The Making of the Modern Refugee

by Peter Gatrell

Overview

The Making of the Modern Refugee is a comprehensive history of global population displacement in the twentieth century. It takes a new approach to the subject, exploring its causes, consequences, and meanings. History, the author shows, provides important clues to understanding how the idea of refugees as a 'problem' embedded itself in the minds of policy-makers and the public, and poses a series of fundamental questions about the nature of enforced migration and how it has shaped society throughout the twentieth century across a broad geographical area - from Europe and the Middle East to South Asia, South-East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Wars, revolutions, and state formation are invoked as the main causal explanations of displacement, and are considered alongside the emergence of a twentieth-century refugee regime linking governmental practices, professional expertise, and humanitarian relief efforts.

This new study rests upon scholarship from several disciplines and draws extensively upon oral testimony, eye-witness accounts, and film, as well as unpublished source material in the archives of governments, international organisations, and non-governmental organisations. The Making of the Modern Refugee explores the significance that refugees attached to the places they left behind, to their journeys, and to their destinations - in short, how refugees helped to interpret and fashion their own history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199674169
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/01/2013
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	326
Sales rank:	716,473
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Peter Gatrell was educated at the University of Cambridge. In 1976 he joined the University of Manchester where he is currently Professor of Economic History and affiliated to new Humanitarian and Conflict Research Institute. He teaches courses on refugees in modern world history, Russian economic and social history, the cultural history of war, and the history of humanitarianism. He is the author of several books including The Tsarist Economy, 1850-1917 (1986), A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War 1 (1999), and Free World? The campaign to save the world's refugees, 1956-1963 (2011).

Table of Contents

Preface and acknowledgementsList of maps and tablesIntroduction: The Making of the Modern RefugeePart 1: Empires of Refugees1. Crucibles of Population Displacement before and during the Great War2. Nation-states and the Birth of a 'Refugee Problem' in Inter-war EuropePart 2: Mid-Century Maelstrom3. Europe Uprooted: Refugee Crises and 'Durable Solutions' at Mid-Century4. 'Nothing Except Commas': Jews, Palestinians, and the Torment of Displacement5. Midnight's Refugees? Partition and its Aftermath in India and Pakistan6. War and Population Displacement in East Asia, 1937-1950Part 3: Refugees in the Global Cold War and its Aftermath7. 'Villages of Discipline': the Cold War and Refugees in South-East Asia8. 'Long Road': Africa's Refugees, Decolonisation, and 'Development'9. 'Some Kind of Freedom': Refugees, Homecoming, and Refugee Voices in Contemporary HistoryConclusion: Refugees and their HistoryFurther Reading

Editorial Reviews

"The Making of the Modern Refugee deserves a wide readership. Peter Gatrell has written a challenging book that is simultaneously meaningful for refugee and displaced communities, academics, practitioners, policymakers and students interested in understanding the complex political, economic, social and moral issues underlying the global refugee phenomenon. This book should be on many reading lists."—Journal of Refugee Studies

"Peter Gatrell has written a superb book. It is the starting point for anyone who wants to understand the recent historical roots of refugees."—American Historical Review

"Gatrell offers a deftly written, comprehensive and at times heartbreaking account of the mass movement of populations. Drawing from a rich array of primary and secondary materials, first-hand accounts and historical reflections, The Making of the Modern Refugee is a terrific introduction to the history of mass displacement in the past century."—The European Review of History

"[T]he book is truly a tour de force [with] a vast scope."—Economic History Review

"[I]nsightful and empathetic...[T]his is a volume to be celebrated."—Journal of Palestine Studies

"A synthetic volume such as this is a key book that should light the way for more work on displacement and other forced migrations."—Journal of Modern History

From the Publisher