Europe on the Move : Refugees in the Era of the Great War

This book talks about the mass displacement of civilians, estimated to be 14 to 15 million, in the twentieth-century Europe during the First World War. It looks at the causes and consequences of the refugee crisis and its aftermath, and the attempts to understand its significance. Key sites of displacement extended from Belgium to Armenia, taking in France, Italy, Austria-Hungary, East Prussia, the Russian Empire, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey and Serbia. The German army's occupation of Belgium, France, Poland and Lithuania prompted the mass flight of refugees, as did Russia's invasion of East Prussia in 1914. Jewish, Ruthenian and Polish civilians in the Habsburg Empire fled their homes or were deported by the military to distant locations. Following Italy's attack on Austria-Hungary in May 1915, the Habsburg authorities ordered around 100,000 Slovenian subjects of the empire to leave. The Austrian and Bulgarian invasion of Serbia brought about a humanitarian catastrophe as civilians and the remnants of the Serbian army sought safety elsewhere. However, mass flight of civilian refugees did not begin in 1914 nor did it come to an end in 1918. Muslim refugees fled to the relative safety of Anatolia in order to escape violent persecution by Bulgarian and other forces during the Balkan Wars on 1912-13. There were complex movements of population between Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey before 1914. The complex process of repatriation and resettlement affected soldiers and civilians alike and rarely took place in stable or peaceful circumstances. Front matter Contents List of illustrations List of maps and tables Notes on contributors Preface Introduction Population displacement in East Prussia during the First World War ‘A mass which you could form into whatever you wanted’: refugees and state building in Lithuania and Courland, 1914–21 Refugees from Polish territories in Russia during the First World War ‘Human waves’: refugees in Russia, 1914–18 Ukrainian assistance to refugees during the First World War ‘Cities of barracks’: refugees in the Austrian part of the Habsburg Empire during the First World War Between refugees and the state: Hungarian Jewry and the wartime Jewish refugee crisis in Austria-Hungary Beyond the borders: displaced persons in the Italian ­linguistic space during the First World War Belgian refugees during the First World War (France, Britain, Netherlands) Citizenship on the move: refugee communities and the state in France, 1914–18 Golgotha: the retreat of the Serbian army and civilians in 1915–16 The refugee question in Bulgaria before, during and after the First World War From imperial dreams to the refugee problem: population movements during Greece’s ‘decade of war’, 1912–22 Becoming and unbecoming refugees: the long ordeal of Balkan Muslims, 1912–34 Index Mass population displacement affected millions of Europe's civilians across the different theatres of war in 1914–18. At the end of the war, a senior Red Cross official wrote ‘there were refugees everywhere. It was as if the entire world had to move or was waiting to move'. Europe on the move: refugees in the era of the Great War, 1912–23 is the first attempt to understand their experiences as a whole and to establish the political, social and cultural significance and ramifications of the wartime refugee crisis. Drawing on original research by leading specialists from more than a dozen countries, it will become the definitive work on the subject and will appeal to anyone who wishes to understand how governments and public opinion responded to refugees a century ago. Europe on the move is the first book to address the dramatic and poignant refugee crisis that erupted during the First World War and that enveloped the entire continent. Written by specialists in the field it will appeal to all those who are interested in the era of the First World War and in Europe’s first major refugee crisis.