The Roots of Diasporism

Laypeople and experts, especially those adhering to the instrumentalist and constructionist approaches to ethnic origins, consider the advent of institutionalized and organized ethno-national diasporas to be a modern or even recent phenomenon. Thus these observers hold the view that the attributes that characterize the current diaspora phenomenon and specific diasporas can be traced back only to the middle of the nineteenth century. This is only partly true. To an extent, the development of certain ethno-national diasporas, such as the Italian and German diasporas, was decisively accelerated by the failure of the national revolutions in Europe, which caused disillusioned revolutionaries and other disgruntled persons to seek refuge in more liberal host countries. It is similarly held that additional European diasporas, such the Polish, Irish, and Russian, arose out of the subsequent worsening political and economic situations in their homelands. It has also been argued that there have been other, no less significant factors contributing to migration, to permanent settlement in host countries, and consequently to diasporas' formation since the middle of the nineteenth century: the demands for functionaries and workers in the older European empires, particularly those of Britain and Holland, and in the newer empires, such as the French and Belgian; the rapid processes of industrialization, especially in the United States; and the accelerated development of land and maritime transportation that has facilitated inter-state migration.