Mobility and Coercion in an Age of Wars and Revolutions

The political upheavals and military confrontations that rocked the world during the decades around 1800 saw forced migrations on a massive scale. This global history brings this explosion into full view. Rather than describing coerced mobilities as an aberration in a period usually identified with quests for liberty and political participation, this book recognizes them as a crucial but hitherto underappreciated dimension of the transformations underway. Examining the global movements of enslaved persons, soldiers, convicts, and refugees across land and sea, Mobility and Coercion in an Age of Wars and Revolutions presents a deeply entangled history. The book interrogates the binaries of “free” and “unfree” mobility, analyzing the agency and resistance of those moved against their will. It investigates the importance of temporary destinations and the role of expulsion and deportation and exposes the contours of a world of moving subjects integrated by overlaps, interconnections, and permeable boundaries. This title is also available in Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Jan C. Jansen is Professor of Modern History at the University of Tübingen, Germany. He works on the comparative history of European empires and decolonization and is leading a major research project on refugee movements during the Atlantic Age of Revolutions. His publications include Decolonization: A Short History (2017) and Refugee Crises, 1945–2000 (2020).

Kirsten McKenzie is Professor of History at the University of Sydney, Australia, and Director of the Vere Gordon Childe Centre. She is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Royal Historical Society. She works on scandal, imposture, and politics in the British Empire in the nineteenth century. Her books include Scandal in the Colonies (2004), A Swindler’s Progress (2009 and 2010), and Imperial Underworld (2016).