Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State

by Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky

Between the 1850s and World War I, about one million North Caucasian Muslims sought refuge in the Ottoman Empire. This resettlement of Muslim refugees from Russia changed the Ottoman state. Circassians, Chechens, Dagestanis, and others established hundreds of refugee villages throughout the Ottoman Balkans, Anatolia, and the Levant. Most villages still exist today, including what is now the city of Amman. Muslim refugee resettlement reinvigorated regional economies, but also intensified competition over land and, at times, precipitated sectarian tensions, setting in motion fundamental shifts in the borderlands of the Russian and Ottoman empires. Empire of Refugees reframes late Ottoman history through mass displacement and reveals the origins of refugee resettlement in the modern Middle East. Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky offers a historiographical the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire created a refugee regime, predating refugee systems set up by the League of Nations and the United Nations. Grounded in archival research in over twenty public and private archives across ten countries, this book contests the boundaries typically assumed between forced and voluntary migration, and refugees and immigrants, rewriting the history of Muslim migration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Academia, 19th Century, Islam

360 pages, Paperback

First published February 20, 2024

Reviews

[Joanna]

Fascinating examination of a subject I knew little to nothing about, even though I knew about the existence of Circassian communities in Turkey, Jordan, and Israel.

[Diane]

Excellent, well-researched book about the migration of large numbers of Muslim refugees from the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire as Russia took over more of their homeland. This is a fascinating story, and explains the origins of the divide between Russia and the Middle East that endures to the present. The author argues that the Ottoman Empire, including Anatolia and the capitol of Istanbul/Constantinople was actually very religiously diverse, with many Christians and Jews, as well as Muslims, before the mid-19th century. However, the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees changed the balance.

The author looks at how the government strategically placed refugees in certain areas to increase their control of these areas, mostly frontier areas largely populated by religious minorities. He also discusses how these policies led to the conflation of religion with ethnicity in much of the region that had formerly been Ottoman. The author places the larger population exchanges and massacres that occurred during and after World War I in this context. He also examines the Ottoman regime's refugee policy, and compares it to contemporary efforts. An excellent study of a topic that often is ignored.

I do wish that the author had brought his study up to date. He mentions that people of Caucasian ancestry are still a large minority in Turkey, but doesn't talk about their contemporary influence on the country. He does talk about how they were initially resettled in the Balkans, how many turned to banditry because of their inability to earn a living, and how this led to many of them being pushed into Anatolia as the Empire retreated from the Balkans. I wish he had talked about some of the long-standing Balkan communities that were also turned in to refugees at the same time, and provided some comparison.

The author had excellent insights about how the differences in farming conditions between the Caucasus on one hand, and the Balkans and Anatolia on the other, made it hard for the refugees to become successful in their new homes. He also contrasted the refugees who were resettled in the Levant (particularly contemporary Jordan), and how they were much more successful. Overall, the book showed that the divide between Europe and the Middle East is not as great as is often thought.

[Farah - OhMyBookness]

“Voluntary migration is hardly possible in wartime, let alone amid targeted expulsion or under foreign rule, which many perceive as occupation.”

(Identity, Survival, Ethnic Cleansing) A harrowing account of the suffering endured by millions as the great powers of the 19th century reshaped the demographics of entire regions. I couldn’t help but notice the unsettling parallels - despite the passage of time - with the ongoing genocide in Gaza and forced displacement in Palestine. In both cases, the mass expulsion and extermination of populations were not merely byproducts of war, but its very objective: to permanently alter the region’s demographic makeup. The Russo-Ottoman migrations laid the groundwork for a population exchange that changed the course of history. The author’s narrative remains objective and deeply informative throughout, offering a unique and compelling perspective on this historical crisis. Reading this struck a deeply personal chord, as the echoes of displacement, loss, and forced erasure reflect stories I’ve heard from both the Circassian and Palestinian diasporas - stories that are painfully familiar and far too close to home.

[Ian]

Good history looks simple but hides a wealth of skills and ability to know but zoom out from the all details and show a bigger picture worth knowing. This books does that. The beauty in this work in putting the bigger picture together with a story that usually misses its true impact because it is only told in the history of one or two countries. This book’s ability to cover the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the emerging states of the Balkans, Jordan, Syria, and many more shows the breadth of the author’s knowledge and his ability to accessibly illustrate the bigger picture.