The Outsiders: Refugees in Europe since 1492.

• Author: Hare, J. Laurence
• Position: Book review

Ther, Philip, The Outsiders: Refugees in Europe since 1492. Princeton University Press, 2019. ix + 342. Hardcover, $29.95.

History is relevant again, or at least it seems to be. Just six years after Jo Guldi and David Armitage's The History Manifesto famously criticized historians for focusing too much on short-term projects and neglecting to use the full power of their field to speak to the present day, a surfeit of new works has appeared drawing on deeper lessons to explain the most concerning maladies of the twenty-first century. Among these is one by Philipp Ther, a historian of modern Germany who has written some important histories of ethnic cleansing in Europe and of the continent's difficult escape from the legacy of dictatorship. In 2015, he was confronted with the parallels between his historical subject matter and the present moment when he saw firsthand the waves of migrants from Syria struggling to find shelter amidst the democracies of the European Union. Not only did the scale of the humanitarian crisis unfolding before his eyes remind him of past incidents he had studied, but also the debate among Europeans over how to respond struck him as familiar. At the same time, Ther noted that the treatment of this wave of refugees marked a departure from the idealistic rhetoric about human rights that has prevailed in recent decades. In order to address both the apparent similarities and discrepancies, Ther has created a richly-detailed synthesis of the "long legacy" of refugees in Europe. In The Outsiders, he reaches across five centuries to "identify the factors that determine when either favorable or unfavorable conditions tend to prevail for refugees, and to explain the causes for these vicissitudes" (p. 9). Along the way, Ther provides a highly-accessible history that serves to illuminate the titanic shifts underway in today's Europe.

Ther begins his narrative in 1492 with the series of mass flights sparked by the Spanish Reconquista. With this point of departure, Ther signals his desire to focus on the history of refugees in the context of several modern trends, including identity formation, state consolidation, and globalization. The book's focus lies mainly with movements across state lines, with particular emphasis on the factors that produce flight and the reception of host states. The author rightly acknowledges that a history of refugee experiences over the long term is elusive given the dearth of source material, but he...