State-Sponsored Immigration into Eastern Europe in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

State-Sponsored Immigration into Eastern Europe in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Roger Bartlett

Bruce Mitchell

Palgrave Macmillan, London

1999

en

Book Section

Roger Bartlett

Bruce Mitchell

Book Section

978-1-349-27096-5 978-1-349-27094-1

The large-scale medieval population movements from German lands into territories further to the east which have been discussed in previous chapters were caused by circumstances which obtained in lands both of origin and of destination. The needs of Eastern European rulers and opportunities for trade, for settlement, for farming or other employment all came together to propel people eastward in search of a life more promising than that they led at home. Excess population with unemployed skills could find space (land to live on) and opportunity (applications for their skills) to the east; and rulers or owners of land often established co-ordinated systems of immigration and settlement in order to take advantage of this. In the eighteenth century patterns of eastward migration were determined by similar considerations, but were distinguished by the greater involvement and organization undertaken by state governments, especially in the second half of the century. Particularly in the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War, the major powers of the day, and above all the absolutist states of Central and Eastern Europe, elaborated measures to foster immigration into their territories and to settle foreigners there en masse on empty lands. This essay will deal with the three most important practitioners of such policies, Prussia, Russia and Austria-Hungary.

2017-10-21 12:12:17

The German Lands and Eastern Europe

1999

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-27094-1_5

en

link.springer.com

91-114

Palgrave Macmillan, London

Studies in Russia and East Europe

State-Sponsored Immigration into Eastern Europe in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-27094-1_5

Snapshot