Immigrant Communities and the Establishment of New States in East-Central Europe

The Case of the Slovenians (Part 1)

Abstract

It will soon be 150 years since the emigration of Slovenians to America began in earnest. If we exclude the collective settlement in Čarobna, which arguably might be considered Slovenian, and the arrival of various missionaries (Kapus, Smolnikar, Pire, Baraga, et ceterd), whom we generally regard to be the forerunners of the Slovenian mass emigrations, the settlement of Saint Stephen, Minnesota, is the first successful attempt at settlement of an agricultural community. Later efforts on the part of rural Slovenian immigrants to settle on extensive territories of colonisation on the continent, usually failed in the early stages, or erumbled because of an ignorance of the land and natural conditions. The experiences in California - 'the land of paradise' - give acute evidence of these shorteomings.