If banishment, expulsion, deportation and other forms of forced population movement are universal phenomena, what can we learn from studying their history in Europe? Editors Sylvia Hahn, Andrea Komlosy and Ilse Reiter open their essay collection, Ausweisung, Abschiebung, Vertreibung in Europa, 16.–20. Jahrhundert, with this provocative question. They argue that studying various forms of forced migration in Europe from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries can help us understand how and why various practices of religious, social, and political exclusion became radicalized over time. This process of radicalization unfolded in the context of nation and state building, which were in turn linked to increasingly effective attempts at creating cultural, ethnic, or political homogeneity. Patterns of both state building and forced population movement were exported outside of Europe and remain relevant on the global scene. The ten essays in the volume are relatively evenly distributed across the period. Geographically, German-speaking Central Europe plays a central role, although many essays have a strong comparative component.

Social, cultural, and political exclusion took many forms through the history of Europe: banishment, expulsion, deportation, exile, forced relocation, and the revocation of citizenship rights, among others. The volume engages with a remarkable range of these practices, showing how they often transformed into each other. Both the purpose and target groups of exclusion changed gradually over time. Although religious persecution was characteristic for the early modern period, with the development of the nation-state expulsion (and other forms of social exclusion) became increasingly aimed at creating ethnic and political homogeneity (Hahn). In addition, although expulsion was used as punishment for crimes from the early modern period through the nineteenth century, it gradually transformed into a means of controlling access to the welfare system as subjects turned into citizens (Komlosy) and a means of global conflict management as the idea of ethnic homogeneity was accepted as the basis of the nation state (Haas). In practice political, ethnic, and religious considerations often worked together in determining the target groups for exclusion (Nolte, Wagermann).

As types of exclusion changed over time, so too evolved the means of controlling population movements. “In the last five hundred years, an increasing radicalization and systematization of inclusion and exclusion took place,” the editors conclude (22–23). A number of essays show this process, mostly focusing on the aftermath of World War I. This period is traditionally considered a watershed in the history of migration, because the sheer scale of population movement (both voluntary and forced) created a qualitatively new form of migration (on this point, see J. Oltmer, “Flucht, Vertreibung und Asyl im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert,” IMIS Beiträge [2002:2], 107). The population exchanges that took place across Europe both before and after World War I represented the “imperial response to the national challenge” (Adanir, 189) and were a logical, but not necessarily inevitable, outcome of the process of nation building. In the twentieth century, methods of ethnic homogenization have run their course from being an internationally accepted (or at least tolerated) form of conflict management (Treaty of Locarno) to a “cause for conflict [that] is not legitimized after the fact anymore” (Haas, 167). Practices of exclusion do not evolve linearly, however. Studying the development of “fortress Europe,” Brat Leuthardt concludes that “terms that are easily used by any speaker of a European Ministry of Internal Affairs today [criminal aliens, forced expatriation, abusing the right to political asylum], would have immediately cost them their jobs 30 years ago” (241).

Although the essays outline broad trends in the development of exclusionary practices, the flexibility of expulsion seems a common characteristic spanning the entire period. In early modern Cologne expulsion was a “cheap, flexible, and almost universally applicable punishment [for petty crimes] that could be meted out in various doses” (Schwerhoff, 69). The newly established Austrian Republic after World War I used the conferral or denial of citizenship to reduce unemployment, ameliorate the effects of housing shortage, and control the black market (Reiter). Yet even if the form and the dynamics of expulsion remained similar over time, the changing contexts produced qualitatively different phenomena (Adanir).

The essays must be commended for their engagement with the experience of exclusion. The experiences of expellees run the wide gamut from resistance to resignation, from resourceful new beginnings to tragedy (Schwerhoff). The social and professional assets (Hahn) and, in some cases, the gender (Embacher) of the (voluntarily or forcibly) relocated influenced to a great degree their ability to fit into a new home and their willingness to return to their home countries at some point. The essays of the volume work on their own, while remaining in conversation with each other. The typology and the narrative history of expulsion suggested in the introduction invite further comparisons, as does the provocative opening question of the volume.