Death of a Nation? Debating the Great Transatlantic Emigration from Hungary (1900-1914)

The turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century was witness to an unprecedented wave of emigration from East Central Europe, with an estimated 1-1.5 million people leaving for the United States from the territory of Hungary. Such loss of population, most young males in their prime, shocked the nation and served as a subject for discussion in various forms and on multiple levels of discourse, from the newspaper reports through literary depictions, to scholarly publications and conferences. In this paper I examine significant monographs as well as conference volumes and proceedings, analyzing the major opinions and debates surrounding the causes and consequences of the Great Transatlantic Emigration. I discuss the most significant publications that appeared before the coming of the First World War, which put an end to mass emigration from Europe. These works in a sense represented the best that Hungarian migration studies had to offer for more than half a century, which makes them particulary worthy of scholarly attention

"’The New World is An Other World’

The process of migration includes the movement between relatively distant geographical locations as well as often facing considerable cultural differences between the sending and receiving countries. At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century, millions of emigrants from East Central Europe and Southern Europe sought their personal dreams in America, but had painfully little information at their disposal about the country, and were consequently in for a considerable “culture shock.” This paper examines the possible sources of information for soon-to-become transatlantic migrants from Europe in general, and from Hungary in particular. It analyzes the various types of “booster literature,” along with the people who had an interest in its publication, and offers a case study of handbooks and guidebooks written specifically for Hungarian emigrants to America during the first two decades of the twentieth century

The "New World is An Other World": Hungarian Transatlantic Emigrants' Handbooks and Guidebooks, 1903-1939

The process of migration includes the movement between relatively distant geographical locations as well as often facing considerable cultural differences between the sending and receiving countries. At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century, millions of emigrants from East Central Europe and Southern Europe sought their personal dreams in America, but had painfully little information at their disposal about the country, and were consequently in for a considerable “culture shock.” This paper examines the possible sources of information for soon-to-become transatlantic migrants from Europe in general, and from Hungary in particular. It analyzes the various types of “booster literature,” along with the people who had an interest in its publication, and offers a case study of handbooks and guidebooks written specifically for Hungarian emigrants to America during the first two decades of the twentieth century