CS/360
Course Syllabus
The history of Central and Eastern Europe was shaped by migrations in a major way. Both emigration and immigration have paid a significant role in the social and political history of the area. The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was one of the top ten countries that contributed most significantly to American immigration. An estimated 3,5-4 million citizens of the former Habsburg Monarchy left for the U.S. and subsequent waves of emigrants changed the social composition of Central Europe in a definitive way. After the mass migrations of the fin-de-siecle (between the 1880s and World War I) an important group of professionals and intellectuals left in the 1920s and 1930s contributing to the growth of American civilization. The U.S. also provided shelter to various groups of Eastern European citizens in the Cold War period, such as to the Displaced Persons right after 1945 or the Hungarian freedom fighters after 1956.
Central Europe acts no longer as a "push" area only. Parallel to the great exodus in the turn of the century, very significant waves returned from the United States already at the beginning of the 20th century. Later, in the 1960s and 1970s, Gastarbeiter (migrant workers) from the former Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey have become a major feature in the job market of Germany and Switzerland. France has received large numbers of people from the former French colonial empire, including specifically the Maghreb countries of North Africa. The more developed parts of the region, particularly Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Croatia, and Slovenia, have become a target of inward migrations from all around the less developed and war stricken areas of Eastern Europe. First looked upon favorably as signs and symbols of anti-Soviet behavior with a benevolent influence on the "dirty" part of the workplace, the influx of foreigners created xenophobia and an almost hysterical nationality outcry in an effort to stop immigration. The wider national and international implications belong to some of the most important political problems of Austria and the European Union today.
Students in this class examine the interactive patterns of outward and inward migrations from the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and its successor states. Attention will be given to the various waves of Austro-Hungarian emigration, to major figures and outstanding achievements, as well as to the question of immigration into Austria and other successor states of the former Habsburg Monarchy. Lectures will survey the period from the mid-19th century through recent years, giving ample attention to problem areas currently discussed in the large international literature on the subject and in the media. The course will also help students to understand the role of migrations in their own personal histories.
Basic knowledge of 19th and 20th century European and U.S. history
English
Lectures, organized discussions, student presentations
Attendance 10%, mid-term exam 30%, take-home paper 30%, final exam 30%
Required
| Week I | The age of migrations |
The nature and history of human migrations. Varieties of migration: local, regional, national, overseas, global. The sociology and social psychology of relocation: push factors and pull factors. Migration as an economic, social, and political phenomenon. Migration and recession, migration and social crisis, migration and political conflict. Remigration, returnees, migrant workers, forced relocation, voluntary and involuntary migrations. The impact of the two World Wars on migrations. The Cold War and after: toward global migrations?
International Migration Review, Vols. 1-, Nicholas Capaldi, ed. (1997), Paul Tabori (1972), Peter J. Taylor, 3rd. ed. (1993), Philip Taylor (1971)
| Week II | The social construction of Austro-Hungarian emigration |
Economic, social, and political crises in modern Austrian, Hungarian, and Austro-Hungarian history. The economic origins of Austro-Hungarian emigration. Austria-Hungary as one of the top ten providers of manpower for the United States. Regional differences in economic development and its impact on emigration. Ethnic groups, national minorities and their share in emigration. Emigration to and remigration from the U.S. Changing patterns of migrant groups: from unskilled laborers to specialized professionals.
Dirk Horder and Diethelm Knauf, eds. (1992), Julianna Puskás (1982), Albert Tezla, ed. (1993)
| Week III | Changing patterns of U.S. immigrations policies in the 19th and early 20th centuries |
"A nation of immigrants" (John F. Kennedy). Reactions to "old" versus "new" immigration. WASP groups in the 18th and 19th centuries: the English, the Scots, the Germans, the Dutch, the Scandinavians. Changes in the 1880s: the rising tide of South and East European immigration (Italians, Hungarians, Slavs, Jews); the beginning of Oriental immigration. The first Chinese Exclusion Bill (1882). From prejudice to xenophobia: the treatment of "new" immigrants.
Thomas Archdeacon (1983), August C. Bolino (1990), Leonard Dinnerstein and David M. Reimers (1988), Maldwyn Allen Jones (1960), Alan M. Kraut (1982, 1994), Carl Wittke (1964)
| Week IV | From the Literacy Bill to the Quota Laws of 1921 and 1924; the impact of U.S. immigration policies on Central Europe |
The establishment of immigrant control at Ellis Island (1892). Toward a Literacy Bill: strategies to stop "unwanted" immigrants. The bill vetoed by President Cleveland (1897), Taft (1912) and Wilson (1915); enacted over the veto of President Wilson in 1917. Measures to keep immigration under control: the secret government surveillance of European emigration, the Dillingham Commission (1907-1911) and the Dillingham Report. Stopping East European immigration: the Quota Laws of 1921 and 1924. The economic and social consequences of the curtailment of U.S. immigration in East-Central Europe.
Josef J. Barton (1974), John Higham (1988)
| Week V | Review session Mid-term exam |
| Week VI | World War I, the Peace Treaties of Paris and migrations in and from Central Europe: Professional and intellectual immigration into the U.S. |
Winners and losers of World War I. The punishing nature of the peace treaties. Redrawing the map of Europe and its ethnic consequences. New borders, new diasporas, new national and ethnic minorities. Social and political conflict in Central Europe after the War: the Bolshevik Revolution (1917) in Russia, soviet republics ("republics of council") in Hungary, Slovakia, Germany. Counterrevolutions. Inflation in Germany. Etatism, central government, thought control, the rise of dictatorships. Anti-Semitism: the first numerus clausus act in Europe (Hungary 1920). Jewish professional emigration to Germany and, after 1933, to the United States.
Lee Congdon (1991), Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn, eds. (1969), Laura Fermi (1971), Franz Goldner (1979), H. Stuart Hughes (1975), Martin Jay (1985)
| Week VII | The effects of World War II: The Displaced Persons Act; the Cold War and its impact on emigration from "Eastern" Europe (Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, Poland 1980) |
Massive relocations during and after World War II. Totalitarian minority policies: forced relocation in Stalin's Soviet Union and in Hitler's Europe. The Holocaust. The relocation of twelve million Germans after WWII. "Displaced Persons" to the U.S. The Iron Curtain during the Cold War. Mass emigration from Eastern Europe after revolutions and uprisings. The role of East European émigré communities and their leaders during the Cold War in the U.S.
Michael R. Marrus (1985)
| Week VIII | Turning the tide: the Gastarbaiter in the 1960s and 1970 in Western Germany and Switzerland |
The appearance of Yugoslav, Turkish, and Greek Gastarbeiter (migrant workers) in Western Europe, particularly in Western Germany and Switzerland. The muslim population of Germany. The idea of "blood-related" German citizenship based on the ius sanguinis (the law of blood): Germans of Romania and other countries "bought" by the Federal Government of Germany. Territorially based citizenship in France based on the ius soli (the law of the soil). The rise of xenophobia in West Germany.
Rogers Brubaker (1992), David Cesarini and Mary Fulbrook, eds. (1996)
| Week IX | Migrations into Austria and other developed countries in Central Europe today and their political consequences |
Ethnic minorities and their expulsion in Eastern Europe (Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia) in the 1980s. The fall of the Berlin wall and the rise of anti-foreignism in Europe. Migrations in Germany after the unification with the German Democratic Republic. The rise of racism and of the extreme right in France, Germany, Hungary, Romania, and Austria. Right wing parties and their immigration politics. The wars in Yugoslavia and the refugee question in the Balkans. Austrian sentiments vis-a-vis immigrants from the East in the late 1990s: the case of Jörg Haider and the right wing FPÖ party.
Peter J. Taylor, 3rd. ed. (1993), current literature on Germany and Austria to become available in English
| Week X | Review session Final exam |
A reader has been compiled for this course and is available through the program office
Archdeacon, Thomas. Becoming American. New York: The Free Press, 1983.
Barton, Josef J. Peasants and Strangers: Italians, Rumanians, and Slovaks in an American City, 1890-1950. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974.
Bodnar, John. The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1985.
Bolino, August C. The Ellis Island Source Book. Washington, D.C.: Kensington Historical Press, 1990.
Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany. Cambridge, Mass.--London, England: Harvard University Press, 1992.
Capaldi, Nicholas, ed. Immigration: Debating the Issues. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1997.
Cesarini, David and Mary Fulbrook, eds. Citizenship, Nationality and Migration in Europe. London and New York: Routledge, 1996.
Congdon, Lee. Exile and Social Thought. Hungarian Intellectuals in Germany and Austria 1919-1933. Princeton University Press, 1991.
Dinnerstein, Leonard and David M. Reimers, Ethnic Americans. A History of Immigration. 3rd ed. HarperCollins, 1988.
Divine, Robert A. American Immigration Policy, 1924-1952. Yale University Press, 1957.
Fermi, Laura. Illustrious Immigrants. The Intellectual Migration from Europe 1930- 1941. 2nd rev. ed. Chicago-London: University of Chicago Press, 1971.
Fleming, Donald and Bernard Bailyn, eds. The Intellectual Migration. Europe and America, 1930-1960. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969.
Goldner, Franz. Austrian Emigration 1938 to 1945. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1979.
Herget, Winfried and Karl Ortseifen, eds. The Transit of Civilisation from Europe to America. Essays in Honor of Hans Galinsky. Tübingen: Günter Narr Verlag, 1986.
Higham, John. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism 1860-1925. Rutgers University Press, 1988.
Horder, Dirk and Diethelm Knauf, eds. Fame, Fortune and Sweet Liberty. The Great European Emigration. Bremen: Temmen, 1992.
Hughes, H. Stuart. The Sea Change. The Migration of Social Thought, 1930-1965. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975.
International Migration Review, The Center for Migration Studies of New York. Vol. 1-
Jay, Martin. Permanent Exiles: Essays on the International Migration from Germany to America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
Jones, Maldwyn Allen. American Immigration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.
Kraut, Alan M. The Huddled Masses. The Immigrant in American Society, 1880-1921. Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1982.
Kraut, Alan M. Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and the "Immigrant Menace". BasicBooks, 1994.
Marrus, Michael R. The Unwanted. European Refugees in the Twentieth Century. New York-Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Puskás Julianna. From Hungary to the United States (1880-1914). Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1982.
Reimers, David M. Unwelcome Strangers: American Identity and the Turn Against Immigration. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
Tabori, Paul. An Anatomy of Exile. A Semantic and Historical Study. London: Harrap, 1972.
Taylor, Peter J. Political Geography: World-Economy, Nation-State and Locality. 3rd. ed. Longman, 1993.
Taylor, Philip. The Distant Magnet. European Emigration to the U.S.A. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
Tezla, Albert, ed. The Hazardous Quest. Hungarian Immigrants in the United States 1895-1920. Budapest: Corvina, 1993.
Wittke, Carl. We Who Built America. The Saga of the Immigrant. 2nd ed. Cleveland: Press of Western Reserve University, 1964.