The Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World

by Tara Zahra

Overview

“With a combination of deft historical analysis, sparkling prose, and careful attention to individual stories, both poignant and instructive, The Great Departure is brimming with important and suggestive lessons from the past for thinking about the worldwide dynamics of emigrants and refugees in our own day.”—Norman M. Naimark, Stanford University

Between 1846 and 1940, more than 50 million Europeans moved to the Americas, irrevocably changing both their new homes and the ones they left behind. In this groundbreaking study, Tara Zahra explores the deeper story of this astonishing movement of people—one of the largest in human history.

The great exodus out of Eastern Europe hollowed out villages with dizzying speed. As villages emptied and the fear of depopulation ran rampant, anxiety over “American fever” prevailed, leading to the scapegoating of Jewish emigration agents. Yet others saw vast opportunity: to seed colonies of migrants like the Polish community in Argentina, to gain economic advantage from an inflow of foreign currency, or to reshape their communities in a new land. In the United States, their migration fostered the notion of the “land of the free.” Globally, 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.

A sweeping history of the most consequential social phenomenon of the twentieth century, The Great Departure gives poignant attention to the individuals whose lives were transformed by these decades of mass departure, and a keen historical perspective on their continuing legacy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393078015
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/21/2016
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Tara Zahra is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a professor of history at the University of Chicago. Recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Table of Contents

Introduction: "Not a Golden Country" 3

Chapter 1 Travel Agents on Trial 23

Chapter 2 "The Man Farthest Down" 65

Chapter 3 Happy and Unhappy Returns 105

Chapter 4 The First Final Solution 143

Chapter 5 Work Will Set You Free 181

Chapter 6 The Freedom Train 217

Chapter 7 Free to Stay or Go 255

Postscript: Against the World 293

Acknowledgments 303

Notes 307

Bibliography 373

Index 383

Editorial Reviews

02/29/2016
Zahra (Kidnapped Souls), a MacArthur fellow and professor of modern European history at the University of Chicago, examines the political and demographic developments and policies that influenced and were influenced by mass population movements from Eastern Europe to the Americas between the 1880s and the early 21st century. She shows how migration sapped the demographic strength of some pre-WWI empires—for example, 3.5 million people emigrated from Austria-Hungary between 1876 and 1910—though remittances from such families to relatives back home also “expanded peasant landholdings, renovated churches, and provided relief in cases of natural disaster.” Zahra relates that during the interwar period, some newly established countries encouraged the emigration of ethnic minorities, while some Polish leaders planned what was euphemistically called an “evacuation” of their country’s sizable Jewish population to Madagascar. After WWII, she shows the ways migration policies articulated Cold War propaganda, as when one Polish publication told Polish workers who had sought work elsewhere that “whoever does not return ... sentences himself to a life of hopeless exile.” Zahra, an assiduous, multilingual researcher who mined sources in Czech, English, French, German, and Polish, is a graceful writer who has produced a very fine study. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Provocative….[Zahra] has uncovered a narrative that is complex, multifaceted."

Chicago Tribune - Julia M. Klein

"Zahra handles this immensely complicated and multidimensional history with remarkable clarity and feeling."

Foreign Affairs - Robert Levgold

03/01/2016
Over the past 125 years, Eastern European governments have changed from monarchy to totalitarian, but common belief maintains that a large population is a necessity for economic and military power. Zahra (history, Univ. of Chicago; The Lost Children) chronicles the lengthy wave of migration that altered the makeup of both Eastern Europe and the United States. As people left poverty and oppression in the East for the hope of prosperity and freedom in the West, governments fearful of losing workers, soldiers, or persons considered prime bloodlines, became alarmed by the mass exodus. Rather than addressing the conditions causing the emigration, ruling powers in Eastern Europe made it increasingly difficult to leave. An exception to this was the Jewish population, which Eastern nations wanted to be rid of and other countries did not welcome. Ben Shephard's The Long Road Home covers migration after World War II at almost twice the length, but Zahra's skillful use of first-person accounts and extensive documentation make this is an absorbing and comprehensive history. VERDICT Readers with an interest in Eastern European history and the history of U.S. ethnic groups will find this book fascinating.—Laurie Unger Skinner, Coll. of Lake Cty., Waukegan, IL

Library Journal

★ 2016-01-26
The story of more than 55 million people who succumbed to "America fever" and emigrated from Eastern Europe in the century before World War II. In this unusually penetrating view of "one of the greatest migrations in human history," MacArthur fellow Zahra (Modern European History/Univ. of Chicago; The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe's Families after World War II, 2011, etc.) analyzes the complex motives that drove the behaviors of migrants and nations during years (1846-1940) of tumultuous human movement. Individuals, facing economic and other pressures at home, wrestled with the conflicting advice of earlier migrants: "There is happiness here," said a Detroit letter writer in 1891; others cautioned friends in the old country to stay home. Indeed, many disappointed migrants found that their "greatest hope was to return home." Meanwhile, Eastern European officials linked westward emigration to "slavery, exploitation, and moral ruin," seeking to retain the most desirable citizens as workers and conscripts while encouraging ethnic and religious minorities to leave. European governments' manipulation of emigration extended to creating colonies of settlers in Brazil, Argentina, and elsewhere and maintaining state-sponsored boardinghouses in major U.S. cities, all aimed at reinforcing attachment to home countries. At the same time, European states arrested and tried travel agents accused of seducing migrants into leaving for America. Writing with an ease and authority borne of a mastery of her material, Zahra uncovers the common threads that characterized these migrations from the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire through the Depression, world wars, and refugee crises. Using letters, diaries, and the work of authors from Joseph Roth to Louis Adamic, Zahra brings to life the sometimes-shattering effects of migration on marriages and families. Her reflections on the meaning of freedom, as well as the conflict between the individual's right to move and the well-being of his or her homeland, add greatly to the richness of this account. A significant work of social history bound to please serious readers and scholars.

Kirkus Reviews

"A perceptive history of migration and eastern Europe."

Economist

"Offers a deep, multifaceted understanding of mass migration."

Times Higher Education - Hester Vaizey

"Meticulously researched, The Great Departure shows mass emigration from all sides, including individual stories of poverty and maltreatment—but also positive changes that emigration brought to women. This book is equally relevant for Americans, showing why and how many of their ancestors left their countries, and for Europeans confronted with an unprecedented wave of immigrants today."

Slavenka Drakulic

"In this riveting book, Tara Zahra takes the story of immigration that Americans know so well and weaves it into a larger story of emigration that we have long neglected. Full of hope and promise, of desperation and tragedy, it is perhaps the most important story of the twentieth century. With all the drama of a novel and all the nuance of history writing at its best, The Great Departure is a must-read."

Alison Johnson

"With a combination of deft historical analysis, sparkling prose, and careful attention to individual stories, both poignant and instructive, The Great Departure is brimming with important and suggestive lessons from the past for thinking about the worldwide dynamics of emigrants and refugees in our own day."

Norman M. Naimark

"In this spare, deeply researched, and unfailingly analytical book, Tara Zahra frees the great migration of Eastern Europeans to the West from romantic myth and dissects all its human and moral complexities."

Robert D. Kaplan

"A meticulous multilayered account of the relationship between physical mobility and political liberty, and the often fleeting manner in which one or the other is restricted out of expediency."

Los Angeles Review of Books - Benjamin Cunningham

"Erudite and exciting…[C]ombines analytical depth with an impressive breadth of personal human stories."

Financial Times - Tony Barber

"A perceptive history of migration and eastern Europe."

Economist

In a year when immigration is a major issue, this audiobook is especially timely and instructive. It tells the story of the greatest era of population movement the world has ever seen through personal stories and historical writing that tells why some people left and thrived and others went back to where they came from. Narrator Elizabeth Wiley approaches the material using a professorial tone and clipped diction that accentuates the history. She reads the facts well, pronounces the myriad Eastern European names accurately, and keeps the book moving. However, she doesn’t provide enough emphasis on the book’s personal and emotional components. While her delivery is authoritative, she misses making a connection with the listener. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2016 - AudioFile