Abstract
Earlier chapters drew on a wide range of evidentiary sources to paint a changing history of the Pale and its Jewish residents. This chapter introduces social science perspectives on how to create and manipulate quantifiable evidence to explore how Jews responded to the increasing disorder in their everyday lives.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Donald Parkerson, The Agricultural Transition in New York State: Markets and Migration in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America (Iowa State University Press, 1995), 91. For further examples, see Robert E. Mitchell’s forthcoming, The Closing of Michigan’s Farm Frontier.
- 2.
See Kris James Mitchener and Debin Ma, “Introduction to the Special Issue: A New Economic History of China,” Explorations in Economic History 63 (January 2017), as well as the other articles in that particular volume.
- 3.
Geraldine Moser and Marlene Silverman, Hamburg Passengers from the Kingdom of Poland and the Russian Empire, Direct Passage to New York: 1855–June 1873 (Washington, DC: Landsmen Press, 1997). As referenced earlier, Dr. Ruth Leiserowitz mined Prussian archives for 47 Jews hailing from this same village (Vishtinetz or today’s Vistytis) living in Prussia. She reported that “Jewish life in East Prussia was in a very high level influenced by inputs from the Litvakian neighborhood . Jewish inhabitants from sthetls near the former East Prussian borderzone crossed the border very often. They had business in Koenigsberg, Tilsit and other towns or visited relatives, who settled here after 1812. Sometimes they followed their neighbours, business partners or relatives and settled in East Prussian places too. People from Vistytis (Vishtiniec) were found extremely often in the East Prussian territory. They had a strong network.” This is the same village that my paternal ancestors left. Leiserowitz kindly provided me information and leads useful in my own studies. Much of her work has been posted online—for example, at http://www.judeninostpreussen.de/front_content.php?idcat=111 and http://www.judeninostpreussen.de/front_content.php?idcat=205.
- 4.
For a report on Jewish peddlers living in smaller towns and rural areas, see Hasia Diner, Roads Taken: The Great Jewish Migrations to the New World and the Peddlers Who Forged the Way (Yale, 2105).
- 5.
Hans Zetterberg, “Asking for Justifications of a Choice. An Aspect of Lazarsfeld’s ‘Reason Analysis ,’” available online at http://www.zetterberg.org/Papers/ppr2010b.htm.
- 6.
See Charles Kadushin, “Reason Analysis ,” in David L. Sills, ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: The Macmillan Company and The Free Press, 1968).
- 7.
Alroey, Appendix A.
- 8.
Michael Goldfarb, Emancipation (Simon & Schuster, 2010), 247.
- 9.
Emphasis added.
- 10.
Spitzer, The Dynamics of Mass Migration: Estimating the Effect of Income Differences on Migration in a Dynamic Model with Diffusion (May 2015), available online at https://yannayspitzer.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/spitzer-the-dynamics-of-mass-migration-150527.pdf.
- 11.
Spitzer, Pogroms, Networks, and Migration: The Jewish Migration from the Russian Empire to the United States 1881–1914 (May 2015), available online at https://yannayspitzer.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/spitzer_pogromsnetworksmigration_150529.pdf.
- 12.
For Jews, the weights might refer to Jewish residents only, not to the general population . These models are based on Newton’s law that: “Any two bodies atract one another with a force that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.” There are many migration studies using this model. See, for example, David Karemera, Victor Iwuagwu Oguledo, and Bobby Davis, “A Gravity Model Analysis of International Migration to North America,” Applied Economics (2000). The models could also presumably be useful in understanding population movements within the Pale itself. Transportation improvements can be incorporated in these models as suggested by Jameel Khadaroo and Boopen Seetanah in their “The Role of Transport Infrastructure in International Tourism Development: A Gravity Model Approach,” Tourism Management 29.5 (2008).
- 13.
I am reminded of Charles Darwin’s assessment of his mental strengths and weaknesses: “I think that I am superior to the common run of men in noticing things which easily escape attention, and in observing them carefully…. From my early youth I have had the strongest desire to understand or explain whatever I observed…. These causes combined have given me the patience to reflect or ponder for any number of years over any unexplained problem.” See Stephen Jay Gould’s review of Charles Darwin: Voyaging by Janet Browne in the New York Review of Books (April 4, 1996).
- 14.
Ruth Leiserowitz, “To Go To or Through Prussia? Litvak Migratory Decisions in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century and Their Consequences,” available online at http://easteurotopo.org/articles/leiserowitz/.
- 15.
Ruth Leiserowitz, The Traders of Wystiten, 320.
- 16.
Osterhammel, 789.
- 17.
Polonsky, 155 ff. These numbers differ from the earlier-referenced estimates of male-female language differences attributable to the predominant role women played in community markets.
- 18.
While it was not so literary or scientific as some of its contemporaries, Ha-Melitz (“The Advocate”) the first Hebrew newspaper in the Russian Empire usually had more news and debates of interest and was supposedly more popular. It was a supporter of the progressive Haskalah movement. The JewishGen Hamelitz Database reported that Yacob Yisrael Mishkowski living in Kaunas was a subscriber in 1897. It is possible that he was my paternal great grandfather.
- 19.
“HaMagid represented the viewpoints of moderate religious Jewry that was opposed to religious reforms and that balked at the Haskalah movement’s more radical elements. At the same time, as early as the 1860s the paper fervently supported the resettling of the Land of Israel, citing a combination of religious and national justifications, and it was one of the earliest harbingers of the Zionist movement, which it continued to support over the years.” Avner Holtzman, “Magid, Ha-” The YIVO Cyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe.
- 20.
The list can be accessed online at http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/misc/HaMagidIndex.htm.
- 21.
Karl Marx’s father was among many German Jews who converted to Christianity. But his was not just a German-based experience, for the Vilnius Jewish archives report that over 100 hundred Jews in the Vilnius area of Lithuania converted to Russian Orthodox Christianity from the mid-nineteenth century on. According to Howard Margol, these archival records “contain biographical details, narratives that tell the drama of conversion, parental objections and more.” Howard Margol “Lithuanian Research Now and in the Future,” Avotaynu (Winter 2011), available online at http://avotaynu.com/2011WinterPage16MargolLithuania.fin.pdf. Riga, the capital of Latvia, has been depicted as a German-oriented city. Its archival records might also have conversion records that can be compared with those from Vilnius.
- 22.
For a cultural, social, and political history of Jews in Britain, see Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Britain, 1659–2000 (University of California, 2002). Also see Gur, 50.
- 23.
These German lines, including Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (Hamburg-American Line) connected European ports with North American ports, such as Hoboken, New Jersey, and New Orleans, Louisiana. This line’s passenger departure lists can be accessed online at http://www.germanroots.com/hamburg.html. Emigrants benefitted from a railroad line that went from Vilna to Kovno and then to the Russian/German border at Eydtkhunen. The North German Lloyd (NDL) company started with a route to England prior to starting a transatlantic service. In 1857, the first ship, the Adler (Eagle), began regular passenger service between Bremen and England. As indicated in the above text, other sources reported that until there was direct Germany-to-American connections, Jewish emigrants would first travel to the east coast of England and then take a train or other transportation to Liverpool, the major English port for transatlantic transportation. The Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain’s study of the Jewish Population Living in Britain in 1851 reported 31 individuals with the surname Mitchell, the name my grandfather also adopted. All but one of these 31 were born in England. Barnet Mitchell (DOB 1798) was listed as “?, Russia.” In 1858, regular scheduled services were available between the new port in Bremerhaven and New York followed by the ports of Baltimore, Galveston, and Savannah by 1907. Passenger lists for this line are accessible online at http://www.gjenvick.com/PassengerLists/index.html. Founded in 1873, the Holland America Line (Nederlandsche-Amerikaansche Stoomvaart Maatschappij or Dutch-American Steamship Company), also provided service to the Americas for Jewish emigrants (and others). Its passenger lists for the 1880s to 1954 are available online at http://www.gjenvick.com/PassengerLists/index.html. Some genealogical services provide access to these lists. It is more difficult if not impossible to track emigrants who travelled first to England and perhaps stayed there for some time, although, as noted earlier, Moser and Silverman’s New York arrival lists are for those who took an indirect route. The readily available Family History libraries and perhaps numerous genealogical services provide convenient access to such resources as Records of the Russian Consular Offices in the USA, containing information about people from Eastern Europe, mostly Jews, who came to the USA during the latter half of the nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth century; locally kept twentieth century alien registers of England, Copenhagen, Denmark, Police Records of Emigrants, consisting of 90 ledger books that list details about people leaving Denmark from 1868 to 1940, and Records of the Poor Jews’ Temporary Shelter in England. For a history of Jewish settlers in England, see Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Britain, 1656–2000 (University of California, 2002).There are many very skilled experts working with these and other lists. The present author is not part of this select group of professionals.
- 24.
For the National Archives arrival records, see https://www.archives.gov/research/immigration and https://www.archives.gov/nyc/finding-aids/passenger-lists.html. One genealogical service provides access to ships manifests departing from Germany and other ports. See http://www.immigrantships.net. There were, of course, many American and Canadian ports where immigrants, including one of my great aunts, disembarked.
- 25.
See Pamela S. Nadell, “From Shtetl to Border: East European Jewish Emigrants and the Agents’ System, 1868–1914,” in Jacob Rader Marchus and Abraham J. Peck, eds., Studies in the American Jewish Experience, vol. 2 (Lanham University Press, 1984).
- 26.
Zahra’s Chapter 1 is titled “Travel Agents on Trial.”
- 27.
Zahra, 48. Her book is an excellent history of the pull and push forces behind worldwide emigration patterns over time. Also see Ruth Leiserwitz “Litvak Migratory Decisions in the 19th Century And Their Consequences: Prussian Transit Migration,” http://www.avotaynuonline.com/2008/07/litvak-migratory-decisions-in-the-19th-century-and-their-consequences-prussian-transit-migration/. See Matthew Frank’s Making Minorities History: Population Transfer in Twentieth-Century Europe (Oxford University Press, 2017) for twentieth century population movements, many of them forced.
- 28.
Balkelis.
- 29.
Alroey, Introduction.
- 30.
Sallyann Amdur Sack and Aubrey Newman, “Modern Jewish Migrations,” in Sack and Mokotoff, eds., Avetaynu Guide to Jewish Genealogy, 75.
- 31.
Zahra, 30–31.
- 32.
Vincent J. Cannato, American Passage: The History of Ellis Island (HarperCollin, 2010), 63–65. There are studies of emigrants from particular areas within the Pale. See, for example, Carol Hoffman, “The Wandering Jew: Jewish Migration Between the Eighteenth and Twenteeth Centuries—Kopcheve (Kapciamiestis), Lithuania.” Paper Delivered at the Third Annual Seminar on the Israel Genealogical Society, November 12, 2007.
- 33.
Cannato, 66–67.
- 34.
Also see the letters printed in The Jewish Daily Forward within Isaac Metzker, A Bintel Brief (Behrman House, 1971).
- 35.
Antin, 142.
- 36.
Don Sussow, Chaia Sonia: A Family’s Odyssey Russian Style (Bantam, 1981), 2.
- 37.
For an early study of these associations, see Book of Landsmanshaftn, a W.P.A. project in cooperation with the J. L. Peretz Writers Verein, 1938. Also see Daniel Soyer, Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880–1893—Jewish Landsmanshaftn in American Culture (Wayne State University Press, 1997). Also Michael R. Weisser, A Brotherhood of Memory: Jewish Landsmanshaftn in the New World (Cornell, 1989). The YIVO archives as well as the Jewish Historical Society have information on over 1000 of these societies. For more information on these societies and the services they provided, see http://www.cjh.org/pdfs/Landsmanschaftn.pdf. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) also has relevant archival records.
- 38.
See the above footnote.
- 39.
Jewish genealogists keep reminding those in search of their ancestors’ travel to America that the names of immigrants, Jews and non-Jews alike, were not changed at Ellis Island or other processing ports. The emigrants’ names were entered on ship manifests leaving for America at the port of embarkation. Emigrants themselves provided this information. Immigration officials in America read names from these lists. Neither these officials nor the arriving passengers changed their names on arrival, as indicated in an earlier footnote on this often-mentioned myth.
- 40.
Spitzer, Pogroms , Networks, and Migration, 26.
- 41.
Spitzer, Pogroms, Networks, and Migration, 31. Markov Chains might be useful in researching migration.
- 42.
Spitzer, Pogroms, Networks, and Migration, 40–41.
- 43.
- 44.
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) launched the Digital Humanities Initiative in 2006 (renamed Office of Digital Humanities in 2008). For some of the criticisms of this new approach as well as its promises, see Debates in the Digital Humanities at http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu. As might be expected, there are also criticisms of this new technology-based research tool. See, for example, Adam Kirsch’s “Technology Is Taking over English Departments: The False Promise of the Digital Humanities,” in The New Republic (May 2, 2014). Patricia Cohen provided a more upbeat assessment in her “Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches,” New York Times (November 16, 2010). She quotes “the eminent historian Anthony Grafton: “The digital humanities do fantastic things… I’m a believer in quantification. But I don’t believe quantification can do everything. So much of humanistic scholarship is about interpretation.” My understanding of this new field goes beyond online preservation and digital mapping, data mining and the use of geographic information systems. This new field covers much more than textual materials. For an early pre-macro digital studies, see Robert E. Mitchell “Abstracts, Data Archives, and Other Information Services in the Social Sciences,” in David L. Sills, ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (Macmillan, 1968).
- 45.
Nathan Nunn, “The Long-Term Effects of Africa’s Slave Trades,” Q. J. Econ (2008). Also see the individual research reports in Joseph E. Inikori and Stanley L. Engerman, eds., The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe (Duke, 1992). Inikori also drew on limited numerical evidence in his Forced Migration: The Impact of the Export Slave Trade on African Societies (Holmes & Meierm, 1983).
- 46.
Frederick Steiner, “Urban Human Ecology ,” Urban Ecosystems (September 2004). For a well-received early account of a sociological perspective on urban (human) ecology, see Amos Hawley article “Ecology” in Ross J. A., ed., International Encyclopedia of Population , vol. 1. (Free Press, 1982). In addition to Hawley’s textbook on ecology, he has contributed other perspectives relevant to an understanding of how Jewish communities and neighborhoods evolved over time. For example, his “An Ecological Study of Urban Service Institutions,” American Sociological Review (October 1941).
- 47.
Jacoby’s review can be read online at http://www.jeffjacoby.com/1673/jew-vs-jew.
- 48.
Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, Jews and the New American Scene (Harvard, 1995).
- 49.
Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People (University of Pennsylvania, 1951). As a lesson for later social historians, Handlin, in his Boston’s Immigrants, 1790–1865: A Study in Acculturation (1941) drew on sociological concepts and census data, an example not always followed by later historians who could have manipulated census information on individuals rather than on statistical summary tables. Handlin’s student Bernard Bailyn has been a major innovator in new research techniques, such as quantification, collective biography, and kinship analysis along the same lines covered in this chapter. Freeze Chaeran’s previously referenced Jewish Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia (Brandeis, 2001) shows the value of the Bailyn’s and other social historians’ use of disaggregated evidence on individuals.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mitchell, R.E. (2019). A Research Agenda for New Historians. In: Human Geographies Within the Pale of Settlement. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99145-0_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99145-0_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-99144-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-99145-0
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)