Refugee Politics in Early Modern Europe

<p><b>Refugees have existed since ancient times, but it was in the early modern era that they were first recognized as a social category</b>. This open access book maps the invention of the refugee and uncovers their impact on local, regional, and transnational politics.<br>With case studies ranging from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean Basin, <i>Refugee Politics in Early Modern Europe </i>traces how refugees transformed the European continent. Topics explored include: the discursive strategies of exiles to distinguish themselves from other migrants; the role of displaced people in forging humanitarian networks; and the agency of religious minorities in migration management and imperialism. Moving beyond common images of refugees as passive victims of repression, this collection of essays shines a spotlight on the political interplay between displaced people, persecuting authorities, transnational support groups, and receiving societies – drawing a fuller picture of the many decision-making processes that determined the lives of newcomers and their hosts. The result is a sophisticated comparative study of mobility, identity, power, and politics, which will be vital reading to all scholars of migration history.<br><i>The open access edition of this book is available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).</i></p>