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, Islam

360 pages, Paperback

First published February 20, 2024

Reviews

[Joanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Farah - OhMyBookness · Rating 5 out of 5]

“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 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.