Migrant Nation-Builders: The Development of Austria-Hungary\u27s National Projects in the United States, 1880S-1920S

This dissertation charts the ways in which migrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire crafted new forms of identification in the United States, complicating their relationships with their home and host states. Transatlantic migration and migrants’ heightened nationalism were, I argue, causative factors in the dismantling of the Habsburg Empire into ethnically-based states after Word War I. Rather than focusing on a single ethnic group, Migrant Nation-Builders looks broadly at early multilingual immigrant institutions, Austro-Hungarian and American perceptions of panslavism, and the splintering of immigrant institutions in the United States along linguistic lines. The project traces the long arm of homeland authorities, especially the Hungarian government, in trying to manage migrant loyalty in America, and follows return migrants from the United States back to East Central Europe to track their influence on domestic politics. Finally, it examines the dual effects on migration of new borders in Eastern Europe and restrictive immigration legislation in the United States