The latest offering of The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies focuses on the theme of European refugees in British Overseas Territories. It is all too easy to focus merely on what happened to refugees from Nazi oppression in Great Britain or the Americas—Steinberg and Grenville's edited collection offers a welcome addition to the field of refugee studies by expanding the range of countries considered.

Steinberg and Grenville use their introduction to give a thorough overview of the historiography of refugee and internment history in the 1930s and 1940s. The movement of refugees is, by its very nature, transnational, hence the choice of topic for this volume. The conditions that create large numbers of refugees constantly change, limiting options available for those seeking escape. Indeed, “[m]any of the refugees fled ‘country by country’, at first within Europe, were often ‘stopped in flight’ at some point or reached a safe destination more or less accidentally” (7). It is these “accidents” of arrival that offer up so many different narratives of global diaspora.

The volume's global view of migration seeks to illustrate the international variety of experiences, including internment of refugee enemy aliens in the British Overseas Territories to which they fled. The volume encompasses New Zealand, Singapore, Shanghai, Kenya, South Africa, Palestine, India, Australia, and Canada, offering a reminder that the history of refugees from Nazi oppression is not just a Europe- and America-centric story. The editors should be commended for selecting these “forgotten destinations” and such a wide range of narratives to include in this book.

There is some exciting new work in this volume, including Jutta Vinzent's chapter on the internment of refugees from Nazi Germany in Kenya during World War II. Though Kenya has been mentioned in a handful of earlier publications, Vinzent combines archival records from both the British and African National Archives alongside the papers of the artist Valentin G. Braun to write a strong overview of internment in Kenya. As Vinzent notes, “Internment has been relevant to migration, and particularly important for artistic production, for several reasons: more specifically, internment was not only an intense period of living closely together, but allowed refugees to re-establish networks from their time before migration as well as to form new ones” (161). Every refugee had their own reason for needing escape, and significant clashes of personalities and experiences occurred within camps where individuals were confined together, with nationality being their only common link. Many turned to art as the medium to express their emotions over confinement and offer a more human insight into internment than governmental records can do alone. The contributors to the volume have each done well to weave the official narratives together with interviews and personal memorabilia to paint a more nuanced picture of life as a refugee.

The authors come from a wide range of disciplines including history, social work, German studies, and art and visual culture. In recent years, there has been an enormous growth in awareness of the art created in internment camps, with numerous exhibitions, publications, and illustrated talks. This edited collection builds on this momentum and introduces some new faces to the arena. Many of the chapters focus on individuals or families and their contribution to the artistic or musical scene of the refugee's country of adoption. As such, this volume is best read in conjunction with other works that contextualize refugee policy and internment. This collection really comes into its own by introducing new audiences to historical topics not previously explored, encouraging further research in new areas.

Some chapters focus on ongoing research, such as Andrea Strutz's work on the index cards created by the United Jewish Refugee and War Relief Agencies for civilian Jewish internees sent from Great Britain to Canada in 1940. Much less has been written about what happened to internees in Canada by comparison with the internees sent from Britain to Australia, and, consequently, there is the potential for exciting new insights into what happened to refugees in Canada post-internment as this research progresses. This chapter is complemented by Patrick Farges’ work on German-speaking refugees admitted to Canada during the 1930s and how they were confronted with “various forms of rejection and hostility in Canada” (26), highlighting the challenges of two different groups of refugees in the same country.

All ages of refugee are covered in this collection, the youngest being child refugees in New Zealand, as discussed by Monica Tempian in her chapter. All nations during the 1930s, including New Zealand, were reluctant to offer sanctuary to large numbers of refugees; this is just as true today as it was then. Tempian contends that the “view that orphaned children, unlike adults or children who migrate with their own families, can most easily be molded into so-called ‘assimilated’ and useful citizens may partly explain the public acceptance of these children” (98), a message with which scholars of any refugee movement will relate.

What this volume really shows is a development of the exploration of micro-archives, as family diaries, letters, papers, and artworks continue to be discovered by second and third generations of refugee families. With the emergence of new documents, new pieces of the jigsaw offer the most complete picture of refugee movements and Second World War internment known to date. However, the jigsaw is not complete, and there are still many elements that need further investigation. This edited collection contributes some more pieces to this puzzle and gives a greater understanding of this highly significant period of history; it should be read by scholars and amateur researchers looking to understand the global significance of refugee movements in the 1930s.