At a time when immigration controversies in the United States have become heated once again, From Multiethnic Empire to a Nation of Nations provides readers with fascinating new information and insights into a huge immigrant group that has been almost entirely ignored, namely those who came from the Habsburg monarchy. The book differs from most other works related to immigration by noting that these people did much more than simply immigrate to the United States. They often migrated within the Habsburg monarchy or to other parts of Europe before adventuring across the Atlantic. Moreover, in contrast to our national myth that immigration was permanent, upward of 40 percent of them returned to Europe after a few months or years or intended to do so because the cost of living was lower than in the United States. However, they were eventually prevented from returning to their homelands by the First World War and postwar laws aimed at grossly limiting immigration from the non–German-speaking parts of the former monarchy along with people coming from other parts of southern, eastern, and southeastern Europe. Whereas Italian, Greek, and Jewish immigrants of the pre–World War I period have drawn considerable attention from historians, those who came from Austria-Hungary have been largely ignored even though they comprised the largest immigrant group at a time when immigration to the United States was at its peak in the decade preceding the World War.

The diverse group of authors—Annemarie Steidl, an associate professor of economic history at the Institute for Economic and Social History at the University of Vienna, Wladimir Fischer-Nebmaier, a senior researcher of cultural history at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and James W. Oberly, a professor of history and American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire—have undertaken the ambitious project of tracing the origins and destinations of their subjects.

American attitudes toward Habsburg migrants were particularly harsh at the turn of the twentieth century. Habsburg migrants were seen as “racially distinct, religiously suspect, and morally questionable.” They were “biologically different” from immigrants who came from Northwestern Europe and “those difference sprang from an inferiority of blood and could be observed in certain social characteristics.” They “were not ‘American’ or ‘white’ enough” to suit “Old-stock” Americans (223). During and after the war, they were often identified as enemy aliens, or at least politically suspicious.

Habsburg migrants, who often came as individuals, not as families, did not plan on assimilating into American society but soon learned that it was expected of them. Nevertheless, they tried to preserve their heritage by living in well-defined neighborhoods; marrying migrants from their own region, especially for the first two generations; founding newspapers in their own language; and establishing singing or other kinds of social societies. Native-born Americans often did not know how to classify them, often lumping them together as Czechoslovaks or Yugoslavs even though no such states existed at the time of their immigration.

Austro-Hungarian immigration to the United States was part of the broader pattern of immigration to the United States. Those immigrants who lived near north Atlantic ports were the first to come because land travel to such ports was relatively cheap and easy, although the voyage to America, before the age of the steamship, was expensive, long, and extremely dangerous. This group included some German and Czech-speaking Austrians from Bohemia, Vorarlberg, and Tyrol. Those who lived farther east, south, and inland, including Poles, Hungarians, South Slavs, and Italian-speaking people, in most cases did not migrate to the United States until 1890 and were thus considered by Americans as part of the “inferior second wave” of immigrants.

Unfortunately, the authors pay scant attention to the means migrants used to reach the United States or even their motives beyond wanting to improve their standards of living. Religion, however, was not one of them. Where they excel, however, is pointing out that Austro-Hungarian immigrants, like many Italians, Greeks, and Poles, frequently had no intention of remaining permanently in the United States. More of them would have emigrated had World War I and US immigration policies not made such a migration either difficult or impossible. Far from being a “prison of the peoples” as some Slavic political leaders maintained during the Paris Peace Conference, Emperor-King Francis Joseph placed few if any restrictions on the four million subjects who left his empire during his long reign or who chose to return.

The relatively late arrival of most Austro-Hungarian immigrants precluded their following the economic paths of earlier immigrants. By 1900 virtually all high-quality farmland had been occupied. However, especially the period preceding the Great War, were boom years, in the United States. Relatively well-paying factory jobs (albeit often under terrible working conditions) were plentiful, as were mining jobs in West Virginia and elsewhere. Thus, Habsburg immigrants could not only send money back to their relatives, adding considerably to the Austro-Hungarian economy, or save enough to return themselves and improve their lifestyle. Between 1880 and 1914 some 3.7 million Habsburg immigrants crossed the Atlantic; in the first years of the twentieth century they composed the largest single block of immigrants and 28 percent of the entire immigrant arrivals (7).

The authors have given scholars a fresh new perspective on a relatively little-known aspect of immigration to the United States and the fate of the migrants during the first two generations following their arrival in America. The revelation that large numbers of Austro-Hungarian migrants chose to return to their homes is relevant to our current debate about illegal immigration in showing that many immigrants, legal or illegal, are likely to return to their homelands if unimpeded. The text is accompanied by an impressive twenty-page list of secondary sources, and another four pages of primary materials. Also helpful are numerous charts, pictures, and maps. Readers who are fond of statistics will love From a Multiethnic Empire to a Nation of Nations. Personally, I would have preferred much more biographical information to bring these people to life.