Migrants have become a focus for research, while the people who enabled their movement have received not the same attention. By analysing a family network of migration agents spread-out in various parts of the Habsburg Empire, this paper brings together the micro and macro perspectives of overseas migration from and via Central Europe. The paper investigates the years preceding the First World War when emigration from Austria-Hungary and those involved became the object of scandal. The imperial War Ministry and several newspapers attacked a newcomer to the transatlantic migration business, the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, and several hundred migration agents for illegally enhancing the emigration of Austro-Hungarian men who had not yet fulfilled their military service. This paper sketches out the different layers of an entangled history. These entanglements included divergent interests and corruption among ministries in Austria-Hungary, political animosities in the Habsburg province of Galicia, competing international steamship trusts, settlement policies for Canada’s sparsely populated territories, and diplomatic and public resentment in the British Empire over the alleged unfair treatment of a Canadian company abroad.

Die Auswanderungsaffäre von 1913/14, oder: Kapeller im Kriminal. In: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 71/1 (2023), 83–111. [The Emigration Affair of 1913/14, or: Kapeller Behind Bars]

Published in a special issue in honour of Andreas Kappeler’s 80th birthday: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 71/1 (2023).