The Last Ships from Hamburg

Starred review from September 25, 2023
Historian Ujifusa (Barons of the Sea) presents a captivating group portrait of three “titans” of industry who facilitated the steamship routes by which around 2 million Jewish refugees, fleeing pogroms and discrimination, immigrated from Europe to America between 1890 and 1921. German Jewish shipping magnate Albert Ballin was the inventive and resourceful managing director of the Hamburg-American Line, which he developed into a leading carrier of both well-heeled travelers and Jewish refugees from Russia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The American Jewish financier and philanthropist Jacob Schiff bankrolled Jewish immigration networks, attempted to enlist the support of the U.S. government on behalf of Russia’s beleaguered Jews, and fought against anti-immigration efforts led by such figures as Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge. Meanwhile, American banker J.P. Morgan, fueled partly by a rivalry with Schiff, made attempts to take over the lucrative Atlantic shipping industry (which Ballin had built up) through the creation of the International Mercantile Marine Company, a monopolistic trust that coordinated activity between different shipping lines. Ujifusa ties this intricate business history into a broader economic and diplomatic context, and relates the experiences of regular people who made the crossings, including the families who perished aboard the Titanic. This innovative account provides a complex new perspective on the turn of the 20th century.

October 15, 2023
A history of the cooperative effort that helped make the U.S. a second Jewish homeland. Between 1881 and 1914, writes Ujifusa, author of Barons of the Sea, more than 10 million people entered the U.S. from Europe, "most of them...from the Russian Empire." Because pogrom-ridden Russia imposed obstacles that made it difficult for Jews to travel, their flight was often illegal, and most arrived in Western Europe with few resources. Against this situation came three important figures. The first was Albert Ballin, the German Jewish director of the Hamburg-America Line, "the largest shipping company in the world," who provided temporary settlement and, in time, subsidized travel through steerage. Monetary support came from New York financier Jacob Schiff. Less willing than those two was J.P. Morgan, who, having made a fortune in railroads, sought to extend his empire seaward and attempted to outflank and then absorb Ballin's own maritime empire. The deal-making that resulted saw steerage passage for the refugees extended to other ocean liners; Ujifusa chronicles how soon-to-become-prominent figures such as Felix Frankfurter, Emma Goldman, Irving Berlin, and Mark Rothko arrived at Ellis Island. As the author also notes in this densely detailed account, Schiff was no softie: Having decided that his father-in-law was an ineffective head of the family banking business, he "began a steady and calculated effort to take over the firm," and he wasn't shy of throwing his well-funded weight around to get things done. Thanks to the efforts of the three magnates, the U.S. emerged as the most desirable destination for Jewish refugees, vastly enriching the nation economically and culturally with their talents--though, as the author acknowledges, not without opposition from government officials and nativists that dogged the effort until the collapse of the immigrant transport at the beginning of World War I. A capable history that explains much about modern American demographics.

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