Author: RomMig

 

Crossings: Non-Privileged Migration and Mobility Control in the Age of Global Empires (c. 1850-1914). 

Conference to be held at the German Historical Institute London, April 25-26, 2024

The time period between 1850 and 1914 is often referred to as the age of mass migration, with more than 30 million Europeans immigrating to the United States alone. However, as previous scholarship has shown, this was by no means an age of free movement. While overseas shipping routes expanded and prices in passenger transport fell, the period also saw increasing state interventions and the establishing of migration regimes that distinguished between “desirable” and “undesirable” immigrant groups. Although non-elite in social composition, the mass migration of the time was overwhelmingly a privileged “white” migration in the age of global empires. 

This is clear when we focus on groups whose transnational mobility was restricted or who were threatened with deportation. But neither state intervention nor societal hostility completely prevented groups labelled as “undesirable” from migrating – in flight from persecution and conflict or in search of opportunities to live and earn in another country. While adopting strategies of survival in the host countries, these groups of “undesired” immigrants often faced huge public responses, followed by new legislation and deportations, resulting in subsequent odysseys. This can be seen, for example, in colonial migration to Europe or in the Romani migration to the UK. Other groups remained under the radar, or only came into focus later, such as the Cape Verdean immigrants to the US. 

This conference brings together research on non-privileged migration from the 1850s to the First World War. We invite contributions that explore transnational mobility and its restriction, emerging migration, citizenship and border regimes, economic strategies in “hostile environments” and the reconstruction, visualisation and memorialisation of migrants’ itineraries and experiences, including digital methods. We are especially interested in perspectives that combine (trans-)local with global and imperial perspectives. Contributions from all relevant disciplines are welcome. 

Key questions include: 

– How does a focus on non-privileged groups sharpen our understanding of transnational mobility and migration regimes in the age of global empires? Who became “undesirable” migrants, and what categories of social difference and their intersection took effect? 

– What state interventions and policing practices were adopted? How did these differ between countries and empires, and what levels of international or transimperial cooperation were established? How did metropolitan and imperial migration regimes inform each other? 

– What role did the media play in public responses to migration, and in how far were migrants and supporting groups able to use the media in their behalf? 

– How did groups of migrants circumvent mobility restrictions, and what economic strategies did they adopt in the host countries, or post deportation? What was the role of private migration agents? 

– With what methods can we reconstruct, make visible, and memorialise migrants’ itineraries and experiences? 

The conference will be held at the German Historical Institute London (GHIL). It is co-financed by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and the GHIL. We anticipate being able to reimburse standard travel expenses and the cost of accommodation for the duration of the conference. Papers from scholars at any stage of their career, drawing on developments in any world areas in the period roughly between 1850 and 1914 are invited. Abstracts of about 300 words and a short CV should be sent both to Felix Brahm and Eve Rosenhaft (felix.brahm@uni-muenster.de, dan85@liverpool.ac.uk) by 15.11.2023. 

GHIL admin contact: Julian Triandafyllou (j.triandafyllou@ghil.ac.uk)

Eve Rosenhaft discusses emerging research on performances staged by Romani visitors to Britain at the turn of the 20th Century

“…sang English songs and danced the cakewalk…” This verbal snapshot of Romani girls and boys dancing the cakewalk on the pier gave us a startling insight into the experience of the travellers. At the same time it opened up a whole new line of inquiry into aspects of their journey and even into wider questions of Romani musical performance around the turn of the century. The cakewalk doesn’t figure in any account of European Romani performances that we have seen. Where, we wondered, did they learn it, and how unusual was its appearance in the Hamburg docks?

Like so many modern popular dances, the cakewalk originated with African Americans. It began as a social dance that involved exaggerated high-stepping, often danced by men and women in evening clothes, probably devised by enslaved Black people to parody the behaviour of the white planters. By the 20^th century it was also a model for elaborate individual performances   on the dance floor and in the context of show-dances. Around the turn of the century, the cakewalk became popular all over the world, entering the repertoire of dance bands and cabaret combos and even featuring in the classical compositions of Claude Debussy  As Astrid Kusser explains in her book Körper im Schieflage (2013), the cakewalk had arrived in Germany by the time our Romani migrants left for Britain, featuring regularly as a social dance in urban dance halls from 1905. 

How did the cakewalk enter the repertoire of Romani Germans? 

Romani musicians who played for non-Romani audiences always depended for their livelihoods on knowing what their audiences wanted, and this meant picking up on the latest trends in popular music, learning new tunes by ear and playing them back – though often in a characteristic style that added a touch of the exotic to the performance. A rare first-hand account of Romani musicians in Germany from the early 1900s confirms that even when travelling in the countryside and playing in wayside inns, ‘[t]hey play by ear and by heart whatever they think will best please their audience … low music-hall crazes [and] Gassenhauer [popular songs]’ (Bernard Gilliat-Smith, ‘The Gypsies of the Rhine Provinz in 1902-03’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society NS 1 (1907-08): 125-44: 129).

Another dimension of their story that is beginning to emerge is the evidence that, once in Britain, they worked together with English and Scottish promoters who organised venues, advertised their performances and shared the takings. We want to know more about those promoters, some of whom seem to have specialised in sponsoring Romani groups. At this stage we can hypothesise that they would have advised the performers on what songs and dances would sell, and also that through them the Romani visitors might have had the opportunity to share the stage with and learn from non-Romani musicians and dancers. 

Wherever and however it originated, the Romani cakewalk is an object lesson in the adaptability, enterprise and essential modernity of European Roma. 

In this Post, Felix Brahm explores further the project’s case study historical migration by discussing the media coverage of the return journey and arrival in Germany from Britain

In February 1905 and November 1906 respectively, two large groups of German Sinti and Roma landed in the port of Hamburg. Each group had travelled the United Kingdom for several months before being forcibly deported back to Germany. Their migratory experience and economic activities in the UK, the incentives and pressures to cross the channel in the first place, and their subsequent deportations form an important part of our research. While their journeys through Great Britain were accompanied by a massive media spectacle, with the travellers’ migration branded the “German gypsy invasion of Britain”, their return was covered much less intensively by the German press. However, the reports on these events that we’ve found are interesting, not only with regard to the information they hold on the emigrants themselves and their itineraries, but also in the way these reports differed in parts from the contemporary, highly stereotypical coverage on Sinti and Roma groups. 

The reporter of the Hamburger Nachrichten drew an image of the group which was in many ways typical of press reports on Sinti and Roma of this time, loaded with racialised and ethnocentric tropes. The reporter emphasised the dirtiness and raggedness of their appearance (“they all had one thing in common: unbelievable dirt and torn clothes”), but also drew upon exotic imaginary when describing the “peculiar picturesque” scene. He (or she, but most likely he) observed the “women and girls had brightly coloured ribbons and all kinds of ornaments in their hair, incredibly large rings in their ears, and many gold and silver rings on their dirty fingers”. “Unconcerned with the onlookers”, he went on, “four young mothers breastfed their babies amidst the crowd, the young people sang English songs and danced the Cakewalk, the women smoked their pipes, eight-year-old boys collected cigar butts.”

However, the article in the Hamburger Nachrichten (and subsequently the coverage in the Hamburgischer Correspondent and the Altonaer Nachrichten) also and surprisingly reported on the economic success of the migratory venture. Having departed from Germany (in late March/early April of the same year) with only four horses, they arrived back with 33. After speaking to members of the group, the correspondent of the Hamburger Nachrichtenreported that they were satisfied with the economic outcome – only to question whether horse trading could have been the main source of income and insinuate that it must have been begging and theft, fortune telling, and “incantation of spooks”. “Earnings” he put in quotation marks. He was back to the expected narrative when he lamented that “England got rid of the unwelcome guests”, while “Germany got them back”. 

Interestingly, the news coverage on the return of the 1904-05 group, in February 1905, differed even more from  familiar accounts. Unusually for press reports on Sinti and Roma groups in the decades around these events, these accounts showed empathy for the distress and traumatic experiences this group faced during their travels: The Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten stated that “the troop went to England some time ago, but it has been badly treated there. In the suburbs of London, the Gypsies were attacked and maltreated several times by the mob. The wagons that served as their homes were demolished.” The Berliner Börsen-Zeitung referred to the group as “unfortunate”, having been tricked by a dodgy emigration agent, pushed back and forth between the English counties (although this was similar to the practice between the German administrative districts), and exposed to a population incited against them by the “jingo press”. The probable reason why these reports differed in tone from the many reports we have on Sinti and Roma in Germany was simply that this happened in England: the fact that a group from Germany, allegedly from the Rhineland, was ill-treated in England superseded all other categories for the moment, creating some patriotic outrage and sympathy.

For us, the reports hold some useful information for further research, especially with regard to the mapping project. For instance, the report of the Hamburger Nachrichten on the return of the 1906 migrants specified that the group split up and intended to travel further to Wandsbek and Uelzen, Hanover and Stettin – possible routes that we will trace further.