A Study On The Poles' American Immigration Experience (1854-1922)

The United States of America was a country founded by immigrants, among whom the polish immigrants from the Eastern Europe was so exceptional. They were the immigrants without the country but left many of their own families and relatives in Europe; they were an ethnic group but governed by three countries; they allemigrated to the United States but had totally different immigration experiences……,the polish immigrants' experience in the United States was so different from others.This article tries to explore the Polish Americans' immigration experience in America during the period of 1854-1922 from the point of view of their ethnicity and class. The whole article goes further to study the two types of the polish immigrants who came from three different parts of Poland and their immigration experiences in America, on one hand, this article tries to focus on the polish special experience and distinguish them from others by their ethnicity, on the other hand, it also studies the polish agricultural and industrial immigrants' experiences and compares them with each other and finally make a conclusion. The whole article composes the introduction, context and conclusion . The introduction introduces the history and the development of the study on this topic and the significance of this thesis. The context is made up of four chapters. The first chapter introduces the historical backgrounds in which the polish peasants went to America and the routes that they usually took. The new world system became mature in the 1950s, when Poland historically met the United States in the world market. The Prussian polish peasants first began to move to America from the 1950s, later the Austrian and Russian polish peasants followed them after 1980s, and the emigration wave continued until the breakout of the World War I, besides that, their experiences to go to America were also very different. These polish people were called the polish business immigrants .The second chapter takes the Prussian Silesian polish immigrants in Texas as an example to explore the polish agricultural immigrants' experience in America. They came to Texas in 1950s and continued to do the agricultural work that they used to do in Poland. After the early colonists' life, they started to build their communities and institutions like the parish and parish school, etc. Then the Civil War and the Reconstruction period came quickly which were the most chaotic time in the American history. The polish immigrants were forced to go to war, but they chose to support the union government instead of the Confederate which brought a great influence on the polish immigrants life in Texas. When it came to the Reconstruction period, the polish immigrants were attacked and bothered by the southerners. In order to protect their rights and interests, the polish immigrants began to enter the local affairs and get involved in the American society; after the Civil War and the Reconstruction, the polish immigrants enjoyed a great development in Texas, they continued to build and develop new colonies, and built new communities, parishes and parish schools. In this process, they breathed new life, maintained and strengthened their polish identity, and finally laid a strong foundation for overcoming the difficulties that they were going to face in and after the World War I. But partly due to the peasants' life tradition and the self-satisfaction of the agricultural economy, the Silesian polish immigrants in Texas were still not totally Americanized even in 1920s, that was the example of the polish agricultural immigrants' experience in the United States.The third chapter deals with the polish industrial immigrants' experience in America, and take the Austrian and Russian polish immigrants who came to Chicago after 1880s, this was in the second period of the Great Economic Immigration Time. The first task for the polish immigrants coming to Chicago was to find a job to support themselves, and most of them quickly realized it in the meat packing industry and Steel and Iron industry. But they found themselves defined as the unexperienced workers and this would decide the polish immigrants' future in Chicago; when the polish immigrants got a job and became economically stable, they quickly remade their "Polish Country" and tried to transplanted the lifestyle and institutions in Poland into the United States, then adapted them to the new social environments, and this was what they counted on in the United States; In order to protect their interests in the industrial Chicago society they had to protect their "Polish Country", and the fact that they were the unexperienced workers made them go to unite with other ethnic workers to fight with the management. At the same time they also had to deal with the conflicts among different classes, ethnic groups and races. In this course, the polish immigrants became mature gradually and also got more involved in the American society consciously or unconsciously. The great industry and labor movement made the Polish Chicagoans became a member of the American society in a very short time, and this is also a typical example of the polish industrial immigrants' experience in America. The fourth chapter approaches the unbreakable connection with the Poland which was formed during the process of their immigration to America. It was showed in two ways : one is the unbreakable family tie, the other is the willingness and the practice of the Polish Americans to help Poland to win the independence.Based on the whole article's analysis, finally I tried to make a conclusion: The polish immigrants had a special immigration experience in America as a special ethnic immigrant group. Not only were they not the "uproots", but also they were not someone who has no "roots". On the contrary, the polish immigrants brought their "roots" with them and transplanted them wherever they settled, then tried to make new developments in the new environment. When the polish immigrants arrived in the USA, they always tried to transplant the country life traditions and institutions(especially the community , the parish and the parish school) in Poland into the America, then on this ground made new developments. Of course, for different immigrants from different part of Poland and those who came to America in different time, their immigration experiences were also very different, this was best showed in the Silesian polish texans' and the Austrian and Russian polish Chicagoans' immigration experience, which was a result caused by the polish immigrants' transplantation of their "roots" into new environment.