Project

Becoming Immigrant Nation-Builders: The Development of Austria-Hungary’s National Projects in the United States, 1880s-1920s

Program

Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowships

Department

History

Abstract

This dissertation explores the relationship between transatlantic migration, migrant identities, and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungary Empire from the 1880s through the 1920s. It traces the extensive actions of Austro-Hungarian state and church officials to maintain the loyalty of subjects abroad and the processes among migrants of crafting new European identities in the United States. The project dissects the political role of American ethnic nationalists in lobbying for new European states during the First World War and examines the dual effects of new European borders and restrictive US immigration legislation in limiting transatlantic mobility in the war’s aftermath. The dissertation thus bridges migration history, foreign relations history, and critical nationalism theory to present a multiethnic transnational interpretation of migration from East Central Europe.