„…hogy Angliába igen jó kereset van, felbátorodva indultunk el.” A 19. század végi kivándorlás kezdeti évei

Bodovics, Éva

Hajnal István Kör Társadalomtörténeti Egyesület – Városi Levéltár és Kutatóintézet – Eszterházy Károly Katolikus Egyetem Líceum Kiadó

’…since there is such a good earning in England we set off emboldened.’ Early Years of Emigration at the End of the 19th Century ----- The topic of American emigration may seem to be fully covered topic on the basis of the extensive quantity of literature. However, the early years, the period of initial waves of the emigration has been given too little attention. This is because we have statistical reports with extensive data only from 1899. In addition to that, the vast majority of the 1- 1,5 million people left their country in between 1905 and 1910. It is understandable why the focus of investigations have been shifted to this late period. However, the study of the initial period could getting us closer to understanding the causes of emigration. Since all reasons occur in scientific discourses (demographic pressure, tenure system, obsolete production technologies, increased taxes etc.) were also present during later periods, yet, these factors did not push hundreds or thousands of people to leave their homes. Researchers of the problem has not yet raised the simple question: why exactly did the number of emigrants significantly increase from 1879-1880? In my opinion, severe impoverishment and heavy indebtedness caused by weather anomalies occurring in the second half of the 1870s and series of poor yields, including the disastrous harvest of 1879, made people – especially inhabitants of Upper Hungary – seek work abroad. These early years of emigration period concealed the most dangers because all those informational and social networks, which during later years made entry and exit processes relatively safe, had not been established yet. In my study, I will describe, based on interview transcripts recorded with emigrants or people seeking to emigrate from Zemplén, those informational and social networks, and routes that enabled emigration processes to happen. Besides the reports of those planning to emigrate, the reactions of authorities to the mass migration and their means to make it stop could be also interesting and this is too will be highlighted in this presented study.

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http://publikacio.uni-eszterhazy.hu/7748/1/273_Bodovics.pdf

Bodovics, Éva (2023) „…hogy Angliába igen jó kereset van, felbátorodva indultunk el.” A 19. század végi kivándorlás kezdeti évei In: Hálózatok és kapcsolatok. Hajnal István Kör Társadalomtörténeti Egyesület – Városi Levéltár és Kutatóintézet – Eszterházy Károly Katolikus Egyetem Líceum Kiadó. pp. 273-291.

http://publikacio.uni-eszterhazy.hu/7748/