AHC: Trigger Massive Jewish Exodus to US in 19th Century

Your challenge is to trigger a massive Jewish exodus from Europe to the United States in the 19th century. Extra points if you can get this to occur pre-ACW.
 
Maybe you could have a Total European attacks to the Jews. You could have it that Napoleon with a slight change of mind hates Jews. He makes it so that Jews have to hand over their wealth to be sent to the French American colony as Serfs. Some escape and other are forced over but then France decides to sell it colony to the USA with these Jews included. Other leave before French armies come knocking.

After Napoleons defeat you could have Germany be more radical against Jews leaving few safe haven for Jews in Europe.
 
Finding a reason for the Jews to flee Europe wouldn't be difficult, alas, but having the USA of that period willing to accept a "massive" number of them as immigrants might be.
 
there wouldve been a massive exodus if it wasn't for the Immigration Laws banning Eastern Europeans and the Irish coming to the US.
 
Ya. If massive numbers of Jews attempt to come, anti-Semitic quotas will be imposed (strengthened?) so fast your head would spin.

There would need to be a MASSIVE change in US public opinion, and I cant imagine what would cause that.
 
there wouldve been a massive exodus if it wasn't for the Immigration Laws banning Eastern Europeans and the Irish coming to the US.

Immigration quotas didn't happen in the U.S. until the 1920s. During the period in question, it was more an issue of countries limiting emigration than anyone putting restrictions on immigration.
 
Your challenge is to trigger a massive Jewish exodus from Europe to the United States in the 19th century. Extra points if you can get this to occur pre-ACW.
There was a massive Jewish migration from Europe to the US in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. So massive, in fact, that the US became one of the countries with the largest Jewish populations.

Do you want this to happen earlier?
 
Immigration quotas didn't happen in the U.S. until the 1920s. During the period in question, it was more an issue of countries limiting emigration than anyone putting restrictions on immigration.

Not quite.

The initial immigration act of 1875 strongly restricted Asian immigration - especially asian women. It is true that quotas per se werent imposed until 1921, and later strengthened, but there was a Chinese Exclusion Act of, hmmm, 1885 I think it was.

It is true that strong restrictions on southern and eastern Europeans didnt get implemented until 1924 - but that was in response to rising immigration from those places.

If a significant number of Jews tried coming in, you betcha thered have been restrictions.
 
Your challenge is to trigger a massive Jewish exodus from Europe to the United States in the 19th century. Extra points if you can get this to occur pre-ACW.

Napoleon for some reason adopts Jewish liberation as a cause.

(Minor historical point: the Archbishop of Mainz became a supporter of Napoleon. As the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved and German petty states were consolidated, he became Grand Duke of Frankfurt, formerly an Imperial Free City. One of his acts was to strike down the laws confining the Jews of Frankfort to a ghetto and imposing special taxes on them; the city fathers opposing this strenuously.)

He gains some support from the Jewish communities in Poland and Russia. Some Jews become prominent in his entourage. But after his defeat the Jews are demonized as traitors in Russia. The Russsians extend this to the Jews of Poland, a campaign joined by some Poles who blame the Jews for Napoleon's defeat, and for either his failure to liberate the serfs of Poland or for subverting the Polish nobility by liberating the serfs. (Doesn't matter which policy Napoleon actually followed; those who don't like it can blame the Jews.)

So increased anti-semitism in Poland and Russia.

This is not a single massive outbreak, but rather a long-term ratchet upward in the continuing persecution of Jews, which leads to a large stream of emigration starting in the 1830s (50,000-200,000 per year, of which 20,000-50,000 go to the U.S.

Bear in mind that the wave of Irish immigration which freaked out many Americans and spawned the Know-Nothings was about 1.5M over 10 years IIRC.
 

katchen

Banned
That's where incorporation of Nuevo Leon into the United States (easily accomplished if James K Polk, who wants the US to take more territory from Mexico than the US initially demanded succeeds in relieving Nicholas Trist of his duties as negotiator and replacing him with someone who better reflects his wishes before he gets the Mexicans to sign the draft treaty in 1848) is incorporated into the United States, at least as a territory and the crypto-Jewish residents reveal themselves now that they have full religious liberty. An actual American state, even one that has legal slavery (probably necessary in order to gain statehood quickly) with a Jewish majority would be a major draw for European Jews--even Jews from as far away as Poland and Ukraine --and Italy, Greece and Morocco and Turkey. Nuevo Mexico might also turn out to have a Jewish majority.
It would be a strange butterfly and spinoff indeed if the price paid for a large Jewish migration to the United States in the mid 19th Century (pre-1860) turned out to be Jewish identification with slavery and continued Slave Power control of the US Senate well into the 1860s, postponing any sectional crisis over slavery until the 1880s. :eek: But that's exactly how it could happen. And in the long run, it could really give Jews and Judaism a black eye.:eek:
 
I am sure I can remember reading that around the time of the Balfour Procalmation that the US was seriously considering / be considered as a new home land for Jews - but I can't for the life of me find a referance to it.
 
Not quite.

The initial immigration act of 1875 strongly restricted Asian immigration - especially asian women. It is true that quotas per se werent imposed until 1921, and later strengthened, but there was a Chinese Exclusion Act of, hmmm, 1885 I think it was.

It is true that strong restrictions on southern and eastern Europeans didnt get implemented until 1924 - but that was in response to rising immigration from those places.

If a significant number of Jews tried coming in, you betcha thered have been restrictions.

The US in 1924 was a vastly different place than the US of, say, 1870.

Remember, the frontier was still "open."

If the US was as anti-Semitic as the people here are implying, why haven't there been the pogroms like in Europe?
 
Napoleon for some reason adopts Jewish liberation as a cause.

(Minor historical point: the Archbishop of Mainz became a supporter of Napoleon. As the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved and German petty states were consolidated, he became Grand Duke of Frankfurt, formerly an Imperial Free City. One of his acts was to strike down the laws confining the Jews of Frankfort to a ghetto and imposing special taxes on them; the city fathers opposing this strenuously.)

He gains some support from the Jewish communities in Poland and Russia. Some Jews become prominent in his entourage. But after his defeat the Jews are demonized as traitors in Russia. The Russsians extend this to the Jews of Poland, a campaign joined by some Poles who blame the Jews for Napoleon's defeat, and for either his failure to liberate the serfs of Poland or for subverting the Polish nobility by liberating the serfs. (Doesn't matter which policy Napoleon actually followed; those who don't like it can blame the Jews.)

So increased anti-semitism in Poland and Russia.

This is not a single massive outbreak, but rather a long-term ratchet upward in the continuing persecution of Jews, which leads to a large stream of emigration starting in the 1830s (50,000-200,000 per year, of which 20,000-50,000 go to the U.S.

Bear in mind that the wave of Irish immigration which freaked out many Americans and spawned the Know-Nothings was about 1.5M over 10 years IIRC.

I like this scenario.

Would the Jewish emigrants in question be carrying diseases? To be fair to the Know-Nothings, at least one outbreak in New York was caused by sickly Irish immigrants.

If they're coming in a more organized fashion and they're not half-starved to death coming in plague ships, there might not be so much upset.
 
I like this scenario.

Would the Jewish emigrants in question be carrying diseases? To be fair to the Know-Nothings, at least one outbreak in New York was caused by sickly Irish immigrants.

If they're coming in a more organized fashion and they're not half-starved to death coming in plague ships, there might not be so much upset.

There were frequent epidemics in every city throughout this period. The problem with the Irish was that they were substantially culturally disctinct from the "native Americans" of the time, practiced a religion many Americans feared and loathed, caused significant social and economic disruption, and were poorly behaved, even by the standards of the time.

The Jewish immigrants suggested would be far more culturally distinct. Note how Jews were received in 1880-1920, though the U.S. had become far more cosmopolitan. Their religion would be mroe intensely offensive than Catholicism, though perhaps not feared. (In the 1800s, there was still a lot of Protestant hostility to the Catholic Church as an institutional danger to Protestant religion and free institutions generally. The Inquisition was still in operation as late as 1834. They would cause social and economic disruption, and be blamed for it. Jews would not be condemned for boozing and violence, as the Irish were, but "Anglo" Americans would find other things to hold against them.

It might even lead to explicit restrictions on Jewish immigration, comparable to the Chinese Exclusion Act.
 
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