The great departure
Subtitle: mass migration from Eastern Europe and the making of the free world
By: Tara Zahra
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 392
ISBN-13: 9780393078015
Subjects: Emigration and immigration; History; Immigrants; Migrations; East Europeans
Description: "A panoramic, eye-opening history of the vast migration of Eastern Europeans to the West by a recent winner of a MacArthur Fellowship. Between 1846 and 1940, more than 50 million Europeans moved to the Americas, irrevocably changing both their new lands and the ones they left behind. Their immigration fostered an idea of the 'land of the free,' and yet more than a third returned home again. In a groundbreaking study, Tara Zahra brilliantly explores the deeper story of this unprecedented movement of people. As villages emptied, some blamed traffickers in human labor, targeting Jewish emigration agents. Others saw opportunity: to seed colonies of migrants like the Polish community in Argentina, or to gain economic advantage from an inflow of foreign currency, or to reshape their populations by encouraging the emigration of minorities. These precedents would shape the Holocaust, the closing of the Iron Curtain, and tragedies of ethnic cleansing, while also forming notions of social solidarity, human rights, and freedom--whether it be the freedom to move or the freedom to stay home"--Provided by publisher.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 297-369) and index.
Table of contents: title: "Not a golden country"; title: Travel agents on trial; title: "The man farthest down"; title: Happy and unhappy returns; title: The first final solution; title: Work will set you free; title: The freedom train; title: Free to stay or go.