Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky, Empire of Refugees: NorthCaucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State (Stanford university Press, 2024)
Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky’s fine monograph examines the migration of Muslim refugees from the Russian-ruled North Caucasus to the Ottoman empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Transnational in its scope, Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late OttomanState is based on research in twenty archives in ten countries. Hamed-Troyansky uses state archives, private letters and petitions, and oral history interviews to tell the fascinating story of the North Caucasian refugees’ resettlement and its aftermath.
The book makes a number of important and original contributions. First, Empire of Refugees argues that the Ottoman Empire constructed a refugee regime between 1860 and the World War I that predated the more familiar 20th-century international refugee regime. Second, Empire of Refugees illuminates the relationship between religion and ethnicity in migration between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Hamed-Troyansky traces the shift from an Ottoman refugee regime following a “sectarian logic” to one based on ethnicity, showing that the drive for homogenization led to the population exchanges of Greeks and Turks after World War I as well as to ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Christian Armenians. Third, Empire of Refugees illuminates the dynamics of rule in multiethnic empires, showing that the Ottoman and Russian empires each used control of migration in order to strengthen central authority. Finally, Hamed-Troyansky investigates the evolving identity of the North Caucasian refugees as a multiethnicand multilingual population whose sense of nationalism originated in the diaspora.
While a great deal has been written about the voluntary migration of Europeans in the first wave of globalization around the turn of the century, less is known about the displacement of indigenous peoples who were victims of colonialism in this era. Hamed-Troyansky notes thatthe existence of this group of nearly a million Caucasian refugees was scarcely acknowledged until recently. In telling their story so effectively and poignantly, Empire of Refugees makes a major contribution to our understanding of transnational migration, diasporic nationalisms, andthe history of the Russian and Ottoman Empires.
Linda Cook, Welfare Nationalism in Europe and Russia (Cambridge University Press, 2024)
Linda Cook’s Welfare Nationalism in Europe and Russia analyzes the relationship between international migration and the rise of nationalism and populism around the world in recent decades. Using extensive empirical data on migrations from the Middle East and North Africa toEurope, from Central and Eastern Europe to the United Kingdom, from Central Asia to Russia and from Ukraine to Europe in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the book identifies and examines the gradual shift toward less inclusive citizenship regimes throughout Europe. Cook brilliantly shows how rising immigration, caused by the end of restrictions on population movement at the Cold War and a rise in global instability, and declining socialexpenditure throughout Europe caused by slower economic growth and an aging population, have combined to shift attitudes in both democratic and authoritarian states, a phenomenon that she calls welfare nationalism. Crucially, she shows that the two factors are not directly linked, that is, that an increase in migration is not the cause of the retrenchment of the welfare state, despite the commonly held perception that this is the case. Through a series of detailed and rigorous case studies, Cook argues instead that the treatment of migrants depends on perceptions of the migrants’ closeness to the dominant population, need and vulnerability, impact on national security, and ability to contribute to the receiving state’s economy. As she convincingly demonstrates, popular views and political elite influence act in a mutually reinforcing manner to drive support or opposition to migration. Throughout the book, Cook’s ability to marshal vast amounts of quantitative and qualitative evidence in a clear and easy to follow manner makes the work a model of social scientific analysis. While presenting an innovative and timely conception of theworkings of nationalism in an interconnected world, Cook’s analysis challenges the scholars of populism who have overlooked the nationalist dimension of identity politics. Welfare Nationalism in Europe and Russia makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding ofhow migrants are perceived and treated in Europe and beyond.
The winner of the 2025 Rothschild Prize was chosen by the following scholars:
