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European Political Emigrations: A Lost Subject

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Robert C. Williams
Robert C. Williams
Affiliation:
Williams College
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Extract

Historians generally dislike lost causes. They seek to explain what happened, rather than what might have been, and have consequently neglected the story of political emigrations. Granted, the study of dmigres is full of methodological pitfalls for the unwary: biased accounts of past issues, outright forgeries of documentary evidence, personal recriminations that serve to distort political reality, and a pervasive mood of bitterness, acrimony, nostalgia, and endless hope. Yet it is an important story, not only because of its intrinsic merit as a political phenomenon worth studying, but also because of the effect that exiles have had both in their place of refuge and in their homeland when they have been able to return. He who would ignore the émigrés might do well to recall that the experience of exile helped fashion the political careers of Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky, as well as of Charles II and Louis XVIII.

Type
Political Emigration
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , April 1970 , pp. 140 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1970

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References

1 Few recent studies have considered the politics of the exiles themselves, but only the politics which drove them abroad. A notable exception is the study of anti-Nazi refugees after 1933 by Edinger, L. J., German Exile Politics (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1956)Google Scholar. General studies of political refugees are more available, among them Cirtautas, K., The Refugee; A Psychological Study (Boston, 1957)Google Scholar; Murphy, H., Flight and Resettlement (Lucerne, 1955)Google Scholar; Stoessinger, J., The Refugee and the World Community (Minneapolis, 1956)Google Scholar; Schechtman, J., The Refugee in the World (New York, 1963).Google Scholar

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