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Abstract
This article analyses whether the Jews leaving Tsarist Russia and the Austro‐Hungarian Empire, part of the transatlantic mass migration of the end of the nineteenth century, became subject to state control. Most emigrants from Eastern Europe in this period passed through the ports of Bremen, Hamburg and Antwerp. In the 1880s only a few emigrants were not welcome in America and sent back to Europe, but economic competition and the supposed health threat immigrants posed meant the US became the trendsetter in implementing protectionist immigration policy in the 1890s. More emigrants were returned to Europe because of the newly erected US federal immigration control stations, but many more were denied the possibility to leave for the United States by the remote control mechanism which the American authorities enforced on the European authorities and the shipping companies. At the Russian–German border and the port of Antwerp, shipping companies stopped transit migrants who were deemed medically unacceptable by American standards. The shipping companies became subcontractors for the American authorities as they risked heavy fines if they transported unwanted emigrants. The Belgian authorities refused to collaborate with the Americans and defended their sovereignty, and made shipping companies in the port of Antwerp solely responsible for the American remote migration control. Due to the private migration control at the port of Antwerp transit migrants became stuck in Belgium. The Belgian authorities wanted these stranded migrants to return “home.” It seems that the number of stranded migrants remained manageable as the Belgian authorities did not make the shipping companies pay the bill. They were able to get away by making some symbolic gestures and these migrants were supported by charitable contributions from the local Jewish community.
Notes
1. Emigrants could also be found among the second class passengers, including those who were willing to pay slightly more to circumvent US immigration control. Around the turn of the century, second class tickets were about US$10 more than steerage, and the volume of passengers in this class was about 10% of the total in steerage. See correspondence between the directors of the Holland America Line (HAL) and their head agent in New York and the minutes of the Continental Shipping Conference 1885–1914, Municipal Archives Rotterdam (MAR), HAL collection, 318.04, 72–7, 221–6, 265 and 580; 318.14 1. See also Fairchild, Science at the Borders, 126–8.
2. Letter of head of emigration inspection to governor, 29 April 1900. Provincial Archive Antwerp (PAA), Scheepvaart, 98; Annual Report of the Emigration Inspection, 1913. City Archive Antwerp, Modern Archive (MA) 13830/462. Between 1905 and 1914, 10% of those “thousands of” Russian Jews who had already bought a ticket and addressed the Jewish Colonisation Association’s information bureaux for help in financing the train fee travelled via Antwerp. See Alroey, “Bureaucracy, Agents and Swindlers,” 14. The Jewish mass migration from Romania seems to have been well organised by the Jewish philanthropic organisation in concert with the authorities in Britain and the US, and they probably bypassed Antwerp, as no trace of them is to be found in the archival documentation we consulted. See Kissman, “The Immigration of Rumanian Jews,” 2–3.
3. Fahrmeier et al., Migration Control in the North Atlantic World; Caestecker, Alien Policy in Belgium, 1–52.
4. Engelsing, Bremen als Auswanderungshafen, passim; Feys, “Gateways to the New World,” 133.
5. In 1898, 90% of the transatlantic passengers from Antwerp travelled with the RSL: Schreiber, L’immigration juive en Belgique, 171.
6. In this paper we do not address the push factors explaining the emigration or flight of Jewish migrants; thus our analysis has little to say about the volume of the migration flow, which was largely determined by factors in the countries of emigration. An analysis of the volume is only possible starting from the places of departure and looking into those who left and those who stayed. For the dynamics of out‐migration, see Klier, “Emigration Mania in Late‐Imperial Russia”; Massil, Patterns of Emigration; Haumann, Geschichte der Ostjuden; Kuznets, “Immigration of Russian Jews”; Alroey, “And I Remained Alone”; Gartner, “Women in the Great Jewish Migration.”
7. Klier, “Emigration Mania in Late Imperial Russia.”
8. Siegel, Österreichisches Judentum zwischen Ost und West, 97–109.
9. Meeting Alliance Antwerp, 1881. Yiddisher Visns Haftelekher Institut, New York (YIVO), Folder 13/5960‐6071, no. 6193. Schreiber, L’immigration juive en Belgique, 179; Spelkens, “Antwerp as a Port of Emigration,” 97ff.
10. We have only a breakdown of the number of transit migrants based on nationality from 1885 onwards and the qualitative data on transit migration are also limited, as the yearly reports of the Belgian Emigration Inspection Service were minimal before 1885. The annual reports of the Belgian Emigration Inspection Service are the source of our quantitative data.
11. Schreiber, L’immigration juive en Belgique, 175–7
12. Alroey, “Out of the Shtetl,” 111ff.
13. Neubach, Die Ausweisungen von Polen; Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers.
14. Brinkmann, “Travelling with Ballin,” 467.
15. Internal correspondence police, 1886. Governor of Galicië to police and heads of border districts, 3 July 1892, Archiwum Państwowe w Krakowie. C. k. Dyrekcja Policji w Krakowie (ARKR DPKR) 124: 3 and 43, quoted in Ronin, Eindverslag researchopdracht Archiwum Panstwowe Krakow.
16. Brinkmann, “Travelling with Ballin,” 470.
17. Kowalski, Przestepstwa emigracyjne w Galicji, 163ff.
18. We focus in this article on medical control, although many more immigrants were refused in the immigration control stations because of the likelihood that they might become a public charge or contract labour, but these latter refusals did not cause structural changes in the manner by which shipping lines and the authorities in the transit countries and the US processed the emigrants. Fairchild, Science at the Borders; Feys, “A Business Approach to Transatlantic Migration,” 392–403.
19. Zolberg, A Nation by Design.
20. Markel, Quarantine!, 16–81.
21. Ibid., 87–100.
22. PAA, Scheepvaart, 40, quoted in de Coster, Eindverslag research in Provinciaal Archief. Such a budget (25,000 Belgian francs) had already been voted for once in 1879, in order to repatriate 161 Russian Mennonites who had returned penniless from Brazil. From 1892 onwards, repatriation was probably an item on the budget of the Ministry of Justice, but the sum was small and mainly to be used for the repatriation of the insane, sick and very young. Ronin, Antwerpen en zijn “Russen”, 209–16; Caestecker, Alien Policy in Belgium, 174.
23. We do not know whether the RSL resumed the transport of Russians before March 1893: correspondence August 1892 to March 1893, MAR, HAL, 318.02, 112–21, 318.04, 221–6.
24. Markel, Quarantine!, 137–49.
25. “Many transatlantic aspirants got routed through Paris, hoping to get on the next boat out of Le Havre.” Green, The Pletzl of Paris, 43, 113, 221–2; PAA, Landverhuizing‐Emigratie, 60, quoted in de Coster, Eindverslag research in Provinciaal Archief.
26. General Belgian Archives (ARA), Archives Alien Department (AAD), 265–8.
27. The incubation period of the cholera bacillus was believed to be seven days and a sea trip from Russia generally took five days, so another two days in quarantine were considered necessary: Rapport du Conseil Supérieur d’hygiène publique, 1893, 54–8 and 187–190; PAA, Landverhuizing‐Emigratie, 60, quoted in de Coster, Eindverslag research in Provinciaal Archief.
28. Letter of Minister of Justice to head of police in Brussels, 11 August 1893, PAA, D60, 185 099, quoted in de Coster, Eindverslag research in Provinciaal Archief; Ronin, Antwerpen en zijn “Russen”, 221–5.
29. Letter of RSL to governor, 16 August 1893, PAA, Landverhuizing‐Emigratie, 60, quoted in de Coster, Eindverslag research in Provinciaal Archief.
30. Letter of the Minister of Justice to governor, 13 March 1894, PAA, Landverhuizing‐Emigratie 60, quoted in de Coster, Eindverslag research in Provinciaal Archief; Ronin, Antwerpen en zijn “Russen”, 221–5; Spelkens, “Antwerp as a Port of Emigration,” 72–3.
31. Annual Report of the Emigration Inspection, 1896, PAA, Scheepvaart, 98.
32. When the US newspapers reported that due to the bubonic plague the US would send physicians to control the European ports, Venesoen, the head of the emigration inspection, recalled the experience with Rosenau and warned his superiors, “Once a whole group was locked up, literally with a key. I had to intervene to liberate them”: letter of head of emigration inspection to governor, 28 December 1899, PAA, Scheepvaart, 98.
33. PAA, Scheepvaart, 57, 61, 63, 67, 82–3, 98, quoted in de Coster, Eindverslag research in Provinciaal Archief.
34. Letters 21, 24 April, 5 May, 31 July, 8, 22 August, 11 November and 22 December 1893, MAR, HAL, 318.04, 221–6.
35. Letter of head of emigration inspection to governor, 13 January 1900, PAA, Scheepvaart, 98.
36. Fairchild, Science at the Borders, 62.
37. Feys, “A Business Approach to Migration,” 452.
38. Letters of head of emigration inspection to governor, 13 January 1900 and 4 July 1900, PAA, Scheepvaart, 98; Feys, “A Business Approach to Migration,” 409.
39. Fairchild, Science at the Borders, 62; “Report on the Conditions Existing in Europe and Mexico Affecting Emigration and Immigration Being a Compilation in Digested Form of Reports Submitted,” 113, National Archives Washington, Records of Immigration and Naturalization Service (RINS), 54411/1; Wheeler, “Immigration Conditions Europe and Mexico,” 1906.
40. Just, Ost‐und südosteuropäische Amerikawanderung, 77–85; Wüstenbecker, “Hamburg and the Transit,” 234–44.
41. Brinkman, “Travelling with Ballin,” 470.
42. Correspondence with Berlin and New York agents 1896–1903, MAR, HAL, 318.04, 1, 74, 226.
43. On smugglers assisting defective emigrants in 1906 see ARA, AAD, 265–8 and PAA, 60, quoted in de Coster, Eindverslag research in Provinciaal Archief.
44. The German shipping lines proposed to the Austrian–Hungarian authorities that they open medical stations at the Prussian border with Austria–Hungary in 1904 and 1906. It does not seem that these plans were ever realised, HAPAG to Minister of Interior, Vienna 19 April 1906, ARKR DPKR 124, 3 and 43, quoted in Ronin, Eindverslag researchopdracht Archiwum Panstwowe Krakow; Alroey, “Out of the Shtetl,” 120–1; Brinkman, “Travelling with Ballin,” 473; Würstenbecker, “Hamburg and the Transit,” 224–34.
45. See Dillingham Commission Reports, vol. 4, 1911.
46. In 1906 they rejected 15 to 30 Russian emigrants a week for trachoma: letter of maritime commissioner to Minister of Justice, 22 December 1906, AAD, 265–8.
47. Luthi, Invading Bodies, 248–90; Maglen, “Importing Trachoma,” 87–99.
48. Annual Report of the Emigration Inspection, 1903, PAA, Scheepvaart, 67. The financial interest in medical screening at the ports of embarkation increased in the early twentieth century when the transport companies had, on top of the repatriation costs, also to pay a fine of US$100 for bringing in migrants with infectious diseases; letter of head of emigration inspection to governor, 6 April 1898, PAA, Scheepvaart, 98.
49. Feys, “A Business Approach to Migration,” 262.
50. Alexander Harkavy, “Diary of a Visit to Europe in the Interests of Jewish Emigration,” 1906–7, 5 (Antwerp), American Jewish Historical Society, Harkavy Papers (an archival document generously put at our disposal by Gur Alroey [henceforth, “Harkavy Diary”]).
51. Letter of New York head agent to directors, 22 April 1912, MAR, HAL, 318.03, 48.
52. Feys, “The Visible Hand,” 46–7.
53. Glavis was in fact quoting Van den Toorn, the chief agent of HAL in New York who proposed this strategy to Glavis and elaborated this argument even further: “not by laws which the United States have the perfect right to enact for their protection, but by well meant, but ill‐considered acts of an official of the United States, who of necessity cannot be competent to be accuser, jury and judge and even Supreme Court all at once”: letter of HAL head agent New York to directors, 8 August 1894, MAR, HAL, 318.04, 221–6.
54. Feys, “A Business Approach to Migration,” 395.
55. In September 1906, 3% of the passengers (n = 1830) were not permitted to board a ship in Antwerp bound for the US due to medical reasons: “Report on the Conditions existing in Europe and Mexico Affecting Emigration and Immigration Being a Compilation in Digested Form of Reports Submitted,” 114, National Archives, NWA, RINS: National Archives Washington, Records of Immigration and Naturalization Service, 54411/1; Wheeler, “Immigration Conditions Europe and Mexico,” 1906.
56. See Daman, “Logement à terre,” 21. Probably this change of policy was also due to the increase in transit migrants who had not passed through the medical control at the Prussian border.
57. Letter of head of emigration to governor, 28 September 1906, AAD, 265–8, document quoted at length in Ronin, Antwerpen en zijn “Russen”, 229–31; Spelkens, “Antwerp as a Port of Emigration,” 72–3.
58. The Belgian industrial economy started to recruit abroad from the beginning of the twentieth century onwards. In 1910, labour for mines was recruited in Galicia and Italy, and employers even thought about recruiting Chinese labour. During the nineteenth century the national labour market had been sufficient for Belgian industry. Caestecker, Alien Policy in Belgium, 47–8. On tourism as part of international travel see among others Morgan, National Identity and Travel and Simmons, “Railways, Hotels and Tourism.”
59. Caestecker, “The Transformation of Nineteenth‐Century West European Expulsion Policy,” 126–8.
60. Report of special immigrant inspector Marcus Braun in Report of the Commissioner‐General on Immigration, 1903, 94, NAW, RINS, 52320/47.
61. Murken, Die grossen transatlantischen Linienreederei‐Verbande, 48; Dillingham Commission Reports 1911, vol. 3, 359–63.
62. Feys, “A Business Approach to Migration,” 232–5.
63. AAD, individual alien’s file, 772505; Ellis Island, list of manifest of alien passengers from the US immigration officer at port of arrival, List D, SS Kroonland sailing from Antwerp, American Family Immigration History Centre, Ellis Island. For similar, albeit less well‐documented cases of aliens considered insane by the US authorities or the RSL and repatriated at the expense of this shipping line, see AAD, individual alien’s files, 772530 (Hungarian Stangl, François, returned to Antwerp November 1904 and interned in asylum St Amadeus in Mortsel) and 785986 (Brynda Paria from Rays Ko [Austria–Hungary], returned to Antwerp May 1909 at age 20); notes, 12 April 1905, National Archives Washington, file record 85, Naturalization and Immigration. For the Belgian aliens files see Caestecker et al., De individuele vreemdelingendossiers and Caestecker and Luyckx “Het individuele vreemdelingendossier.”
64. Letter of Minister of Justice to Minister of Foreign Affairs, 12 May 1905, PAA, Scheepvaart, 104, quoted by de Coster, Eindverslag research in Provinciaal Archief.
65. On the Jewish community initiatives in Europe towards the transit migrants, see Bar‐Chen, Weder Asiaten noch Orientalen, 78–9; Brinkmann, “Travelling with Ballin,” 475–7.
66. Of the Jewish transit migrants effectively supported by Ezra, 90% were from the Russian Empire and only 5% from Austria–Hungary: Ezra, Société philanthropique pour la protection des émigrants, Anvers Rapport, 1911–12 and 1908. On Ezra, see Ronin, Antwerpen en zijn “Russen”, 248–50 and Schreiber, L’immigration juive en Belgique, 338.
67. Rapport annuel 1907, Ezra, AAD, 1029; Harkavy Diary: 5.
68. Dernière Heure, 30 January 1908; L’étoile Belge, 30 January 1908, AAD, 1029.
69. “Aid only temporary and intended only to give destitute transmigrants a chance to communicate with relatives and friends. Maximum aid 24 days’ lodging and board”: Harkavy Diary, 5. The financial reports of Ezra point out that in 1907 and 1908 60% of its expenses were spent on tickets; this percentage increased in the following years and reached 70% by 1913: Rapport général à l’occasion du vingt‐cinquième anniversaire, Anvers, 1920, 34–7; Ezra, Société philanthropique pour la protection des émigrants, Anvers Rapport, 1911–12, Anvers, 1913, 5; Ezra, Société philanthropique pour la protection des émigrants, Anvers Rapport, 1907, Anvers, 1908, AAD, 1029.
70. City archive Antwerp, MA 27816, quoted in de Coster, Eindverslag research in Provinciaal Archief.
71. Annual report of head of emigration inspection for 1898, PAA, Scheepvaart, 98.
72. Schreiber, L’immigration juive en Belgique, 200, refers to 418 Jews stranded in Antwerp in 1906 due to the bankruptcy of the travel agent who would have provided them upon arrival in Antwerp with shipping tickets.
73. Ezra, Société philanthropique pour la protection des émigrants, Anvers Rapport 1907, Anvers, 1908, AAD, 1029; Alroey, “Out of the Shtetl,” 96; Gartner, The Jewish Immigrant in England, 170–1.
74. Schreiber, L’immigration juive en Belgique, 173.
75. The rumour went, according to a US official, Marcus Braun, that it would be easier for diseased passengers to get to the US from London. Report of special immigrant inspector Marcus Braun in Report of the Commissioner‐General on Immigration, 1903, 88, NAW, RINS, 52320/47.
76. The Belgian emigration service in 1906 thought this barrier would imply that Belgium would be stuck with the poor migrants because they would be no longer able to make it to Britain. Letter of maritime commissioner to Minister of Justice, 22 December 1906, AAD, 265. The UK 1905 Aliens Act defined an alien as being a steerage passenger: Report of agents who had been sent to Europe, 1907, NAW, RINS, 54411/01; Simmons, “Railways, Hotels and Tourism,” 217; Hofmeester, Jewish Workers and the Labour Movement, 156–74.
77. Schreiber, L’immigration juive en Belgique, 180–1; Ezra reports (see footnote 67).
78. David Toback, a Russian Jew was returned to Antwerp from Ellis Island in 1898 because of the likelihood of him becoming a public charge. The Jewish aid organisation, Ezra, was only willing to assist him to return to Russia. He finally got to the US: Toback, The Journey of David Toback.