Aspects of migration and emigration of Jews from the Czech lands with respect to the period of the "official" anti-Semitism of the 18th century and the expulsion of the Prague Jews in the 1740s
Abstract
Up until the Josephinist reforms (and with certain legislative modifications practically up until 1848), the life of the Jewish population in the Czech lands was determined on the basis of several regulations, one of the most important being the Familiants Law from the year 1726 (together with the translocation rescript from 1727). Its primary purpose consisted in the lowering of the number of the Jewish inhabitants in the Czech lands, originally to the level of 1618, then regulating the existing numbers and limiting the possibility of mobility for members of the Jewish minority.
The main objective of the contribution is to follow the effects of the central regulations on the transformation of the Jewish settlement, especially in the context of the (e)migration of the Prague Jews after their expulsion in the first half of the 18th century. The main source for the mapping of the settlement development (and also the demographic structure) of the Jewish population in Bohemia is the lists (conscripts) of the rural and Prague Jewish population, covering the period from the 1720s to the very beginning of the second decade of the 19th century, stored in the National Archive in Prague.
With regard to the forced (e)migration of the Prague Jews in connection with their expulsion from the capital of the kingdom in the years 1745 to 1748, their lists made in the second half of the 1740s was also used.