War and Population Displacement: Lessons of History

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recently announced that the number of displaced persons caused by wars and conflicts, estimated at more than 65 million, has reached the highest level ever recorded. This book explores the reality by examining some significant population displacements and/or deportations caused by armed conflict. Throughout human history people not directly involved in wars have endured its consequences death, famine, destruction, illness, pillage, rape, robbery. These effects of war have become more globalized, resulting in migration in search of a better place to live or to find safety and security. Migration represents an indisputable reality found in every time and culture since prehistoric times until today, seen recently in the Mediterranean, Africa, and Asia. Armed conflict brings with it population displacement: refugees fleeing the dangers of war, dislodgement by invaders or regime change, population migration with expansionist purposes. These phenomena have not been adequately studied from a historical perspective. Cast in the mold of war and society studies, this book, endorsed by the Spanish Association of Military History, works to fulfill a historiographic need, covering twelve relevant dislodgments caused by wars in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, Modern and Contemporary History, and the present.

Fernando Puell de la Villa is Professor of Military History at the University Institute General Gutierrez Mellado, Madrid. He has published extensively on military matters, and is President of the Spanish Association of Military History.

David Garcia Hernan is Chairman of the Department of Humanities and Full Professor of Modern History at Carlos III University, Madrid. He has published widely on contemporary history and been a visiting researcher at the University of Chicago.