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Migration studies: deep time and global approaches*

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Migrationen im Mittelalter. Ein Handbuch Edited by BorgolteMichael. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014.
The battle for the migrants: the introduction of steamshipping on the North Atlantic and its impact on the European exodus By FeysTorsten. St John’s, Newfoundland: International Maritime Economic History Association, 2013.
Wandering Greeks: the ancient Greek diaspora from the age of Homer to the death of Alexander the GreatByGarlandRobert. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014.

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2016

Dirk Hoerder
Dirk Hoerder*
Affiliation:
Arizona State University, USA E-mail: dhoerder@asu.edu
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Journal of Global History , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , November 2016 , pp. 473 - 480
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

This review essay incorporates studies on widely diverging topics, periods and regions received by the Journal for review and my own complementary selection of titles to provide a coherent (almost) global perspective over time. I am very grateful to Gagan D. S. Sood for suggestions and editing.

References

1 Anderson, Bridget, Us & them? The dangerous politics of immigration control, Oxford: Oxford, 2013 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Schiller, Nina Glick, Basch, Linda, and Blanc-Szanton, Cristina, Towards a transnational perspective on migration: race, class, ethnicity and nationalism reconsidered, New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1992, pp. 1–24 Google Scholar.

3 A brief summary is provided by Harzig, Christiane, Dirk Hoerder with Donna Gabaccia, What is migration history?, Cambridge: Polity, 2009 Google Scholar.

4 Daniels, Roger, Coming to America: a history of immigration and ethnicity in American life, New York: Perennial, 1991 Google Scholar (rev. edn 2002); Takaki, Ronald, A different mirror: a history of multicultural America, Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1993 Google Scholar. For Canada, see Burnet, Jean R. with Howard Palmer, ‘Coming Canadians’: an introduction to a history of Canada’s peoples, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1988 Google Scholar. For western Europe, see Moch, Leslie Page, Moving Europeans: migration in western Europe since 1650, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992 Google Scholar (2nd edn 2003).

5 Cohen, Robin, ed., The Cambridge survey of world migration, Cambridge: Cambridge, 1995 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hoerder, Dirk, Cultures in contact: world migrations in the second millennium, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bentley, Jerry H., Old World encounters: cross-cultural contacts and exchanges in pre-modern times, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993 Google Scholar; Manning, Patrick, Migration in world history, New York: Routledge, 2005 Google Scholar; Lucassen, Jan, Lucassen, Leo, and Manning, Patrick, eds., Migration in world history: multidisciplinary approaches, Leiden: Brill, 2010 Google Scholar; Parzinger, Hermann, Die Kinder des Prometheus. Eine Geschichte der Menschheit vor Erfindung der Schrift, Munich: Beck, 2014 Google Scholar (English translation in progress).

6 Bentley, Jerry H., ‘Sea and ocean basins as frameworks for historical analysis’, Geographical Review, 89, 2, 1999, pp. 215–224 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wigen, Kären, ed., ‘AHR forum: oceans in history’, American Historical Review, 111, 3, 2006, pp. 717–780 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Horden, Peregrine and Purcell, Nicholas, The corrupting sea: a study of Mediterranean history, Oxford: Blackwell, 2000 Google Scholar; Beckwith, Christopher I., Empires of the silk road: a history of central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the present, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009 Google Scholar; Broodbank, Cyprian, The making of the Middle Sea: a history of the Mediterranean from the beginning to the emergence of the classical world, London: Thames & Hudson, 2013 Google Scholar.

8 Research on ancient migrations is expanding fast. See de Ligt, Luuk and Tacoma, Laurense E., eds., Migration and mobility in the early Roman empire, Leiden: Brill, 2016 Google Scholar; Sänger, Patrick, ed., Minderheiten und Migration in der griechisch-römischen Welt, Paderborn: Schöningh, 2016 Google Scholar; Rass, Christoph, ed., Militärische Migration vom Altertum bis zur Gegenwart, Paderborn: Schöningh, 2016 Google Scholar; Preiser-Kapeller, Johannes, Reinfandt, Lucian, and Stouraitis, Ioannis, eds., Migration history of the medieval Afroeurasian transition zone, Leiden: Brill, forthcoming 2017 Google Scholar.

9 Borgolte and his students pioneered the study of medieval migration and mobility in German academia. See Borgolte, Michael, Europa entdeckt seine Vielfalt, 1050–1250, Stuttgart: Ulmer, 2002 Google Scholar.

10 Early studies include Meilink-Roelofsz, Maria A. P., Asian trade and European influence in the Indonesian archipelago between 1500 and about 1630, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1962 Google Scholar; Gupta, Ashin Das and Pearson, Michael N., eds., India and the Indian Ocean, 1500–1800, Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1987 Google Scholar; Reid, Anthony, Southeast Asia in the age of commerce, 1450–1680, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993 Google Scholar.

11 Gungwu, Wang, The Chinese overseas: from earthbound China to the quest for autonomy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000 Google Scholar; Heidhues, Mary S., Southeast Asia’s Chinese minorities, Hawthorn, Victoria: Longman, 1974 Google Scholar; Reid, Anthony, Alilunas-Rodgers, Kristine, and Cushman, Jennifer, eds., Sojourners and settlers: histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese, London: Allen & Unwin, 1996 Google Scholar.

12 Carter, Marina, Voices from indenture: experiences of Indian migrants in the British empire, Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1996 Google Scholar.

13 Pan, Lynn, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Chinese overseas, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999 Google Scholar, and Singapore: Archipelago Press, 2000; Lal, Brij V., Reeves, Peter, and Rai, Rajesh, eds., The encyclopedia of the Indian diaspora, Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007 Google Scholar.

14 See, in contrast, Balachandran, G., Globalizing labour? Indian seafarers and world shipping, c.1870–1945, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013 Google Scholar.

15 To reach out to specialists of other regions, this volume should have included a glossary. In several graphs of Chapter 3, legends are missing or are unclear. Tina S. Clemente, in her essay on Spanish policy towards Chinese merchants in the eighteenth-century Philippines, calls the colonial government’s ‘massacres’ (her quotation marks) of Chinese – many of whom were artisans – ‘deemed as [of] excessive armed force’ (p. 123, emphasis added); a decree issued after 6,000 had been killed in 1762 is evaluated ‘as somewhat conciliatory’ (pp. 130–1) and the policy of the ‘Hapsburg rulers’ as of ‘utmost flexibility’ (p. 137). Thus, the concluding call for a study of the ‘victims’ perspectives’ (pp. 137–8) sounds almost cynical.

16 Oonk included several of his earlier published essays (see p. xvii) and the volume is extremely repetitive. Specific phrases as well as whole topics appear over and over again.

17 Zaugg, Roberto, Stranieri di antico regime. Mercanti, giudici e consoli nella Napoli del Settecento, Roma: Viella, 2011 Google Scholar.

18 A third book-length study of 2012 is Per Kristian Sebak’s unpublished PhD thesis, ‘A transatlantic migratory bypass: Scandinavian shipping companies and transmigration, 1898–1929’, University of Bergen.

19 In the printing process some of Feys’s graphs became difficult to read.

20 To my knowledge no studies of the movements in China exist, but see Elleman, Bruce A. and Kotkin, Stephen, eds., Manchurian railways and the opening of China: an international history, Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 2010 Google Scholar.

21 Torpey, John, The invention of the passport, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000 Google Scholar.

22 The essays in Schulze, Mathias et al., eds., German diasporic experiences: identity, migration, and loss, Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008 Google Scholar, concentrate on the multifaceted experience in communities across the globe.

23 Tölölyan, Khachig, ‘Rethinking diaspora(s): stateless power in the transnational moment’, Diaspora, 5, 1, 1996, pp. 9–36 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brah, Avtar, Cartographies of diaspora: contesting identities, London: Routledge, 1996 Google Scholar; Cohen, Robin, Global diasporas: an introduction, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1997 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clifford, James, Routes: travel and translation in the late twentieth century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997, pp. 244–277 Google Scholar; Anthias, Floya, ‘Evaluating “diaspora”: beyond ethnicity?’, Sociology, 32, 1998, pp. 557–580 Google Scholar. Reviews of the field include Brubaker, Rogers, ‘The “diaspora” diaspora’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 28, 1, 2005, pp. 1–19 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Cho, Lily, ‘The turn to diaspora’, Topia, 17, 2007, pp. 11–30 Google Scholar.

24 The book contains maps, a glossary, and illustrations. See also the essays in Randolph, John and Avrutin, Eugene M., eds., Russia in motion: cultures of human mobility since 1850, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2011 Google Scholar, including an essay on Odessa as a hub for the hajj.

25 See also Gabaccia, Donna and Hoerder, Dirk, eds., Connecting seas and connected ocean rims: Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans and China Seas migrations from the 1830s to the 1930s, Leiden: Brill, 2011 Google Scholar, and Hoerder, Dirk and Kaur, Amarjit, eds., Proletarian and gendered mass migrations: a global perspective on continuities and discontinuities from the 19th to the 21st centuries, Leiden: Brill, 2013 Google Scholar. For the Western hemisphere, see Moya, José C., ‘A continent of immigrants: postcolonial shifts in the western hemisphere’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 86, 1, 2006, pp. 1–28 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Moya, José C. and McKeown, Adam, ‘World migration in the long twentieth century’, in Michael Adas, ed., Essays on twentieth-century history, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2010, pp. 9–52 Google Scholar. In many of the comparative anthologies, African and Latin American migrations are underrepresented. This does not necessarily reflect lack of research but lack of connectivity between scholars and academic institutions.

26 A recent assessment countering the anti-immigrant stance since the 1990s is Goldin, Ian, Cameron, Geoffrey, and Balarajan, Meera, Exceptional people: how migration shaped our world and will define our future, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011 Google Scholar.