The Outsiders: Refugees in Europe since 1492 by Philipp Ther, and: Die Außenseiter. Flucht. Flüchtlinge und Integration im modernen Europa by Philipp Ther

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Outsiders: Refugees in Europe since 1492 by Philipp Ther, and: Die Außenseiter. Flucht. Flüchtlinge und Integration im modernen Europa by Philipp Ther Brent Peterson The Outsiders: Refugees in Europe since 1492. By Philipp Ther. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. Pp. vii + 342. Cloth $29.95. ISBN 978-0691179520. Die Außenseiter. Flucht. Flüchtlinge und Integration im modernen Europa. By Philipp Ther. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2017. Pp. 437. Cloth €26.00. ISBN 978-3518427767. Although Philipp Ther's The Outsiders is not, strictly speaking, centered on Germany, the book is filled with information and insights that make it extremely valuable to those of us who focus our attention more narrowly. Among other things, by looking at the much longer history of refugees in Europe, including refugees who arrived in Germany long before the so-called refugee crisis of 2015, Ther explodes the myth that migration began in 1955 when the first Gastarbeiter began arriving from southern and eastern Europe to keep the Wirtschaftswunder thriving. For Germany, the crucial date might be 1685, when some 50,000 French Protestants, confronted by demands to convert or flee, ended up settling in German lands. In addition to pushing the clock back on the history of people seeking refuge in Germany, Ther notes that it was this group, the Huguenots, who gave French and English the word refugee. The book starts considerably earlier, and the English version has the date that Ther regards as the original refugee crisis in its subtitle: 1492. Americans associate this year with Columbus, who set out from Spain, reached the Americas, and launched untold horrors on the indigenous population after 1492, but his voyage was only one result of the expulsion of Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula. The Jews of Spain and Portugal faced the same demands as the Huguenots, and, rather than converting to Catholicism, hundreds of thousands of Sephardic Jews fled to the Ottoman Empire, including to territory that became Turkey, the Balkans, and Greece, while others ended up in Amsterdam, Hamburg, various Italian cities, and even North Africa. The loss of its Muslim and Jewish communities impoverished newly united Spain culturally and intellectually, but the expulsion allowed Jewish communities to flourish in much of the Mediterranean basin for centuries, albeit with periodic outbreaks of antisemitism. In other words, despite what we might hear today, refugees have been [End Page 169] with us for centuries, and they almost invariably enrich the countries where they settle and impoverish those they flee. In a nutshell, The Outsiders is filled with histories that remain little known, especially to the general readers who could easily profit from the book, but also to scholars who might appreciate the broader context that national histories seldom provide. Ther not only sheds light on the history of refugees to and from Europe, but he also stitches these otherwise scattered historical accounts into a coherent whole and concludes with a reasoned plea for action. Rather than presenting a chronological overview, The Outsiders divides refugees into three sometimes overlapping categories: refugees who fled religious intolerance, those who were forced out or attracted by extreme nationalism, and political or ideological refugees. Of course, since religiously motivated flight began much earlier, since nationalism only reared its ugly head in the eighteenth century and since politically motivated flight mostly began with the French Revolution and reached new heights in the twentieth century, the book contains an implicit chronology. It also links and explains movements that might otherwise seem disparate. For example, the "exchange" of Greek and Turkish populations in the aftermath of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, part of what Ther calls "the 'long' First World War" (2) turns out to be strikingly similar to the flight and expulsion of Russian, German, Polish, Hungarian, and other populations when Europe's borders were redrawn after World War II. And, in addition to exploring the reasons behind refugees' flight, Ther's book differentiates itself from other broad treatments by playing close attention to how well refugees integrated themselves into the communities where they found shelter, if seldom a warm welcome. Ther is well aware that integration is a concept that requires considerable unpacking and, as a...