Transatlantic Migration under the Neutral Flag during World War I: A Business Perspective

Based on shipping archives this paper compares how Scandinavian and Dutch passenger shipping companies remained operative between Europe and the U.S. throughout the war. It refutes the popular assumption that transatlantic passenger traffic came to a standstill during WWI by analysing  the movements of over a million people that did cross the North Atlantic. Who travelled, in what direction and why? How did migration patterns change? What were the impediments that passengers faced? How were new laws and regulations enforced and what impact did they have on human mobility? The perspective of the shipping companies provide a meso-level view which is complemented with micro and macro level documents from the U.S. National archives. We also look at the impact of the conflict on the business structures behind mass migration, such as cartel agreements between shipping lines. How did the neutral lines take advantage of the war to improve their market position on belligerent rivals? By doing so we want to assess the role of WWI on our modern border system which  as Aristide Zolberg denoted developed into a global wall protecting the rich industrial states from the ‘invasion’ by the world’s poor. Did WWI represent an irrevocable turn or were immigration restrictions during the 1920s the consequence of long trends of regulations, border control and nationalism that went hand in hand with the era of global mass-migration before 1914?