III. SoCIAL SCIENCES
2. Historical turning Points
First modern effects of emigration can be seen after the Hungarian revolution in the years 1849-1851. Great political pressure and asylum seeking appears just like in developing countries of today making move out not only the elites but a higher amount of population involved or feeling involved and suspected by involvement. Although real growth in Hungary eventuated only in the 1880’s the first great emigrational wave from Europe to the overseas started in the 1830’s even Eastern Europe connected to the process later. It doesn’t mean that slow outflows couldn’t have a character. Migration is not only economic or political process but might have individual importance of those contributing to a country’s progress. Some examples are Michael Kovats de Fabriczy one of the founders of the US Cavalry, serving as an officer in the Continental Army during the American revolutionary War.1 He was born
* The study was written in and sponsored by the project “társadalmi konfliktusok – társadalmi jól-lét és biztonság – Versenyképesség és társadalmi fejlődés”
(tÁMoP-*
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in Karcag, Hungary under name of Kovács Mihály in 1724. The nobleman after serving Maria Theresa’s and Frederick the Great’s cavalry offered his sword to Benjamin Franklin in France.2 or another example of economic and cultural importance: Ágoston Haraszthy, born at Pest, Hungary in 1812. The estate and crop owner nobleman travelled to America with his cousin just for to see this blessed country for himself. There he became the founder of the California vine culture as often called “Father of California Viticulture”, the founder of the Buena Vista vineyards and the first planter in Wisconsin too.3 These are quiet well-known examples the following might be less famous but more important for us to represent those were persecuted after the fall of the Hungarian revolution in 1849. tivadar rombauer was born at Lőcse (present Levoča in Slovakia) in 1803. He became owner of a steel industry founder of another at Ózd and the main weapon supporter of the revolution and the war of independence. After the fall of Arad where his duty was the leading of the military defense he had to escape to America through London. His sons and grandsons settling down in St. Louis immediately assimilated growing up to engineers working on the transcontinental railroad or even planning Eads Bridge. today descendant are owners of the rombauer Vineyards in California.4 The great outflow of Forty-Eighters resulted only 2 710 Hungarians lived in the US by 1860.5 Wars, revolutions and a consequence misery were the most important factors behind emigration till the end of the 19th century and the main destination was the US. target countries didn’t change just economic reasons emerged in the last decades of that century.
About fifty million people shipped to the Americas since and before the First World War: 35 million to the US. Almost four million went there from the Austro-Hungarian Empire between 1861-1913 and most of them only after 1899. About one third of them came back to their home within 2-5 years. The circulation and the whole migration was influenced by pure economic reasons: a growing period pulled the labor force and from the other side a crisis pushed them individually even as interpreting on population level.
4.2.2.A-11/1/KoNV-2012-0069).
1 PÓKA-PIVNy Aladár – ZACHAr József: Az amerikai függetlenségi háború magyar hőse - Kováts Mihály ezredes élete (1724-1779). Zrínyi Kiadó, Budapest, 1982.
2 MAPPEN, Marc – LUrIE, Maxine N.: Hungarians. In: Encyclopedia of New Jersey.
rutgers University Press. 2004 395.
3 MCGINty, Brian: Strong Wine: The Life and Legend of Agoston Haraszthy. Stanford University Press 1998.
4 KoUDELA Pál: Négy város – Négy család a Felvidéken. ráció Kiadó, Budapest (Under publication)
5 VIDA István Kornél: Hungarian Émigrés in the American Civil War: A History and Biographical Dictionary. McFarland, Jefferson. 2011.
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Structurally the process can be characterized by two main components:
peasants and Jewish craftsmen. reasons extended from labor market and prices to political pressure, persecution.6
Hungarian citizens immigrated to the US between 1871-19137
US Immigration
Office Data Harbors Data Hungarian Statistical Office Data
1871-1879 5 597 7 682
-1880-1889 115 252 164 119
-1890-1899 235 895 261 444
-1900-1909 1 094 116 1 171 758 854 584
1910-1913 410 480 433 230 315 498
The war and the influenza epidemic slowed down out- or inflows but the real turning point in migration occurred when the Emergency Quota Act came into force in the US in 1921 excluding immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe by limiting their number year by year on their rate in the 1910 US census. The basis of the calculations changed to the 1890 census three years later.
Foreign Born Population by World region in the United States8
Regions population
was born 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920
Northern-Europe (Great Britain,
Ireland, Scandinavia)
3 212 431 4 056 160 3 917 815 3 953 947 3 501 149
Western-Europe (Austria, France,
Germany, etc.) 2 287 458 3 232 757 3 286
834 3 352 378 2 740 767
6 PUSKÁS Julianna: Migráció Kelet-Közép-Európában 19. és 20. században. In: Regio Kisebbségtudományi Szemle 1991. Vol. 2. Nr. 4.
7 PUSKÁS Julianna: Kivándorló magyarok az Egyesült Államokban 1880-1940. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest 1982. 443-446.
8 GIBSoN, Campbell – LENNoN, Emily: Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-Born Population of the United States: 1850 to 1990. Population Division Working Paper No. 29.
Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census 1999.
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Southern-Europe (Italy, Spain,
Greece, etc.) 248 620 728 851 1 674 648 4 500 932 5 670 927 Eastern-Europe
(russia, Poland,
Hungary, etc.) 182 371 512 464 1 134
680 2 956
783 3 731 327
Asia 107 630 113 383 120 248 191 484 237 950
Africa 2 204 2 207 2 538 3 992 16 126
Australia, oceania 6 859 9 353 8 820 11 450 14 626
Latin-America 90 073 107 307 137 458 279 514 588 843 Northern-America
(Canada) 717 286 980 938 1 179 922 1 209 717 1 138 174
Comparing foreign born population in years 1910 (or even 1920, the relevant year for a law of 1921) and 1890 the intention of exclusion is clearly visible.
The most preferred target country for centuries lost its position for Hungarians;
emigration to the US suddenly fell down since 1921 but the overseas remained in minds as a possibility, a hope till today as we will see below.
Along with the US Australia and Canada were important destinations.
Composition by gender shows classic picture of migration as long as 68.7 % of emigrants were male between 1899-1913, mainly active aged young men without their family, industrial and agricultural workers. From the viewpoint of the countries overseas immigration was basic element of demographic growth.
Census population at the end of and Immigrants during the decades in Canada (thousands)9
Decades
1851-1860
1861-1870
1871-1880
1881-1890
1891-1900
1901-1910
1911-1920
Population 3 230 3 689 4 325 4 833 5 371 7 207 8 788
Netimmigration 182 -150 -54 -144 -130 810 311
9 Statistics Canada. Government of Canada. 1851-1920 Censuses.
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As we can see the real turning point was the turn of the century. In 1880 only two Hungarians immigrated to the country, the next year only one, in 1883 their number was 38. In the following years 7 and 26 immigrants went there from Hungary (Austro-Hungarian Empire with birth place in Hungary).
An interesting case of immigrants and a special individual influence on migration can be observed in the life of Pál Esterházy, born Johannes Baptista Vintetius Packh, commonly known as János Packh; in North America he signed Paul o. d’Esterházy. obviously not an Esterházy only rumored at his birth in 1831 but used this name despite any protest of the aristocrat family.
The non-real Esterházy fled to London and later to the US after his participation of the fallen revolution forced to do so and became a federal immigration officer until 1870 when the Government’s new law restricted ability for a position as an officer for US citizens only. In the following years he founded the First Hungarian-American Colonization Company in the US but in 1885 the Canadian Pacific railway invited him to assist in the relocation, from the United States to western Canada, of immigrants from Austria-Hungary. The same year he became a Government official of immigration in Canada and started to organize a “New Hungary” in Canada. He established the Hungarian Immigration and Colonization Aid Society and recruited Hungarian miners from Pennsylvania and peasants from Austria-Hungary. In 1885 he established a settlement near Minnedosa, Manitba, at a place that later became known as Huns Valley. The following year an additional group of immigrants established a second settlement, which was soon called Esterhaz (later Esterhazy), in the Qu’Appelle valley of the North-West territories.10 As a result in 1893 eve 241 immigrants arrived from Hungary to Canada and altogether 1 081 until 1900. Between 1901 and 1914 the number of Hungarian immigrants in Canada boosted up to 6 506. Most of them settled down in Saskatchewan and several villages was named originally in Hungarian like Halmok, otthon, Békevár (today Kipling) etc. The city of Esterházy counted 900 inhabitants by 1902 and Saskatchewan was called Little Hungary before the First World War although only 11 648 Hungarians lived in Canada by 1911 and 6 534 of them in Saskatchewan with a total population of 492 432 that year.
The Immigration Act of 1924 in the United States limited annual European immigration to 2% of the number of people from that country living in the United States in 1890. 62 435 Hungarian born lived in the US in 1890 but in 1920 the number of them increased to 397 283. The Act highly reduced
10 WILLMott, Donald E.: Ethnic solidarity in the Esterhazy area, 1882–1940. In: Ethnic Canadians: culture and education. Ed. KoVACS, M. L. Canadian Plains research Center, University of regina, 1978. 76-167.
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immigration from Eastern European nationalities that had only small populations in the US in 1890. The previous 0.7% of Hungarians in total population compared to the latter 2.9%. The most popular destination for emigration lost its place but not in minds as we will see. Despite the exclusion in the US Canada remained a target country for Hungarian emigration after the First World War a new wave begun to emigrate there, Canadian in the next decade Hungarian population in Canada increased with 37 000. Both political and economic factors motivated emigration; not only farmers to the western territories like before 1920 to Manitoba or Saskatchewan but rather to the industrialized eastern cities like Montreal, toronto, Hamilton and Windsor. 40 500 Hungarian lived in Canada in 1931 and 54 500 a decade later. Integration developed as long as institutions like schools, churches, libraries and associations or even newspapers such as the Canadai Magyar Farmer (1910-1918) and the Kanadai Magyar Újság (1924-1976) came into existence. The third emigrational wave to Canada was after the Second World War. refugees, asylum seekers, political persecution are dominant, officers, military officers had to flee but tradesmen and owners of companies the communist country socialized also fled abroad, many of them to Canada. The latter had asset in employment by knowing English unlike the former officers.
Hungarians in Canada11
Census
year 1901 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951 1961 1971 1981
Number
of residents 1 549 11 648 13 181 40 582 54 598 60 460 126 220 131 890 116 395
Since 1924 and even now the most relevant target countries are Germany and Austria for Hungarian emigration but sub periods are not as easy to differentiate as was in the previous era. Between the two wars migration outflows decrease from Hungary mainly because of the political limitations of the German speaking territories. The prosecutions and the Second World War emphasized the political and religious refugees’ role in migration and after the war about 250 thousand people fled from the fore coming communism, most of them to Western European countries and America. With the beginning of totalitarian governing and russian rule outflows depressed, controlled and was forbidden until 1989 only the revolution in 1956 resulted a higher number of emigrants
11 DrEISZIGEr, Nándor F.: research Note: Hungarians in the Canadian West. Prairie Forum. Vol. 10, No. 2. Fall 1985. 437.
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approximately 200 000 of whom 36 637 fled to the US.12 We can consider 1948 a turning point or even 1989 but the main courses didn’t change then.
Changing home was difficult, expensive; to know another language is rare, to travel is hard. Searching for better conditions lead to a general change in lifestyle, identity and relations. Thus interpretations emerged in sociology after the Second World War emphasized the chains of relations needed for and individual to emigrate and social factors mainly economic migration was embedded. Path dependence or structural changes could influence migration as well as family strategies.13