Removing Peoples: Forced Removal in the Modern World
Richard Bessel, Claudia B. Haake - OUP/German Historical Institute London, 2011
One
of the terrible and tragic themes of modern history is the forced
removal of millions of human beings. The causes, course, and
consequences of the removal of peoples from their homes form a central
theme in the history of the modern world. While removing people from
their homes by force did not begin suddenly in the nineteenth century,
the combination of the development of a global (capitalist) economy, of
modern race-thinking, of world wars, of the triumph of popular and
national sovereignty, and of new technological means of physically
uprooting and transporting peoples has given this phenomenon a
quantitatively and qualitatively new character. Removal has been a
global phenomenon, and therefore this volume treats it within the frame
of world history and international comparison. Examples discussed range
from the United States in the 1830s to the expulsion of pied noir
settlers from Algeria in the 1960s. A number of factors reshaped the
older practices of forced migration and helped to make the removals
discussed in this volume distinctly 'modern'. These include the use of
modern apparatuses of administration, communication, and coercion, as
well as warfare based on modern technology and organization.
