The "Grand Migration" (1880-1914)

The "Grand Migration" (1880-1914)

The mass migration of East European Jews from 1880-1914

This map, “The ‘Grand Migration’ 1880-1914,” is a visual representation of the mass migration of East European Jews to various areas of the world between the years 1880 and 1914.

The map features blue arrows of varying thicknesses connecting the origin of the migration in Eastern Europe with seven ultimate destinations. The thinner arrows (representing fewer migrants) lead to Palestine, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, and France, while the thicker arrow (representing more migrants) flows through the United Kingdom and ends in the United States.

While there are no numbers on the map, the legend gives us an idea of the concentration of both emigrants and immigrants during this time period. Countries colored purple (Romania and the west of the Russian Empire) represent those with “heavy emigration;” and those colored pink (Greece, Austria-Hungary, etc.) represent “significant emigration.” Countries colored dark green (the United States and Great Britain) represent those with “heavy Jewish immigration;” those colored light green (Canada, Mexico, etc.) signify “significant Jewish immigration.” Lastly, black dots signify “gateways of migration” and include London, Hamburg, and New York, among others.

To understand the magnitude of this migration, it is necessary to attach numbers to the visuals. Between 1880 and 1914, 2.5 million Jews emigrated from Eastern Europe. Approximately two million reached the United States, while 350,000 settled in Western Europe (Great Britain and France, for example), and 300,000 chose other overseas countries (Palestine and Canada, for example.) This mass migration signified a diaspora of Eastern European Jews that resulted in settlements all over the world.

I chose this map because my podcast is about the Russian Jewish mass migration that occurred at the end of the 19th century and continued into the first two decades of the 20th century. The migration was kickstarted in 1881 when Tsarist Russia unleashed a slew of pogroms upon the Russian Jews, targeting the population with organized massacres because of supposed “disloyalty” to the Tsar. While the catalyzing event was real (a Jewish woman helped organize the assassination of Tsar Alexander II), the pogroms were an escalation of persistent persecution of Jews in the Russian Empire that included forced settlement in the Pale (an area in Western Russia) and little to no rights as Russian subjects.

When the cholera outbreak of 1892 ravaged Asiatic Europe, it added yet another reason for Jews to flee Russia, as they, being marginalized people already, were blamed for the rapid spread of the disease. This map emphasizes the heavy flow of immigrants to the United States in particular; it serves as a backdrop to my discussion of the suspicion and prejudice that the Western world ascribed to the Russian Jews as they fled one form of persecution only to be met with another.

Catherine Petit

The Penguin Atlas of Diasporas by Gerard Chaliand and Jean-Pierre Rageau. Maps by Catherine Petit. Penguin Books U.S.A. Inc., 1995. (p. 59)

The Mapping Globalization Project (Princeton University and the University of Washington) https://commons.princeton.edu/mg/the-grand-jewish-migration-1880-1914/

1995

Thumbnail is publicly accessible.

JPEG

English

Migration map

This map shows the spacial presence of Jews as they migrated from Eastern Europe between 1880 and 1914.