Transborder Disaster In The Progressive Era

What can disaster teach us about diaspora? What can diaspora teach us about disaster? This paper explores two early 20th-century disasters in the U.S.-Canada borderlands. One, the Halifax Explosion of 1917, took place in a region that sent migrants south to the United States; the other, the Salem Fire of 1914, mostly affected French-Canadian immigrants to the U.S. and their descendants.

Each disaster illuminates experiences of migration and diaspora. The Salem Fire—which started at a rickety patent-leather factory and spread through the tenement district, eventually rendering 18,000 homeless or jobless—shows the relative unimportance of the Franco-American diaspora to the lives of its members. Contrary to what the historiographical literature would have us expect, Franco-American survivors mostly stayed near Salem, going neither to other New England centers of the diaspora nor back to Quebec. Local and regional communal organizations did little fund-raising or relief work. In contrast, the Halifax Explosion—which began as a fire on a munitions ship, killed 2,000, and left about 25,000 homeless or jobless—shows the importance of the Nova Scotia diaspora. Nova Scotian migrants to the “Boston States” donated money for relief and through their donations built a transnational political community that sought to influence relief and recovery efforts. 

Likewise, attention to diaspora and migration can help us better explain the experience of disaster. As Erikson (1976) and others have recognized, displacement is a key trauma of disaster. Prior “displacement”—that is, migration—means that disaster refugees have more access to aid from outside the affected community and have a greater willingness and ability to relocate. These two historical disasters help shed light on the uses of disaspora and migration in disasters’ aftermaths.