Why Emigrate from Croatia to the United States in 1905?

As I have noted in a previous post, Andrew likely emigrated in 1905.  With a 1905 emigration date, that actually puts him on the tail end of the Udbina emigration.  Most of the immigration into the U.S. from Udbina was concentrated in the 1902-1903.

Udbina was not the only town relocating to the U.S. at the time, immigration to the United States.  Between 1910 and WWI, immigration to the United States was at a relative high point. 

In the case of Udbina, individuals seemed to be unhappy with something that was going on at home.  One indication of this dissatisfaction is the election results.  Recall, that Udbina was party of the Military frontier and only officially became part of Croatia in 1881.

In 1883, two years after the incorporation of the military frontier into the Kingdom of Croatia, they held special elections to choose representatives from the new counties that were formerly part of the military frontier.  Going into the election, the leading party in government was the People's Party (Narodna stranka).  The People's Party also had great success in the new parts of Croatia, winning 28 of the 35 seats, including the seat for Udbina. Here's how the People's Party did in the subsequent elections:

1884: 69 of 110 seats
1887: 87 of 107 seats
1892: 78 of 88 seats
1897: 59 of 88 seats
1901: 73 of 86 seats
1906: 37 of 88 seats

The People's party had dominated politics for decades and as late as 1901 held 85% of the seats in parliament.  The fact that they lost so many seats between 1901 and 1906 is a strong indication that people were unhappy.  Here's a map of the election results in 1906:

[NOTE: The electoral map comes from Wikipedia. Here's the citation: "Croatian Parliamentary Election Results 1906 v2" by Tzowu - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Croatian_Parliamentary_Election_Results_1906_v2.png#/media/File:Croatian_Parliamentary_Election_Results_1906_v2.png]

The orange districts represent the districts where the People's Party still held on.  Significantly, they held on to many of the seats in the former military frontier, including in two of the districts surrounding Udbina.  However, they did not win in Udbina. Instead the Serb Independent Party (Srpska samostalna stranka - color coded as Brown) won in Udbina.  While I do not know the reason for dissatisfaction, the mass exodus and the huge electoral swing indicate that people were not happy with the status quo.

One possible reason for the emigration is the resentment about the forced military service for an empire they did not believe in.  The following is a quote from Kosso's article about the Yugoslav community in White Pine County (Kosso, Lenore M. 1985. "Yugoslavs in Nevada After 1900: The White Pine Community." Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 28 (3): 158-174.):

"Lika in Croatia is located in what was formerly known as the Military Frontier, maintained by the Austrian Empire from 1564 to 1881... For centuries the Lika District on the border of the Austrian and Ottoman Empires witnessed some of the bitterest fighting against the Turks.  The entire population lived in a constant state of war and every able-bodied man from eighteen to sixty was subject to military service. Later this included participation not only in border skirmishes with the Turks, but in all wars of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  With the rise of Croatian and Serbian nationalism in the nineteenth century, compulsory military service for the Hapsburgs was increasingly resented by the people in the Lika District, and it became a major impetus for emigration."