Refugee History
Introduction to Refugee History
The UN definition of a refugee was developed following World War II. During that war millions of people were displaced by the fighting and by the Holocaust. But the concept of a refugee dates back much earlier. Throughout recorded history, oppression and disaster have caused people to flee their homelands. In biblical times, the enslaved Israelites fled Egypt. Millennia later, in the 15th century, the Moors and Jews, hounded by the Inquisition, were expelled from Spain. In the 17th century the Puritans, seeking religious freedom, settled in what became the United States; in the 18th century the nobility fled France during the French Revolution; and political exiles left central and southern Europe during the upheavals of the mid-19th century. After World War I, people were displaced en masse from Asia Minor, the Russian Empire, and the Balkans. During the 1930s, many fled from China because of the Japanese invasion and from Spain because of the Fascist victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). During World War II, an estimated 7 million Jews and others threatened by the Nazis fled their homelands.
Following the resettlement of millions of displaced persons after World War II, the United States and other countries established programs to admit refugees from the Communist countries of Eastern Europe. During this same period, refugees fled the Communist takeovers of Tibet and mainland China; Dutch nationals left Indonesia during the struggles for Indonesian independence; and Arabs in Palestine were displaced as a result of the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 and 1949. The pattern continued: Cubans fled their country’s Communist revolution in 1959 (see Cuban Revolution), and other peoples fled revolutions in the following decades.
After the fall of Saigon ended the Vietnam War in 1975, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese fled by boat, often enduring starvation and piracy before being rescued or landing in a nearby country. Many of these “boat people” eventually settled in the United States, France, Australia, and Canada. Elsewhere in Asia, revolution and war caused many people to flee their countries. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1979-1989), more than 5 million Afghans left their homeland; most settled in Pakistan and Iran. As of 2007 Afghans made up the world’s largest refugee group.” (1)
Resources
Notes and References
- Information about Refugee History in the Encarta Online Encyclopedia
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