Essays on Forced Migration in History

A skillful and important collection, this book has much to offer both those interested specifically in the period and those concerned more generally with global history.

Thanks to the latter, the book is unusual in being a collection of essays that in many respects is more than a sum of its parts. The latter are important but so also is the extent to which the book repeatedly sets off ideas. It does so from the introduction which is not a flimsy palimpsest of the rest but, instead, a mature contribution to global history. The central subject is that of forced mobility and the fundamental method rests on its very different origins and trajectories. As such, this is at once analysis and contextualisation, with an important parallel to the work on slavery that presents it as one among a number of forms of forced labour, an approach that many appear to find difficult to accept. The slave trade is one aspect of this collection, although, as normal, there is a failure to address adequate attention to the situation outside the Atlantic.

There is also a consideration, as aspects of forced mobility, of convict transportation, the dispossession and expulsion of native populations to the benefit of white settlers, military mobility, including prisoners of war and deserters, and political flight and exile, although there is an underplaying of the sexual control aspect of forced mobility.

This is unfortunate as it was important to the slave trade and helped condition as well as replicate patterns and practices of male control. Forced mobility emerges from these varied types as a key element of social history, and a cause, consequence and aspect of its international character. This is a valuable means of adding a societal characteristic to international relations and a dynamic tone to social history.

Given the range, it is not surprising that the case studies, each valuable, only cover so much, but they do raise one important omission. The editors note there were “manifold Indigenous efforts toward political and social reordering and state-building” (p. 4), but then essentially ignore this. There is an account essentially of Western imperialism, but that does not constitute a global history. Among the world that is ignored comes China, Japan, Korea, Persia/Iran, and Central Asia, and, although Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Egypt are all mentioned, they are largely ignored. This approach is problematic. It is also inaccurate. Thus, one of the largest-scale wars of the period, the White Lotus Rebellion of 1794-1804 saw many of the characteristics discussed by the editors, not least compulsory resettlement on a very large scale. As with Japanese policies at the expense of the Ainu in Hokkaido, there may be a tendency to neglect such developments because they occurred within one state, but that approach sits at variance with the tendency to see the European empires as states. Meanwhile, in Central Asia and East Africa and the sahel, slave-raiding continued on a large scale, and as part of a pattern of forcible transfers that was not identical to the Atlantic slave trade. It is also worth considering slave soldiers in the Islamic world and, notably, the violent end of the janissary system in the Ottoman Empire which occurred in this period.

Turning to positives, the comparison of the forced migrations of the Wabanaki Acadians and Loyalists works very well as part of an account of “a world on the move” (p. 57), in this case in the shifting Northeastern Borderlands of North America,

situation valuably assessed for South America by Edward Blumenthal. He carefully links his account of complex alliances in the developing world of independent South America to the imagining of Chile and Argentina as territorially bounded nations. Attacking intermediate groups helped reset multiple boundaries, thus creating new notions of inclusion and exclusion. This was an aspect of the longstanding tension over marginal zones and the move from border zones to frontier lines. Blumenthal notes, however, how indigenous groups continued to offer refuge to those defeated in Argentinean civil conflict. Territorialisation had effects in exile, while international exile was an important feature of political struggle.

Differing pulses of French emigration are considered by Nathalie Dessens, who discusses the Saint-Domingue migration, focusing on New Orleans, a city of transitions, and Friedemann Pestel who sees the émigrés of the 1790s as opening the global dimension for France’s siècle des exiles, while Christian De Vito brings in the Spanish comparison, punitive relocations showing a situation of “context-specific configurations” (p. 105). New Orleans became a key part of the American South from 1803, and indeed its largest town. The influence of Saint-Domingue maintained earlier imperial links but these were refracted by the experience of flight in the 1790s which was very different, for example, from the influence of Barbados on the Carolina colony.

In both cases, however, the lasting role of the Caribbean White experience for that of the South was to the fore.

It is valuable to have these examples which are not those of the Anglophile world. Possibly a conclusion could have brought in comparisons, but that is a difficult task for what is a developing field, and one in which the conceptual, methodological and historiographical bases for such comparative work are uncertain and, at best, suggestive. Anna McKay assesses prisoner of war mobilities in the British imperial world, while Brad Manera and Hamish Maxwell-Stewart bring in the British military deployment of convict labour, and Kirsten McKenzie “political removal” (p. 194) in the British world. The cases addressed related to public discussion and the idea of a licentious press, these focusing on the relationship between executive and judicial power in colonial constitutions and the implications for Britons subjected to distinctive legal regimes outside the British Isles. McKenzie shows how cases of “political removal” on the colonial periphery could backfire in an interconnected imperial public sphere.

Maurizio Isabella looks at the Mediterranean in the 1820s, individual accounts, notably of military volunteerism, providing a clear instance of the transience and fluidity of international boundaries; and Karen Racine a prominent Mexican exile in London, Mexico’s ex-Emperor Agustín de Iturbide’s four-month stay in London demonstrating how exiles and their networks shaped British involvement in restructuring political and economic life in early national Mexico, a theme that could also have been probed for Simon Bolivar. Assessing refugees, regimes of proof, and the law in Jamaica, 1791-1828, Jan Jansen shows how alien laws ensured that differences in race and origin created wildly variegated statuses among aliens. Alien laws, he argues, were related to other efforts to control and regulate the mobilities of particular groups such as slaves, free Blacks, and the poor.

The chronology of coverage is instructive. The volume begins in 1750, but essentially treats of the 1790s-1820s. The latter ensures that we are in “Age of Revolutions” or “General Revolutions” or “General Crisis” territory, which is a Western construction of this period that is both pertinent but also incomplete. Going back to 1750 opens up the possibility of locating this period in terms of an assessment of continuity over a 1780s-90s divide. There is no formal discussion of this topic, which is a pity as it would be very useful to see the reflections of the editors and, indeed, the individual contributors. Part of the subject is very much set by the “Age of Revolutions” period and concept, particularly the Saint-Domingue discussion, but there are other elements that were more long-term, notably the slave trade. The volume ending in 1830 automatically raises the question of why and how far the discussion might be different were a sequel to have appeared. The end date might appear relevant in so far as it includes the Latin American Wars of Independence, as well as the end of the slave trade by most European states. Yet, that can be unpicked to note that conflict in Latin America, both within and between states, continued important, while the slave trade remained significant in the South Atlantic. In terms of Eurasia and the Pacific World, the largest conflict of the century, the Taiping Revolution in China, was not to occur until mid-century, and it is unclear how best to relate it to a Chinese diaspora that included the Americas and Australasia.

There is the technological dimension, with steamships and railways greatly speeding up movement, but that was not a key turning point in 1830 as long-range railways and regular steamship services essentially came later, and therefore offered a totally different scale for migration, voluntary or forced, as well as for that which had a degree of overlap. The last is an important topic for discussion and one that is pertinent both for forced migration as a whole and for particular categories of it that are discussed in this book, categories that could be complicated further if an alternative axis was offered, one incorporating race / ethnicity, religion, gender, politics, settlement and the specific needs of warfare. In another dimension, should come the geographical/spatial classification. This can be by continent, sub-continent, and geographical type as agrarian or marginal, desert or temperate. Thus, part of the appeal of this volume is that it encourages us to consider the period that came later. A valuable volume.

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Our Reviewer: Jeremy Black, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Exeter, is also a Senior Fellow of the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the author of an impressive number of works in history and international affairs, frequently demonstrating unique interactions and trends among events, including The Great War and the Making of the Modern World, Combined Operations: A Global History of Amphibious and Airborne Warfare, and The War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon. He has previously reviewed The Return of Marco Polo's World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-first Century, Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939, War: How Conflict Shaped Us, King of the World, Stalin’s War, Underground Asia, The Eternal City: A History of Rome in Maps, The Atlas of Boston History, Time in Maps, Bitter Peleliu, The Boundless Sea, On a Knife Edge. How Germany Lost the First World War, Meat Grinder: The Battles for the Rzhev Salient, Military History for the Modern Strategist, Tempest: The Royal Navy and the Age of Revolutions, Firepower: How Weapons Shaped Warfare, Sing As We Go: Britain Between the Wars, Maritime Power and the Power of Money in Louis XIV’s France, Empireworld: How British Imperialism Shaped the Globe, Why War?, and Seapower in the Post-Modern World. 

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Note: Mobility and Coercion in an Age of Wars and Revolutions.is also available in e-editions.

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