The eleven essays brought together in this volume explore the relations between expulsion, diaspora, and exile between Late Antiquity and the seventeenth century. The essays range from Hellenistic Egypt to seventeenth-century Hungary and involve expulsion and migration of Jews, Muslims and Protestants. The common goal of these essays is to shed light on a certain number of issues: first, to try to understand the dynamics of expulsion, in particular its social and political causes; second, to examine how expelled communities integrate (or not) into their new host societies; and finally, to understand how the experiences of expulsion and exile are made into founding myths that establish (or attempt to establish) group identities.

Diaspora: A Very Short Introduction examines the origins of diaspora as a concept, its changing meanings over time, its current popularity, and its utility in explaining human migration. The book proposes a flexible approach to diaspora based on examples drawn mainly from Jewish, African, Irish, and Asian history.

Military Diasporas proposes a new research approach to analyse the role of foreign military personnel as composite and partly imagined para-ethnic groups. These groups not only buttressed a state or empire’s military might but crucially connected, policed, and administered (parts of) realms as a transcultural and transimperial class while representing the polity’s universal or at least cosmopolitan aspirations at court or on diplomatic and military missions. Case studies of foreign militaries with a focus on their diasporic elements include the Achaemenid Empire, Ptolemaic Egypt, and the Roman Empire in the ancient world. These are followed by chapters on the Sassanid and Islamic occupation of Egypt, Byzantium, the Latin Aegean (Catalan Company) to Iberian Christian noblemen serving North African Islamic rulers, Mamluks and Italian Stradiots, followed by chapters on military diasporas in Hungary, the Teutonic Order including the Sword Brethren, and the Swiss military. The volume thus covers a broad band of military diasporic experiences and highlights aspects of their role in the building of state and empire from Antiquity to the late Middle Ages and from Persia via Egypt to the Baltic. With a broad chronological and geographic range, this volume is the ideal resource for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars interested in the history of war and warfare from Antiquity to the sixteenth century.

From the refugee camps of the Lebanon to the relative prosperity of life in the USA, the Palestinian diaspora has been dispersed across the world. In this pioneering study, Helena Lindholm Schulz examines the ways in which Palestinian identity has been formed in the diaspora through constant longing for a homeland lost. In so doing, the author advances the debate on the relationship between diaspora and the creation of national identity as well as on nationalist politics tied to a particular territory. But The Palestinian Diaspora also sheds light on the possibilities opened up by a transnational existence, the possibility of new, less territorialized identities, even in a diaspora as bound to the idea of an idealized homeland as the Palestinian. Members of the diaspora form new lives in new settings and the idea of homeland becomes one important, but not the only, source of identity. Ultimately though, Schulz argues, the strong attachment to Palestine makes the diaspora crucial in any understandings of how to formulate a viable strategy for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

A groundbreaking new history of the shared legacy of expulsion among Jews and Christian moneylenders in late medieval Europe Winner of the Wallace K. Ferguson Prize, Canadian Historical Association Beginning in the twelfth century, Jewish moneylenders increasingly found themselves in the crosshairs of European authorities, who denounced the evils of usury as they expelled Jews from their lands. Yet Jews were not alone in supplying coin and credit to needy borrowers. Across much of Western Europe, foreign Christians likewise engaged in professional moneylending, and they too faced repeated threats of expulsion from the communities in which they settled. No Return examines how mass expulsion became a pervasive feature of European law and politics—with tragic consequences that have reverberated down to the present. Drawing on unpublished archival evidence ranging from fiscal ledgers and legal opinions to sermons and student notebooks, Rowan Dorin traces how an association between usury and expulsion entrenched itself in Latin Christendom from the twelfth century onward. Showing how ideas and practices of expulsion were imitated and repurposed in different contexts, he offers a provocative reconsideration of the dynamics of persecution in late medieval society. Uncovering the protean and contagious nature of expulsion, No Return is a panoramic work of history that offers new perspectives on Jewish-Christian relations, the circulation of norms and ideas in the age before print, and the intersection of law, religion, and economic life in premodern Europe.

This book is the first encompassing history of diasporas in Europe between 1500 and 1800. Huguenots, Sephardim, British Catholics, Mennonites, Moriscos, Moravian Brethren, Quakers, Ashkenazim... what do these populations who roamed Europe in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries have in common? Despite an extensive historiography of diasporas, publications have tended to focus on the history of a single diaspora. Each of these groups was part of a community whose connections crossed political and cultural as well as religious borders. Each built dynamic networks through which information, people, and goods circulated. United by a memory of persecution, by an attachment to a homeland—be it real or dreamed—and by economic ties, those groups were nevertheless very diverse. As minorities, they maintained complex relationships with authorities, local inhabitants, and other diasporic populations. This book investigates the tensions they experienced. Between unity and heterogeneity, between mobility and locality, between marginalisation and assimilation, it attempts to reconcile global- and micro-historical approaches. The authors provide a comparative view as well as elaborate case studies for scholars, students, and the public who are interested in learning about how the social sciences and history contribute to our understanding of integration, migrations, and religious coexistence.

Featuring essays by world-renowned scholars, Diasporas charts the various ways in which global population movements and associated social, political and cultural issues have been seen through the lens of diaspora. Wide-ranging and interdisciplinary, this collection considers critical concepts shaping the field, such as migration, ethnicity, post-colonialism and cosmopolitanism. It also examines key intersecting agendas and themes, including political economy, security, race, gender, and material and electronic culture. Original case studies of contemporary as well as classical diasporas are featured, mapping new directions in research and testing the usefulness of diaspora for analyzing the complexity of transnational lives today. Diasporas is an essential text for anyone studying, working or interested in this increasingly vital subject.