July 23, 2018
From 1846 to 1940 there was massive legal immigration [they followed the rules that were in place] from European counties to the Americas [predominately to the United States]. The author attempts to look at the causes and procedures. She also examines returnees to Europe. Additionally covered is post-World War II mass immigration. The politics of both sending and receiving nations are examined.
December 12, 2018
I read this for a class I was taking about Eastern European history but I think this is a book that is very easy to read. I wasn't my favorite book in the world because Eastern European History is not my favorite history topic but if you do like that topic and you're interested in immigration, this is a great book for you
September 10, 2016
This book covers my own family history, since all 8 of my great-grandparents came from East Central Europe in the late 19th Century. One topic that I hadn't thought of was the effect of immigration on the villages that were left behind. After WWI when Czechoslovakia became its own country, the government tried to entice emigrants from the previous Austro-Hungarian Empire to come home. Apparently this was not very successful, until the US helped out by passing Prohibition. A Czech official was quoted as saying (p. 114): "The majority of re-emigrants proclaim that 'it's better to earn less and be able to drink again'." After WWII the Czechs again tried to entice emigrants back home, with the promise of housing and businesses taken from the Sudeten Germans who were expelled. But (p. 228) by the time that a group of miners returned from France, the Czech neighbors had already claimed what the miners were supposed to get.
There is a fair bit of repetition in the book and not a very strong narrative flow. It felt like the editor wanted the book lengthened. But several points were clearly made: The ambiguity of what is voluntary and what is coerced emigration; the vagueness of the distinction between political and economic emigration; the loss experienced by the emigrant even when there are undoubted gains; the endless problems that Jews faced even after the devastation of WWII. Apparently some of the few Jews returning to Poland after the war were met with sentiments such as (p. 234): "What, you're still alive?"
My own family story (the one I know) is that someone stole the family cow, and that was the last straw that led the family to leave the old country. So we were economic, not political, emigrants. But emigration was not an unmixed blessing. After my grandfather was born in Chicago, my great-grandmother returned to Chotusice (in Bohemia) for a year or so, and took her two sons with her. She eventually returned to Chicago with them, but obviously it was not an easy decision.
The end of the last chapter the author is a bit more expansive, discussing some of the very current immigration issues, and the losses of emigration.
There is a fair bit of repetition in the book and not a very strong narrative flow. It felt like the editor wanted the book lengthened. But several points were clearly made: The ambiguity of what is voluntary and what is coerced emigration; the vagueness of the distinction between political and economic emigration; the loss experienced by the emigrant even when there are undoubted gains; the endless problems that Jews faced even after the devastation of WWII. Apparently some of the few Jews returning to Poland after the war were met with sentiments such as (p. 234): "What, you're still alive?"
My own family story (the one I know) is that someone stole the family cow, and that was the last straw that led the family to leave the old country. So we were economic, not political, emigrants. But emigration was not an unmixed blessing. After my grandfather was born in Chicago, my great-grandmother returned to Chotusice (in Bohemia) for a year or so, and took her two sons with her. She eventually returned to Chicago with them, but obviously it was not an easy decision.
The end of the last chapter the author is a bit more expansive, discussing some of the very current immigration issues, and the losses of emigration.
April 18, 2023
Zahra tells the story of emigration(s) from Central and Eastern Europe, spanning from the first great exodus of the second half of the 19C until the era of the free movement of labour within the borders of the expanded EU. She argues that there are several nodal points in the debates around CEE migration which have remained more or less constant — the debates over the ‘racial’ or ‘civilisational’ value of Eastern Europeans in the receiving countries, the centrality of migration regulation in engineering ethnic homogeneity or building up the nation-state in CEE, and the expulsion of unwanted elements (read the Jews) from these populations. She places the centrality of the notion of physical mobility in imagining the ‘free individual’ in ‘the West,’ and juxtaposes it against the recurrent notions of freedom to enter the Western ‘wage slavery’ within the countries of ‘the East.’
This is a multi-dimensional history, narrating the fantasies of 'the promised land' and mythologies of the homeland. Thumbs up for the sarcasm in the title though, since she contests some of the aspects of Western freedom and 'tolerance' (and its triumphalist narratives) and presents often ambivalent experiences of migrants yearning to return back 'home.'
I enjoyed reading her argument that the path towards the Holocaust was inherent within the Wilsonian nation-state project, rendering the discourse of the removal of the Jewish populations so hegemonic (ie in the resettlement debates framed as a positive humanitarian objective) that it became a conceptual precondition for the deportations eastward.
Not sure about the presentism — attempting to map the migration crisis to these histories — she pushed for in the conclusion.
This is a multi-dimensional history, narrating the fantasies of 'the promised land' and mythologies of the homeland. Thumbs up for the sarcasm in the title though, since she contests some of the aspects of Western freedom and 'tolerance' (and its triumphalist narratives) and presents often ambivalent experiences of migrants yearning to return back 'home.'
I enjoyed reading her argument that the path towards the Holocaust was inherent within the Wilsonian nation-state project, rendering the discourse of the removal of the Jewish populations so hegemonic (ie in the resettlement debates framed as a positive humanitarian objective) that it became a conceptual precondition for the deportations eastward.
Not sure about the presentism — attempting to map the migration crisis to these histories — she pushed for in the conclusion.
October 2, 2020
I was born in Czechoslovakia, and my parents fled communism in 1979. We ended up in Switzerland, but since then I have lived in England, for a little while in Canada and now permanently in the United States. I have experienced migration and I am interested in people's stories of migration. Zahra's book is not just well written but also well researched. It takes you back to the late 1800's and gradually more into the modern times describing what motivated people from the former Eastern Bloc to pick up and leave. It's also the incredibly sad story of people of jewish faith and their struggles to find a secure home. It's an important book in the sense that migrations streams these days are from different parts of the world but the stories those people share will have similarity to those of the people in this book.
June 12, 2023
Although I am not a big nonfiction reader, I LOVED this book! Tara Zahra did such a wonderful job describing the progression of immigration in Eastern Europe and the United States through history as we know it; she combined a wonderfully-interesting writing style with immersive personal stories and clear-cut evidence. This book was recommended to me by my advisor for my extended essay about the American Dream... somehow, I was even more captivated by the discussion of Eastern Europe. As an immigrant myself, it was so eye-opening to read about other people's stories that resembled mine. ALSO, props to Tara Zahra for calling out famous American political figures (cough cough Donald Trump) for their ignorance and incompetence regarding immigration policies.
Favorite Quotes:
“Did migrants return home with pockets full of dollars and fresh ideas, or with broken bodies and souls? Was migration a path toward freedom, social mobility, and a better life? Or did it entrap migrants in new forms of slavery?”
“‘The man farthest down in Europe is a woman. Women have the narrowest outlook, do the hardest work, stand in greatest need of education, and are farthest removed from influences which are everywhere raising the level of life among the masses of European people.”’
Favorite Quotes:
“Did migrants return home with pockets full of dollars and fresh ideas, or with broken bodies and souls? Was migration a path toward freedom, social mobility, and a better life? Or did it entrap migrants in new forms of slavery?”
“‘The man farthest down in Europe is a woman. Women have the narrowest outlook, do the hardest work, stand in greatest need of education, and are farthest removed from influences which are everywhere raising the level of life among the masses of European people.”’
January 12, 2018
An overview of migration from Eastern Europe since the late 19th century.
+ Many separate facts of interest, and interesting parallels between policies and attitudes in different epochs, which are usually treated or perceived separately.
- You can't guess from the introduction what will be the scope of analysis. A catchy phrase in the introduction and repeated in on the dust jacket mentioned the number of people who left Eastern Europe for the New World between 1860s and 1940. So I guessed this will be the scope: this time period and the emigration to the Americas. Then, every new chapter brings surprises.
- What is conceived to be Eastern Europe is also never defined. Apparently, Austro-Hungarian empire, its successor states in the interwar period with most focus on Poland and Czechoslovakia, then the communist block countries outside the USSR, including East Germany. Quite a non-intuitive definition of Eastern Europe from my vantage point :)
+ Many separate facts of interest, and interesting parallels between policies and attitudes in different epochs, which are usually treated or perceived separately.
- You can't guess from the introduction what will be the scope of analysis. A catchy phrase in the introduction and repeated in on the dust jacket mentioned the number of people who left Eastern Europe for the New World between 1860s and 1940. So I guessed this will be the scope: this time period and the emigration to the Americas. Then, every new chapter brings surprises.
- What is conceived to be Eastern Europe is also never defined. Apparently, Austro-Hungarian empire, its successor states in the interwar period with most focus on Poland and Czechoslovakia, then the communist block countries outside the USSR, including East Germany. Quite a non-intuitive definition of Eastern Europe from my vantage point :)
January 9, 2024
In ‘The great departure, mass migration from eastern Europe and the making of the free world’ van Tara Zahra vindt men een boek dat er niet voor heeft teruggedeinsd om het grootschalige en impactvolle onderwerp van Europese migratie breed aan te vliegen. Om een dermate grootschalig project behapbaar te maken bakent Zahra haar boek enigszins af door zich te richten op de landen die voormalig deel uitmaakten van het multi-etnische Oostenrijk-Hongarije en het aangrenzende Polen. In zeven hoofdstukken wordt migratie in deze regio behandeld vanaf het einde van de 19e eeuw tot het begin van de 21e.
Zahra heeft overduidelijk veel tijd in haar onderzoek gestopt. Het boek staat vol met illustratieve anekdotes en quotes uit en directe verwijzingen naar haar bronnen. Toch is ze in staat de lezer een prettig leesbaar, informatief en plezierig boek voor te schotelen. Haar schrijfstijl lijkt naast de informerende ook een emotionele component te hebben die de lezer doet inleven in het tijdperk wat de interpretatie en het begrip van het onderwerp ten goede komt. De enigszins chronologische aanpak van het boek versterkt verder het idee van een duidelijk narratief dat de lezer meedraagt naar de volgende pagina’s. Het gebruik van microhistoriën betekent zelfs dat het geheel soms meer doet denken aan een roman dan een historische analyse. Concluderend is het werk dus fijn geschreven.
Hoewel de schrijfstijl een belangrijk aspect is voor de leesbaarheid en ontvangst van een boek blijft het werk van Tara Zahra een historische beschrijving van de massa migraties uit oost Europa waarin de inhoud uiteindelijk de belangrijkste rol speelt. Op keuzes over deze inhoud is helaas wat meer af te dingen dan gehoopt.
De kaft en titel van het boek scheppen de verwachting dat voornamelijk de massale exodus van Oost Europeanen naar de Verenigde Staten in de eerste helft van de 20e eeuw zal worden behandeld. Dit is ook duidelijk het geval in de eerste drie hoofstukken. Gezien de duidelijke afbakening van de landen van herkomst is er in deze hoofstukken de ruimte om de ‘America fever’ redelijk uitgebreid te behandelen. Haar levendige schrijfstijl wordt ingezet om de chaotische, onvoorspelbare en vaak miserabele reisomstandigheden inzichtelijk te maken. Zahra heeft echter niet alleen aandacht voor emigratie en de jacht naar ‘the golden country’ maar ook de voor de desillusie en remigratie die deze periode rijk is. Het eerste hoofdstuk behandelt de periode voor de eerste wereldoorlog waarin honderdduizenden centraal en oost Europeanen naar Amerika vertrokken in een periode met relatief weinig migratiebeperkingen. In deze periode van opkomend nationalisme wekte dit massale vertrek veel angst op over het verzwakken van de landen van herkomst. Zahra laat zien dat staten hier niet mee konden omgaan wat leidde tot vervolging van voornamelijk joodse reisagenten. Zahra geeft veel agency aan het verhaal dat Amerika het beloofde land zou zijn. Hierdoor krijgt de lezer het beeld dat migratie voornamelijk werd aangedreven door Amerikaanse pull factoren. Economische achtergesteldheid in de regio wordt genoemd maar krijgt gevoelsmatig een kleine rol.
Het tweede hoofdstuk laat Zahra duidelijk zien hoe rassen-denken een belangrijke rol speelt in de geschiedenis van migratie. Volkeren probeerden volgens haar een homogene (proto)staat te creëren en trachtten de emigratie van andere bevolkingen aan te zwengelen terwijl eigen emigratie werd afgeremd. Joden werden door iedereen als onwenselijk beschouwd. Zahra lijkt met deze analyse goed in lijn met andere historici op dit gebied. Een artikel van Gabbocia, Hoerder en Walaszek dat onder andere het Poolse nationalisme behandelt beschrijft ruwweg dezelfde ontwikkelingen. De grotere focus op de verschillende bevolkingen in Oostenrijk-Hongarije van Zahra onderstreept echter de onderlinge bevolkingsstrijd nog beter.
Gedurende hoofdstukken één, twee en drie wordt het vertrek, de reis, de aankomst, integratie en in sommige gevallen de terugkeer van migranten behandeld. Zahra pakt zo migratie holistisch aan en overstijgt daarmee veel collega’s die enkel emigratie of immigratie behandelen. Ze omarmt hiermee aspecten van het transnationalistische perspectief dat Schiller, Basch en Blanc-Szanton in 1992 vurig bepleitten. In de behandeling van de aankomst komt vooral de desillusie duidelijk over. Men moest in de VS vaak hard werken onder slechte omstandigheden die meer leken op lijfeigenschap dan arbeiders in het land van de vrijheid. Daarnaast noemt ze ook het idee van whiteness en de ‘raciale minderwaardigheid’ van oost Europeanen en joden, al behandeld ze dit onderwerp minder uitvoerig dan bijvoorbeeld Roediger die de whiteness van Ieren centraal stelt in zijn stuk over dit onderwerp.
Naast de migratiestromen van en naar de Verenigde staten behandelt hoofdstuk drie ook de directe nasleep van de eerste wereldoorlog. Zahra benoemt hier het ontstaan van de sterk nationalistische natiestaten en hun wens voor het verder homogeniseren van hun bevolkingen en ze focust op de immigratiewetgevingen die hiervoor ontstonden maar onderbelicht helaas de schaal van de bevolkinsverschuivingen zoals Brubaker die illustreerd in zijn vergelijking van deze periode met het latere uiteenvallen van de Sovjetunie.
De joden vormden een grote bevolkingsgroep in oost Europa die een centrale rol hebben gespeeld in de migratiegeschiedenis aldaar. Zahra neemt in het vierde hoofdstuk van haar boek de tijd om de joodse kwestie, zoals hij werd genoemd, goed te beschrijven. Het hoofdstuk wordt ‘the first final solution’ genoemd. Tamelijk verbazend word er vervolgens zo goed als geen woord gerept over de tweede final solution. De gehele tweede wereldoorlog met al haar verschuivingen wordt in één stap overgeslagen in The great departure. Het volgende hoofdstuk hervat het verhaal met de chaos na de oorlog en de herverdeling van de displaced persons. Voor een boek over migratie uit oost Europa is de afwezigheid van het nazikolonialisme een groot hiaat. Niet allen zet het voort op de joodse en nationalistische migratie, waar Zahra eerder zoveel aandacht aan besteedde, het is een hele migratietornado die simpelweg niet wordt genoemd.
Vanaf hier ontstaat het gevoel dat Zahra teveel hooi op haar vork heeft genomen. De eerste vier hoofdstukken behandelden de oost Europese exodus met voldoende aandacht. Waar sommige punten zoals de pushfactoren van deze migratie soms wat onderbelicht bleven bracht een transnationalistische inslag extra kwaliteit in het stuk. Vanaf halverwege de jaren ’30 jaagt Zahra ons echter in iets meer dan honderd pagina’s helemaal tot in het tweede decennium van de 21e eeuw. Deze keuze geeft een holistische grootschaligheid aan het boek maar gaat ten koste van de kwaliteit van de tweede helft.
Zoals genoemd behandelt hoofdstuk vijf de chaos na de tweede wereldoorlog. In deze periode rekruteren West-Europese landen als het VK en Frankrijk displaced persons uit vluchtelingenkampen voor de wederopbouw. Tegelijkertijd moeten landen hun beleid herformuleren om immigratie buiten het gebruik van ras om te beperken. Zahra blijft haar narratief illustreren met persoonlijke verhalen maar deze worden minder talrijk zonder dat deze extra ruimte wordt benut door het uitgebreider behandelen van de macroschaal. Dit wordt duidelijk als men een artikel van Linda McDowel naast het hoofdstuk in kwestie legt en McDowel in een fractie van de tekst verschillende nieuwe aspecten kan toevoegen.
Het zesde hoofdstuk focust zich voornamelijk op overheidsbeleid ten tijde van de koude oorlog op gebied van emigratie en immigratie. Extra aandacht gaan uit naar de symboliek van het ijzeren gordijn. Het laatste hoofdstuk getiteld free to stay or go begint bij het versoepelen van de gehele stop op emigratie vanuit het Oostblok in de jaren ’70 en ’80 en brengt de lezer uiteindelijk tot voorbij 2010. Dit is simpelweg een te grote periode om alles grondig te behandelen. Zahra behandeld in korte tijd de heropening van de grenzen, de val van het communistische oosten, migratie westwaarts na EU toetreding en de ontvangst van de oost-blokkers. De hernieuwde problematiek rond whiteness van oost Europeanen wordt genoemd maar is niet met voldoende aandacht behandeld en doet zwaar onder voor collega’s als McDowel , Börörsz en Sarkar . Tegelijkertijd is er geen aandacht voor de veranderende positie van Centraal-Oost Europese landen van semiperiferie naar kernlanden en van emigratie naar immigratie. Verschuivingen die door bijvoorbeeld Barnickel al enkele jaren voor het publiceren van het boek werden opgemerkt.
Al met al is The great departure een uitstekend populair historisch werk dat met plezier kan worden gelezen. Een goed onderzocht en goed geschreven boek bied de lezer een interessant en regelmatig diepgaand overzicht van Oost Europese emigratie. Tara Zahra heeft helaas de fout gemaakt een te groot onderwerp aan te snijden in een te kort boek en vooral de tweede helft heeft hieronder te lijden. Een duidelijkere afbakening of structuur had The Great Departure tot een van de beste boeken over het onderwerp kunnen maken.
Bibliografie
Barnickel, C. & Beichelt, T. ‘Shifting patterns and reactions: Migration policy in the new EU member states’, East European politics and societies and cultures 27:3 (2013) p.466-492.
Böröcz, J. & Sarkar, M. ‘The unbearable whiteness of the Polish plumber and the Hungarian peacock dance around “race”’, Slavic Review 76:2 (2017) p. 307-314.
Brubaker, R. ‘Aftermaths of Empire and the unmixing of peoples: historical and contemporary perspectives’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 18:2 (1995) p.189-218.
Gabaccia, D. R. & Hoerder, D. & Walaszek, A. ‘Emigration and nation building during the mass migrations from Europe’ in: Green, N. L. & Weil, F. (reds.), Citizenship and those who leave, the politics of emigration and expatriation (Champaign 2007).
Harvey, E. ‘Management and manipulation: nazi settlement planners and ethnic German settlers in occupied Poland’, in: Elkins, C. & Pedersen, S. (reds.) Settler colonialism in the twentieth century (London 2005).
McDowell, L. ‘Old and new European economic migrants: Whiteness and managed migration policies’ Journal of ethnic and migration studies 35:1 (2009) p.19-36.
Roediger, D. R. ‘Whiteness and Race’ in; Bayor R. H. (red.), The Oxford handbook of American immigration and ethnicity (Oxford 2014).
Schiller, N. G. & Basch, L. & Blanc-Szanton, C. ‘Towards a definition of transnationalism: Introductory remakrs and research questions’ annals of the New York academy of sciences 645:1 (1992) p.ix-xiv.
Zahra, T. The great departure: Mass migration from eastern Europe and the making of the free world (New York 2017).
Zahra heeft overduidelijk veel tijd in haar onderzoek gestopt. Het boek staat vol met illustratieve anekdotes en quotes uit en directe verwijzingen naar haar bronnen. Toch is ze in staat de lezer een prettig leesbaar, informatief en plezierig boek voor te schotelen. Haar schrijfstijl lijkt naast de informerende ook een emotionele component te hebben die de lezer doet inleven in het tijdperk wat de interpretatie en het begrip van het onderwerp ten goede komt. De enigszins chronologische aanpak van het boek versterkt verder het idee van een duidelijk narratief dat de lezer meedraagt naar de volgende pagina’s. Het gebruik van microhistoriën betekent zelfs dat het geheel soms meer doet denken aan een roman dan een historische analyse. Concluderend is het werk dus fijn geschreven.
Hoewel de schrijfstijl een belangrijk aspect is voor de leesbaarheid en ontvangst van een boek blijft het werk van Tara Zahra een historische beschrijving van de massa migraties uit oost Europa waarin de inhoud uiteindelijk de belangrijkste rol speelt. Op keuzes over deze inhoud is helaas wat meer af te dingen dan gehoopt.
De kaft en titel van het boek scheppen de verwachting dat voornamelijk de massale exodus van Oost Europeanen naar de Verenigde Staten in de eerste helft van de 20e eeuw zal worden behandeld. Dit is ook duidelijk het geval in de eerste drie hoofstukken. Gezien de duidelijke afbakening van de landen van herkomst is er in deze hoofstukken de ruimte om de ‘America fever’ redelijk uitgebreid te behandelen. Haar levendige schrijfstijl wordt ingezet om de chaotische, onvoorspelbare en vaak miserabele reisomstandigheden inzichtelijk te maken. Zahra heeft echter niet alleen aandacht voor emigratie en de jacht naar ‘the golden country’ maar ook de voor de desillusie en remigratie die deze periode rijk is. Het eerste hoofdstuk behandelt de periode voor de eerste wereldoorlog waarin honderdduizenden centraal en oost Europeanen naar Amerika vertrokken in een periode met relatief weinig migratiebeperkingen. In deze periode van opkomend nationalisme wekte dit massale vertrek veel angst op over het verzwakken van de landen van herkomst. Zahra laat zien dat staten hier niet mee konden omgaan wat leidde tot vervolging van voornamelijk joodse reisagenten. Zahra geeft veel agency aan het verhaal dat Amerika het beloofde land zou zijn. Hierdoor krijgt de lezer het beeld dat migratie voornamelijk werd aangedreven door Amerikaanse pull factoren. Economische achtergesteldheid in de regio wordt genoemd maar krijgt gevoelsmatig een kleine rol.
Het tweede hoofdstuk laat Zahra duidelijk zien hoe rassen-denken een belangrijke rol speelt in de geschiedenis van migratie. Volkeren probeerden volgens haar een homogene (proto)staat te creëren en trachtten de emigratie van andere bevolkingen aan te zwengelen terwijl eigen emigratie werd afgeremd. Joden werden door iedereen als onwenselijk beschouwd. Zahra lijkt met deze analyse goed in lijn met andere historici op dit gebied. Een artikel van Gabbocia, Hoerder en Walaszek dat onder andere het Poolse nationalisme behandelt beschrijft ruwweg dezelfde ontwikkelingen. De grotere focus op de verschillende bevolkingen in Oostenrijk-Hongarije van Zahra onderstreept echter de onderlinge bevolkingsstrijd nog beter.
Gedurende hoofdstukken één, twee en drie wordt het vertrek, de reis, de aankomst, integratie en in sommige gevallen de terugkeer van migranten behandeld. Zahra pakt zo migratie holistisch aan en overstijgt daarmee veel collega’s die enkel emigratie of immigratie behandelen. Ze omarmt hiermee aspecten van het transnationalistische perspectief dat Schiller, Basch en Blanc-Szanton in 1992 vurig bepleitten. In de behandeling van de aankomst komt vooral de desillusie duidelijk over. Men moest in de VS vaak hard werken onder slechte omstandigheden die meer leken op lijfeigenschap dan arbeiders in het land van de vrijheid. Daarnaast noemt ze ook het idee van whiteness en de ‘raciale minderwaardigheid’ van oost Europeanen en joden, al behandeld ze dit onderwerp minder uitvoerig dan bijvoorbeeld Roediger die de whiteness van Ieren centraal stelt in zijn stuk over dit onderwerp.
Naast de migratiestromen van en naar de Verenigde staten behandelt hoofdstuk drie ook de directe nasleep van de eerste wereldoorlog. Zahra benoemt hier het ontstaan van de sterk nationalistische natiestaten en hun wens voor het verder homogeniseren van hun bevolkingen en ze focust op de immigratiewetgevingen die hiervoor ontstonden maar onderbelicht helaas de schaal van de bevolkinsverschuivingen zoals Brubaker die illustreerd in zijn vergelijking van deze periode met het latere uiteenvallen van de Sovjetunie.
De joden vormden een grote bevolkingsgroep in oost Europa die een centrale rol hebben gespeeld in de migratiegeschiedenis aldaar. Zahra neemt in het vierde hoofdstuk van haar boek de tijd om de joodse kwestie, zoals hij werd genoemd, goed te beschrijven. Het hoofdstuk wordt ‘the first final solution’ genoemd. Tamelijk verbazend word er vervolgens zo goed als geen woord gerept over de tweede final solution. De gehele tweede wereldoorlog met al haar verschuivingen wordt in één stap overgeslagen in The great departure. Het volgende hoofdstuk hervat het verhaal met de chaos na de oorlog en de herverdeling van de displaced persons. Voor een boek over migratie uit oost Europa is de afwezigheid van het nazikolonialisme een groot hiaat. Niet allen zet het voort op de joodse en nationalistische migratie, waar Zahra eerder zoveel aandacht aan besteedde, het is een hele migratietornado die simpelweg niet wordt genoemd.
Vanaf hier ontstaat het gevoel dat Zahra teveel hooi op haar vork heeft genomen. De eerste vier hoofdstukken behandelden de oost Europese exodus met voldoende aandacht. Waar sommige punten zoals de pushfactoren van deze migratie soms wat onderbelicht bleven bracht een transnationalistische inslag extra kwaliteit in het stuk. Vanaf halverwege de jaren ’30 jaagt Zahra ons echter in iets meer dan honderd pagina’s helemaal tot in het tweede decennium van de 21e eeuw. Deze keuze geeft een holistische grootschaligheid aan het boek maar gaat ten koste van de kwaliteit van de tweede helft.
Zoals genoemd behandelt hoofdstuk vijf de chaos na de tweede wereldoorlog. In deze periode rekruteren West-Europese landen als het VK en Frankrijk displaced persons uit vluchtelingenkampen voor de wederopbouw. Tegelijkertijd moeten landen hun beleid herformuleren om immigratie buiten het gebruik van ras om te beperken. Zahra blijft haar narratief illustreren met persoonlijke verhalen maar deze worden minder talrijk zonder dat deze extra ruimte wordt benut door het uitgebreider behandelen van de macroschaal. Dit wordt duidelijk als men een artikel van Linda McDowel naast het hoofdstuk in kwestie legt en McDowel in een fractie van de tekst verschillende nieuwe aspecten kan toevoegen.
Het zesde hoofdstuk focust zich voornamelijk op overheidsbeleid ten tijde van de koude oorlog op gebied van emigratie en immigratie. Extra aandacht gaan uit naar de symboliek van het ijzeren gordijn. Het laatste hoofdstuk getiteld free to stay or go begint bij het versoepelen van de gehele stop op emigratie vanuit het Oostblok in de jaren ’70 en ’80 en brengt de lezer uiteindelijk tot voorbij 2010. Dit is simpelweg een te grote periode om alles grondig te behandelen. Zahra behandeld in korte tijd de heropening van de grenzen, de val van het communistische oosten, migratie westwaarts na EU toetreding en de ontvangst van de oost-blokkers. De hernieuwde problematiek rond whiteness van oost Europeanen wordt genoemd maar is niet met voldoende aandacht behandeld en doet zwaar onder voor collega’s als McDowel , Börörsz en Sarkar . Tegelijkertijd is er geen aandacht voor de veranderende positie van Centraal-Oost Europese landen van semiperiferie naar kernlanden en van emigratie naar immigratie. Verschuivingen die door bijvoorbeeld Barnickel al enkele jaren voor het publiceren van het boek werden opgemerkt.
Al met al is The great departure een uitstekend populair historisch werk dat met plezier kan worden gelezen. Een goed onderzocht en goed geschreven boek bied de lezer een interessant en regelmatig diepgaand overzicht van Oost Europese emigratie. Tara Zahra heeft helaas de fout gemaakt een te groot onderwerp aan te snijden in een te kort boek en vooral de tweede helft heeft hieronder te lijden. Een duidelijkere afbakening of structuur had The Great Departure tot een van de beste boeken over het onderwerp kunnen maken.
Bibliografie
Barnickel, C. & Beichelt, T. ‘Shifting patterns and reactions: Migration policy in the new EU member states’, East European politics and societies and cultures 27:3 (2013) p.466-492.
Böröcz, J. & Sarkar, M. ‘The unbearable whiteness of the Polish plumber and the Hungarian peacock dance around “race”’, Slavic Review 76:2 (2017) p. 307-314.
Brubaker, R. ‘Aftermaths of Empire and the unmixing of peoples: historical and contemporary perspectives’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 18:2 (1995) p.189-218.
Gabaccia, D. R. & Hoerder, D. & Walaszek, A. ‘Emigration and nation building during the mass migrations from Europe’ in: Green, N. L. & Weil, F. (reds.), Citizenship and those who leave, the politics of emigration and expatriation (Champaign 2007).
Harvey, E. ‘Management and manipulation: nazi settlement planners and ethnic German settlers in occupied Poland’, in: Elkins, C. & Pedersen, S. (reds.) Settler colonialism in the twentieth century (London 2005).
McDowell, L. ‘Old and new European economic migrants: Whiteness and managed migration policies’ Journal of ethnic and migration studies 35:1 (2009) p.19-36.
Roediger, D. R. ‘Whiteness and Race’ in; Bayor R. H. (red.), The Oxford handbook of American immigration and ethnicity (Oxford 2014).
Schiller, N. G. & Basch, L. & Blanc-Szanton, C. ‘Towards a definition of transnationalism: Introductory remakrs and research questions’ annals of the New York academy of sciences 645:1 (1992) p.ix-xiv.
Zahra, T. The great departure: Mass migration from eastern Europe and the making of the free world (New York 2017).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 29, 2016
When Americans think about migration from eastern Europe, I think we concentrate on the immigration of people from there to here. Millions of people left eastern European lands and moved to the United States in waves basically beginning in the 1840's. We know what they were looking for when they came here, but what were they leaving behind in the places they emigrated from? And what were those places like after great swathes of people left? In her new book, "The Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World", University of Chicago professor Tara Zahra has produced an elegant piece of historical writing explaining what the effects were on the places and the people "left behind".
Please remember that Tara Zahra is only writing about the emigrants from eastern European countries. Those from the UK, Scandinavia, France, etc, are not referred to here in her book. Their experiences - both in the places they were leaving and the places they were going - were largely different from those from the eastern European countries and Russia .In the 1800's and up to the early 1900's, Christian emigrants were looking for economic prosperity in the United States; the same reason for Jewish emigrants, who were also fleeing anti-Semitic pogroms. What they found here was not always the "Golden Medina"; rather it was a land where the immigrant had to work hard to get ahead. In the countries they had left, often villages and city areas were left empty by those who had left seeking a better life. After the First World War, the reasons to leave became more political as the world-wide Depression and the repressive regimes gave rise to wide anti-Semitism. And after WW2, the migrations were all over Europe as Displaced People found a way to return "home" after being forcibly moved by war and post-war politics. she ends her book alluding to the most recent migrations in eastern Europe.
Tara Zahra's book is a fascinating look at both the politics and economics of migration. Her writing is fluid and the book is a pleasure to read.
Please remember that Tara Zahra is only writing about the emigrants from eastern European countries. Those from the UK, Scandinavia, France, etc, are not referred to here in her book. Their experiences - both in the places they were leaving and the places they were going - were largely different from those from the eastern European countries and Russia .In the 1800's and up to the early 1900's, Christian emigrants were looking for economic prosperity in the United States; the same reason for Jewish emigrants, who were also fleeing anti-Semitic pogroms. What they found here was not always the "Golden Medina"; rather it was a land where the immigrant had to work hard to get ahead. In the countries they had left, often villages and city areas were left empty by those who had left seeking a better life. After the First World War, the reasons to leave became more political as the world-wide Depression and the repressive regimes gave rise to wide anti-Semitism. And after WW2, the migrations were all over Europe as Displaced People found a way to return "home" after being forcibly moved by war and post-war politics. she ends her book alluding to the most recent migrations in eastern Europe.
Tara Zahra's book is a fascinating look at both the politics and economics of migration. Her writing is fluid and the book is a pleasure to read.
May 5, 2018
I think I was looking for something different from this book, perhaps a story of hope? If that is what you hope to find here, don't read this account of the mass migration of people, primarily from Eastern Europe, to the United States and other countries. You will be thoroughly depressed.
The subtitle is "Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World". It really should be "Oppressed People Who Wanted to Immigrate and Were Either Denied the Chance, or Disappointed Once They Did."
My family on both sides left various places in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania between the 1880s and 1890s and made their way to America, some via London, some not. They settled in Philadelphia and New Jersey. My paternal relatives worked in Philadelphia in various trades and small businesses. My maternal grandmother's family were part of the agricultural settlements of Jews in southern New Jersey, partly funded by the Baron de Hirsch. I don't know all of the details, but no one ever spoke of any family member who wanted to return to any of the places from which they had come.
Obviously there were people who were unhappy with what they found in America, and nearly all worked very hard to improve their lives, but the idea of going back to the pogroms, or 25 years of service in the Tsar's army, wasn't a viable or appealing option. I can't speak for other groups, but for Jews, America and Canada were certainly safer and more welcoming than what they faced in their native countries.
I read through the book with increasing dismay. Of course I knew that immigration quotas were greatly reduced in the 1920s and many people died in the camps and ghettos because they were denied visas. No one could deny this, and it makes me terribly sad (and often angry). But this book is so bleak, and so without hope that I could hardly bear to read it. The choice to read its grim chapters is yours.
The subtitle is "Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World". It really should be "Oppressed People Who Wanted to Immigrate and Were Either Denied the Chance, or Disappointed Once They Did."
My family on both sides left various places in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania between the 1880s and 1890s and made their way to America, some via London, some not. They settled in Philadelphia and New Jersey. My paternal relatives worked in Philadelphia in various trades and small businesses. My maternal grandmother's family were part of the agricultural settlements of Jews in southern New Jersey, partly funded by the Baron de Hirsch. I don't know all of the details, but no one ever spoke of any family member who wanted to return to any of the places from which they had come.
Obviously there were people who were unhappy with what they found in America, and nearly all worked very hard to improve their lives, but the idea of going back to the pogroms, or 25 years of service in the Tsar's army, wasn't a viable or appealing option. I can't speak for other groups, but for Jews, America and Canada were certainly safer and more welcoming than what they faced in their native countries.
I read through the book with increasing dismay. Of course I knew that immigration quotas were greatly reduced in the 1920s and many people died in the camps and ghettos because they were denied visas. No one could deny this, and it makes me terribly sad (and often angry). But this book is so bleak, and so without hope that I could hardly bear to read it. The choice to read its grim chapters is yours.
October 6, 2019
My grandparents were a part of this departure. My grandfather was one of those who returned to Europe after coming to America. In fact, he had gone back and forth at least twice according to family lore before meeting my grandmother on the ship during his third and final trip.
I had always wondered what it was that made them leave everything behind to voyage halfway around the world. I had a general idea that they were seeking a better life but the details were missing. I thought those details would always be missing since my grandpa died before I was born and my grandma died when I was very young.
Anyway, this book helped me understand all of those things. It gave a broader historical context to my family history.
I had always wondered what it was that made them leave everything behind to voyage halfway around the world. I had a general idea that they were seeking a better life but the details were missing. I thought those details would always be missing since my grandpa died before I was born and my grandma died when I was very young.
Anyway, this book helped me understand all of those things. It gave a broader historical context to my family history.
September 7, 2017
Maybe a little ponderous as an audio book, but a very interesting vein of history that I never though much about: the result of emigration on the countries from which people originated and the politics and sociology of the effect of emigration on those countries.
March 23, 2017
Be cautious if attempting to use this book as a historical source, as Zahra seems to have valued telling a good story over any rigor or fidelity to events. She doesn't seem to have looked very closely at the things she cites; to pick an egregious example, she claims on page 280 that over 100,000 Poles were immigrating to the United States each year in the years before the 2008 financial crisis. This is startlingly high on its face: only a bit over a million people were immigrating total, by the official U.S. government counts that she cites, and it's hard to believe that anything close to 10% of new U.S. migrants were Polish. To her credit, Zahra does provide a citation here that backs up her numbers -- except that she cites a table explicitly about non-immigrant Polish entrants to the United States, such as tourists or people on business trips. The only other source I explicitly spot-checked, a New York Times quotation about Martina Navratilova from p. 255, was also doubtful. Although it is presented as a direct quote, she gets the wording slightly wrong. Perhaps worse, she also implies more about the context than is supported by the original source and even repeats a a bit about Navratilova having stated the quotation "simply" that skirts close to what I would have been rebuked for as plagiarism in freshman composition.
Even on quotations that I didn't check and have no direct reason to doubt, Zahra's choice of sourcing seems dubious. I'm thinking of things like her extended recounting of the dramatic testimony of Karel Ruml about his role on the "Freedom Train" that was hijacked across the Iron Curtain from Czechoslovakia in 1951. Ruml's memories, expressed in memoirs and interviews decades later, are dramatic, almost melodramatic, with him boldly using a gun to face down sniveling Communists who "stink of beer and onions," etc. It's more than reasonable for people to remember and recount their life stories as they see fit, but historians normally take this sort of thing with many grains of salt. And with good reason: Ruml, somewhat famously, doesn't show up as prominent in the Czechoslovak security services' accounts of the incident, even though they had a lot more reason to deeply investigate how the train's diversion went down than did most other people and interviewed dozens of eyewitnesses. Relying on unverified stories has a real place in oral histories and the like, but Zahra aims to write something more definitive. In short, despite Zahra's sterling, MacArthur-certified pedigree, this book seems at least from a cursory investigation to be much longer on color than on trustworthiness.
Even on quotations that I didn't check and have no direct reason to doubt, Zahra's choice of sourcing seems dubious. I'm thinking of things like her extended recounting of the dramatic testimony of Karel Ruml about his role on the "Freedom Train" that was hijacked across the Iron Curtain from Czechoslovakia in 1951. Ruml's memories, expressed in memoirs and interviews decades later, are dramatic, almost melodramatic, with him boldly using a gun to face down sniveling Communists who "stink of beer and onions," etc. It's more than reasonable for people to remember and recount their life stories as they see fit, but historians normally take this sort of thing with many grains of salt. And with good reason: Ruml, somewhat famously, doesn't show up as prominent in the Czechoslovak security services' accounts of the incident, even though they had a lot more reason to deeply investigate how the train's diversion went down than did most other people and interviewed dozens of eyewitnesses. Relying on unverified stories has a real place in oral histories and the like, but Zahra aims to write something more definitive. In short, despite Zahra's sterling, MacArthur-certified pedigree, this book seems at least from a cursory investigation to be much longer on color than on trustworthiness.
January 9, 2022
Tara Zahra is an excellent historian and "The Great Departure" was no disappointment.
This book creatively and ambitiously tells the transnational story of emigrants--the flipside of the very familiar historical narrative of America's wave of Eastern European immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By focusing on the stories of the countries they left, Zahra adds a great deal of insight about the role of travel agents, the reasons why people left, the ambivalence and connections they continued to hold toward the home countries they left behind, and the impact of depopulation on the Eastern European countryside. Most fascinating was her analysis of countries' changing attitudes toward encouraging "excess" populations to emigrate, versus their efforts to restrict emigration and retain wanted populations. Her research adeptly integrates the mass emigration into a broader context of the ideas of modern states in the era of colonization and imperialism, of modern science and economics and of recognizing the potential economic value and cost of population itself. Many details were so fascinating I had to look up from the book and share them right away.
In working with many countries and many generations, Zahra deftly weaves existing scholarship with original archival research in a way that is really impressive. Her work also integrates personal narratives alongside data history and legal sources very effectively. She also does an excellent job of incorporating the unique aspects of the Jewish emigration narrative into the broader narrative and highlighting commonalities.
The exclusion of Italians from this work makes sense from the perspective of Zahra's field as an Eastern Europeanist, but does a disservice to the work's subject matter. I would expect that Italian emigration shared a great deal in common with emigration from the Austrian Empire, and more contextualization of the two emigrations with one another would have been useful.
I also wasn't so into the final 1/3 of the book, which took the emigration story into the post-World War II era.
Also, I wish the book had a stronger conclusion making a more sweeping analytical case for the way in which the Great Migration created the Free World, as the title ambitiously suggests.
But all in all, this was a very strong work of historical scholarship, with impressive research and very enjoyable prose.
This book creatively and ambitiously tells the transnational story of emigrants--the flipside of the very familiar historical narrative of America's wave of Eastern European immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By focusing on the stories of the countries they left, Zahra adds a great deal of insight about the role of travel agents, the reasons why people left, the ambivalence and connections they continued to hold toward the home countries they left behind, and the impact of depopulation on the Eastern European countryside. Most fascinating was her analysis of countries' changing attitudes toward encouraging "excess" populations to emigrate, versus their efforts to restrict emigration and retain wanted populations. Her research adeptly integrates the mass emigration into a broader context of the ideas of modern states in the era of colonization and imperialism, of modern science and economics and of recognizing the potential economic value and cost of population itself. Many details were so fascinating I had to look up from the book and share them right away.
In working with many countries and many generations, Zahra deftly weaves existing scholarship with original archival research in a way that is really impressive. Her work also integrates personal narratives alongside data history and legal sources very effectively. She also does an excellent job of incorporating the unique aspects of the Jewish emigration narrative into the broader narrative and highlighting commonalities.
The exclusion of Italians from this work makes sense from the perspective of Zahra's field as an Eastern Europeanist, but does a disservice to the work's subject matter. I would expect that Italian emigration shared a great deal in common with emigration from the Austrian Empire, and more contextualization of the two emigrations with one another would have been useful.
I also wasn't so into the final 1/3 of the book, which took the emigration story into the post-World War II era.
Also, I wish the book had a stronger conclusion making a more sweeping analytical case for the way in which the Great Migration created the Free World, as the title ambitiously suggests.
But all in all, this was a very strong work of historical scholarship, with impressive research and very enjoyable prose.
November 10, 2023
This is the second book I have read by Ms. Zahara. She is quickly becoming one of my favorite historians. Ms. Zahara combines macro trends in economies, international relations and social thought with the experiences of the individuals who lived in this macro environment. Although a respected academic, Ms. Zahara's writing style makes me think she writes for the general public, nt an academic audience (I am sure she disagrees with me).
This work documents the massive migrations from Eastern Europe from the late nineteenth century to the present. Startling masses of humanity moved in this time period in successive waves and for different reasons. More than 50 million people left Eastern Europe between the 1870s and the 1920s. Huge migrations followed the World Wars, the fall of the Soviet alliance and then massive migrations into Eastern Europe in the 21st Century from war torn Syria and from the Middle East and Africa. Ms. Zahara covers the effect on the receiving countries - the struggle for integration, the backlash to the arrival of the "other", the conditions which migrants encountered vs. what they expected. More interestingly and more unique, Ms. Zahara also covers the goals and policies of the source countries. Nationalism (new in the Nineteenth Century) led countries to use migration to rid themselves of unwanted minorities (mainly Jews) and to create policies to restrict migration of desired "real" citizens. National honor also required that home country migrants be deemed "White" by the receiving countries in North and South America. Ms. Zhara documents all of this without the work becoming tedious.
Reading this book reminds me that humans are a migratory species. Mass migrations and the disruptions they entail have defined our history for as long as we have had history. The bible recounts the displacement and wanderings of whole populations. We can think of the Germans, Vandals and Goths invading the Roman Empire. The Mongols and Huns spreading throughout Eurasia. The Europeans migration to the Americas. Forced migrations of Africans to America. We fool ourselves when we try to distinguish between natives and non-natives, because such a analysis is a matter of framing and relative. As we address large scale migration from South America to North America, we would do well to remember that migration is human and migrants are human. P
This work documents the massive migrations from Eastern Europe from the late nineteenth century to the present. Startling masses of humanity moved in this time period in successive waves and for different reasons. More than 50 million people left Eastern Europe between the 1870s and the 1920s. Huge migrations followed the World Wars, the fall of the Soviet alliance and then massive migrations into Eastern Europe in the 21st Century from war torn Syria and from the Middle East and Africa. Ms. Zahara covers the effect on the receiving countries - the struggle for integration, the backlash to the arrival of the "other", the conditions which migrants encountered vs. what they expected. More interestingly and more unique, Ms. Zahara also covers the goals and policies of the source countries. Nationalism (new in the Nineteenth Century) led countries to use migration to rid themselves of unwanted minorities (mainly Jews) and to create policies to restrict migration of desired "real" citizens. National honor also required that home country migrants be deemed "White" by the receiving countries in North and South America. Ms. Zhara documents all of this without the work becoming tedious.
Reading this book reminds me that humans are a migratory species. Mass migrations and the disruptions they entail have defined our history for as long as we have had history. The bible recounts the displacement and wanderings of whole populations. We can think of the Germans, Vandals and Goths invading the Roman Empire. The Mongols and Huns spreading throughout Eurasia. The Europeans migration to the Americas. Forced migrations of Africans to America. We fool ourselves when we try to distinguish between natives and non-natives, because such a analysis is a matter of framing and relative. As we address large scale migration from South America to North America, we would do well to remember that migration is human and migrants are human. P
September 24, 2023
A hard book for me to get through but full of a lot of information that I had no idea about so that’s why I decided to keep reading.
Lots of words I didn’t know. Might have been beneficial to know more about Austrian history/government.
*Interesting to learn how many Eastern European countries wanted to get rid of undesirables (mostly Jews) but then promoted them coming back/emigrating back home after WWI and WWII. They promised them good jobs, housing and benefits but failed to provide this once they returned. So many were country-less if they came back-so many living in refugee camps and wishing they would have stayed in the US.
*On the flip side so many immigrants were promised the land of milk and honey but ended up “enslaved” in the US. They lived in deplorable conditions and wished they hadn’t come over. They at least had family and friends and a piece of land to farm-in the US they “were worked like dogs from sun up to sundown” and had barely enough money to survive, let alone enough for send home to Europe-with their families thinking they were living the dream.
*Travel agents lied to immigrants-offering false hopes of jobs. Many had all their money and belongings stolen before departing. Many gave their life savings for passports that were false or not needed.
*The Jewish problem - countries actually looked at other countries like Madagascar, British Guiana and Angola to move them to and for them to have their own country. Dominican Republic was also looked at and a few actually inhabited the island, but then the US stopped visa bc they worried about spies making their way to the US. And boats stopped going bc of the war.
*End chapters talked about the Cold War and Bosnian refugees. And also sex trafficking…Mail order brides and the sex workers in Eastern Europe still today.
“In the United States, meanwhile, it is, perhaps not coincidental that Donald Trump is married to the Slovene immigrant Melania Trump. His first wife, Ivana, was an immigrant from Czechoslovakia. Four of his five children have immigrant mothers. But for Trump (and his supporters), there is no contradiction in aspiring to make a central European immigrants the first lady while promising to put a “total stop” to Muslim immigration to the United States and build a wall on the Mexican border.” Pg. 299
Lots of words I didn’t know. Might have been beneficial to know more about Austrian history/government.
*Interesting to learn how many Eastern European countries wanted to get rid of undesirables (mostly Jews) but then promoted them coming back/emigrating back home after WWI and WWII. They promised them good jobs, housing and benefits but failed to provide this once they returned. So many were country-less if they came back-so many living in refugee camps and wishing they would have stayed in the US.
*On the flip side so many immigrants were promised the land of milk and honey but ended up “enslaved” in the US. They lived in deplorable conditions and wished they hadn’t come over. They at least had family and friends and a piece of land to farm-in the US they “were worked like dogs from sun up to sundown” and had barely enough money to survive, let alone enough for send home to Europe-with their families thinking they were living the dream.
*Travel agents lied to immigrants-offering false hopes of jobs. Many had all their money and belongings stolen before departing. Many gave their life savings for passports that were false or not needed.
*The Jewish problem - countries actually looked at other countries like Madagascar, British Guiana and Angola to move them to and for them to have their own country. Dominican Republic was also looked at and a few actually inhabited the island, but then the US stopped visa bc they worried about spies making their way to the US. And boats stopped going bc of the war.
*End chapters talked about the Cold War and Bosnian refugees. And also sex trafficking…Mail order brides and the sex workers in Eastern Europe still today.
“In the United States, meanwhile, it is, perhaps not coincidental that Donald Trump is married to the Slovene immigrant Melania Trump. His first wife, Ivana, was an immigrant from Czechoslovakia. Four of his five children have immigrant mothers. But for Trump (and his supporters), there is no contradiction in aspiring to make a central European immigrants the first lady while promising to put a “total stop” to Muslim immigration to the United States and build a wall on the Mexican border.” Pg. 299
April 3, 2024
Interesting book that went farther than I expected in terms of human migrations. I assumed initially that the author would focus on the immigration to American between roughly the 1820-1910s, but the book went much farther in time all the way to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
I have studied American immigration many times via my history classes, but never thought about it from the European perspective; those countries lost huge percentages of their population/workforce! It was good to think how that affected those nations “left behind”. The Czechoslovakia Foreign Institute stated that for small countries, the impact of the loss of one soul is twice that of larger countries who lose citizens. Interesting perspective that I can apply to other topics.
Countries realized that this mass exodus was extremely detrimental to their nation’s economies (and military power) thus many created ways to slow emigration down. Correspondingly, some countries tried to slow down the immigration inflows. Both often created “paper walls” to accomplish this. Those paper walls were all the extra bureaucracy one had to work through, along with the required paperwork, to reach their destination. Obviously there are many paper walls still in existence.
The author also spent a lot of time describing how many countries in the 1800s/1900s were trying to expel Jewish populations; it wasn’t just Nazi Germany. Poland was specifically highlighted with their scheme to send Jewish citizens to such far away places such as Mozambique.
One last note from the book helped explain the start of the Cold War. Stalin expected that after WWII he would be compensated with control of all of eastern Europe for the extremely high price the USSR paid in bloodshed as part of the Allied conquest of the Axis powers. This was again an interesting perspective which I had never before heard.
I have studied American immigration many times via my history classes, but never thought about it from the European perspective; those countries lost huge percentages of their population/workforce! It was good to think how that affected those nations “left behind”. The Czechoslovakia Foreign Institute stated that for small countries, the impact of the loss of one soul is twice that of larger countries who lose citizens. Interesting perspective that I can apply to other topics.
Countries realized that this mass exodus was extremely detrimental to their nation’s economies (and military power) thus many created ways to slow emigration down. Correspondingly, some countries tried to slow down the immigration inflows. Both often created “paper walls” to accomplish this. Those paper walls were all the extra bureaucracy one had to work through, along with the required paperwork, to reach their destination. Obviously there are many paper walls still in existence.
The author also spent a lot of time describing how many countries in the 1800s/1900s were trying to expel Jewish populations; it wasn’t just Nazi Germany. Poland was specifically highlighted with their scheme to send Jewish citizens to such far away places such as Mozambique.
One last note from the book helped explain the start of the Cold War. Stalin expected that after WWII he would be compensated with control of all of eastern Europe for the extremely high price the USSR paid in bloodshed as part of the Allied conquest of the Axis powers. This was again an interesting perspective which I had never before heard.
May 23, 2018
I wrote my bachelor’s thesis on emigration from Europe in the nineteenth century. So I had some background knowledge coming into this book. But that wasn’t enough to fuel me through this long haul through unpleasant episodes of history
This book starts late in the 19th century with Eastern European countries feeling left out of the power game. They resent that their population is leaving an overcrowded underdeveloped land in favor of opportunity, because they worry about losing military conscripts. They also think of population numbers as a measure of power. They want purity of population, not caring that these pure people are poor, miserable, uneducated.
However, they were ready to lose any and all their Jews. From this book I learned more about the depths of resentment and hatred and mistreatment of the Jews of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia. Seized property, proto-concentration camps, fines and fees
There was an especially tragic section about how countries restricted Jewish movement even as Nazi intentions became clearer and clearer.
It follows restrictions and occasional easing all the way past the fall of the Berlin Wall and even through current resentment of Muslims / Syrians and Africans.
The book was very repetitive, ridiculously detailed, and way too long.
Know that the book’s goal was to teach you about how these countries were and still are obsessed with “creating homogenous populations and reinforcing national sovereignty” (Kindle loc 4136). Then you don’t need to bother reading it
.
This book starts late in the 19th century with Eastern European countries feeling left out of the power game. They resent that their population is leaving an overcrowded underdeveloped land in favor of opportunity, because they worry about losing military conscripts. They also think of population numbers as a measure of power. They want purity of population, not caring that these pure people are poor, miserable, uneducated.
However, they were ready to lose any and all their Jews. From this book I learned more about the depths of resentment and hatred and mistreatment of the Jews of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia. Seized property, proto-concentration camps, fines and fees
There was an especially tragic section about how countries restricted Jewish movement even as Nazi intentions became clearer and clearer.
It follows restrictions and occasional easing all the way past the fall of the Berlin Wall and even through current resentment of Muslims / Syrians and Africans.
The book was very repetitive, ridiculously detailed, and way too long.
Know that the book’s goal was to teach you about how these countries were and still are obsessed with “creating homogenous populations and reinforcing national sovereignty” (Kindle loc 4136). Then you don’t need to bother reading it
.
Read
October 17, 2019An interesting topic I didn't know a whole lot about. The book focuses on the push factors of immigrants out of East Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. Globally, as cheap labor during the period, these immigrants didn't just show up at the door of Ellis Island, but around the globe, like Argentina and Brazil.
Much of the book is devoted to the policies of Eastern European states as they attempted to manage labor. When over population was too great, immigration was strong, especially in Austria-Hungry before World War I. Other times, states feared human capital sifting out of their hands due to immigration. The group most encouraged to leave Eastern Europe were the Jews, there's a lengthy portion of the book devoted to the proposed colonization of Jews to Madagascar.
The muddled differences between status of political or economic refugee were interesting in terms of how a state attempts define between the two.
As the book's narrative leads up to the early 21st century, the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe to the modern situation of immigration in the EU. It's very revealing to understand that these are age old debates, held in both the exiting and entering nations. The final conclusion was simple: be nice to immigrants. It is worth understanding the long history of global migration and more about cultures and nations immigrants come from. Optimistically, a clearer understanding of immigration and its' history could lead to more meaningful immigration policy with a more stable and free world.
Much of the book is devoted to the policies of Eastern European states as they attempted to manage labor. When over population was too great, immigration was strong, especially in Austria-Hungry before World War I. Other times, states feared human capital sifting out of their hands due to immigration. The group most encouraged to leave Eastern Europe were the Jews, there's a lengthy portion of the book devoted to the proposed colonization of Jews to Madagascar.
The muddled differences between status of political or economic refugee were interesting in terms of how a state attempts define between the two.
As the book's narrative leads up to the early 21st century, the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe to the modern situation of immigration in the EU. It's very revealing to understand that these are age old debates, held in both the exiting and entering nations. The final conclusion was simple: be nice to immigrants. It is worth understanding the long history of global migration and more about cultures and nations immigrants come from. Optimistically, a clearer understanding of immigration and its' history could lead to more meaningful immigration policy with a more stable and free world.
January 3, 2023
In The Great Departure, Tara Zahra describes the experiences of Eastern European emigrants, and the policies of nations that affected these emigrants from the late 19th Century, throughout both World Wars, the Cold War, and beyond. Zahra intent is also to reveal patterns in emigration and immigration policies among Eastern and Western states.
Tara Zahra reveals patterns in emigration policies among Eastern and Western European states (US included) that emerged in the late 19th century and continued throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century. The patterns include ideas of mobility being linked to freedom, the goal of states to create a homogenous society (with the ironic side effect of marginalized groups gaining additional mobility, at times), ways that states sought to use emigration to achieve their goals, the influence of colonial and mercantilist ideologies, using particular ethnic groups as scapegoats in order to avoid more fundamental problems, the adjustment of immigration policies in order to allow preferred or “ideal” immigrants, and a conflicting view between East and West on what freedom really means.
Tara Zahra reveals patterns in emigration policies among Eastern and Western European states (US included) that emerged in the late 19th century and continued throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century. The patterns include ideas of mobility being linked to freedom, the goal of states to create a homogenous society (with the ironic side effect of marginalized groups gaining additional mobility, at times), ways that states sought to use emigration to achieve their goals, the influence of colonial and mercantilist ideologies, using particular ethnic groups as scapegoats in order to avoid more fundamental problems, the adjustment of immigration policies in order to allow preferred or “ideal” immigrants, and a conflicting view between East and West on what freedom really means.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 24, 2021
The academic history monograph is a peculiar genre. I've routinely been shocked at how readable such books are, compared to academic books in other disciplines.
Anyhow, this book presents a clear and readable history of emigration (not immigration!) from Europe in the first half of the twentieth century or thereabouts, filling in "the other half" of the usual stories we Americans hear about the immigration that filled our cities. The book was particularly interesting in its focus on marginal periods of history that don't feature in the big war and industry narratives (such as Polish domestic policy in the 30s before the German invasion), and its focus on how people interacted with their governments in Europe.
My biggest complaint might have been that I wish it was more academic, funnily enough. Not being a historian myself, it's hard to get a sense of how the author thinks of how the book fits into other histories of the period, or what her approach is to the documents she's working with.
Anyhow, this book presents a clear and readable history of emigration (not immigration!) from Europe in the first half of the twentieth century or thereabouts, filling in "the other half" of the usual stories we Americans hear about the immigration that filled our cities. The book was particularly interesting in its focus on marginal periods of history that don't feature in the big war and industry narratives (such as Polish domestic policy in the 30s before the German invasion), and its focus on how people interacted with their governments in Europe.
My biggest complaint might have been that I wish it was more academic, funnily enough. Not being a historian myself, it's hard to get a sense of how the author thinks of how the book fits into other histories of the period, or what her approach is to the documents she's working with.
February 20, 2022
This book tells the story of Eastern European migration to North America (as well as South America and Western Europe), beginning in the mid-19th century, up until the present day. The book mostly focuses on migration policy (both on the part of the sending and the receiving country), rather than discussing in detail the experiences of the migrants' in their new homes. The author strives to show both positive and negative aspects of migration, but I would have been interested in more information about migrants' lives once reaching their destinations. I would also have been interested in more information about Eastern European communities in South America, which are mentioned in the introduction, but then never discussed again. Nevertheless, the author presents a thoughtful argument about a subject that is not extensively covered elsewhere.
Want to read
January 21, 2023First published March 21, 2016 to good notices. I'm interested in the topic from my exposure to the many Eastern Europeans who migrated to the mining camps in the American West around the time of WW1, when there were, let us say, *strong incentives* for folks to get the hell out of there! I recall at the Globe, Arizona cemetery, where I worked for a couple of years, the Croats were buried at one end of the cemetery, and the Serbs at the other!
"Between 1846 and 1940, more than 50 million Europeans moved to the Americas in one of the largest migrations of human history . . ." Wow. 50 million immigrants!
Anyway, gets pretty good notices here too, though none from my GR friends. I'll look into it later, when my TBR pile gets more manageable. Hah!
"Between 1846 and 1940, more than 50 million Europeans moved to the Americas in one of the largest migrations of human history . . ." Wow. 50 million immigrants!
Anyway, gets pretty good notices here too, though none from my GR friends. I'll look into it later, when my TBR pile gets more manageable. Hah!
July 12, 2018
This book, covering immigration from the 1850s to the present, puts a great deal into perspective about what we are seeing today. You also realize how much governments throughout this 175 years have manipulated people. There is so much politics involved and our own countries policies have always been less than generous. There is a lot of eye-opening information about Europe as well and some insights into just what was behind the two world wars. Hitler did not come up with some of his own policies on his own. They truly evolved from what was going on and eastern Europe for many years. No doubt, he took it to the max, but the groundwork has been laid for him.
March 26, 2020
It started out slow, but by the end I was really enjoying it. It's a book jam-packed with details--incredible, unbelievable details. With novels, sometimes I feel like I'm listening to a song, and I don't have to try very hard to guess what the second half of the rhyme will be. On the other hand, with history books like this, you just start to get into a groove, and then the rhythm changes on you.
I'm glad that I stuck it through to finish this, and I learned a lot because of it. The hard part now is making sense of it all. How do the countries told in this book translate to the images we have of them today? Has the underlying culture of xenophobia in any way changed? What comes next?
I'm glad that I stuck it through to finish this, and I learned a lot because of it. The hard part now is making sense of it all. How do the countries told in this book translate to the images we have of them today? Has the underlying culture of xenophobia in any way changed? What comes next?
March 9, 2020
Extremely interesting book. Most of what I knew about emigrants and migration came from learning about people wanting to enter the US. This book examines migration in a European context particularly Eastern Europe. Forced migration and forced limits on mobility were frequently-used tools to control "desirable" and "undesirable" residents. Of course, Jewish people were usually considered undesirable. The policies of the first quarter of the 20th century shaped the Holocaust and the years after. I can see reverberations in the news today. A fascinating look from a different angle.
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