Population transfer or resettlement is a type of mass migration that is often imposed by a state policy or international authority. Such mass migrations are most frequently spurred on the basis of ethnicity or religion, but they also occur due to economic development. Banishment or exile is a similar process, but is forcibly applied to individuals and groups. Population transfer differs more than simply technically from individually motivated migration, but at times of war, the act of fleeing from danger or famine often blurs the differences.
Often the affected population is transferred by force to a distant region, perhaps not suited to their way of life, causing them substantial harm. In addition, the process implies the loss of immovable property and substantial amounts of movable property when rushed. This transfer may be motivated by the more powerful party's desire to make other uses of the land in question or, less often, by security or disastrous environmental or economic conditions that require relocation.
The first known population transfers date back to the Middle Assyrian Empire in the 13th century BCE, with forced resettlement being particularly prevalent during the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The single largest population transfer in history was the Partition of India in 1947 that involved up to 12 million people in Punjab Province with a total of up to 20 million people across British India, with the second largest being the flight and expulsion of Germans after World War II, which involved more than 12 million people. The aftermath of the war also saw the massive Allied repatriation of Soviet citizens which involved 4.2 million people who had been displaced by the German occupation.
Before the forcible deportation of Ukrainians (including thousands of children) to Russia during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the last major population transfer in Europe was the deportation of 800,000 ethnic Albanians during the Kosovo War in 1999. Moreover, some of the largest population transfers in Europe have been attributed to the ethnic policies of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.
Population transfers can also be imposed to further economic development, for instance China relocated 1.3 million residents in order to construct the Three Gorges Dam.
Historical background
The earliest known examples of population transfers took place in the context of war and empire. As part of Sennacherib's campaign against King Hezekiah of Jerusalem (701 BCE) "200,150 people great and small, male and female" were transferred to other lands in the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Similar population transfers occurred under the Achaemenid and Byzantine Empires. Population transfers are considered incompatible with the values of post-Enlightenment European societies, but this was usually limited to the home territory of the colonial power itself and population transfers continued in European colonies during the 20th century.
Specific types of population transfer
Population exchange Population exchange is the transfer of two populations in opposite directions at about the same time. In theory at least, the exchange is non-forcible, but the reality of the effects of these exchanges has always been unequal, and at least one half of the so-called "exchange" has usually been forced by the stronger or richer participant. Such exchanges have taken place several times in the 20th century: The partition of India and Pakistan The mass expulsion of Anatolian Greeks and Balkan Turks from Turkey and Greece, respectively, during their so-called Greek-Turkish population exchange. It involved approximately 1.3 million Anatolian Christians (majority Greek) and 354,000 Balkan Muslims (majority Turkish), most of whom were forcibly made refugees and de jure denaturalized from their homelands. The 1940 peaceful population exchange between Bulgaria and Romania The Cyprus population exchange following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 that led to displacement of 140,000 Greeks from the north and around 60,000 Turks that have relocated from the south to the north.
Ethnic dilution
Ethnic dilution is the practice of enacting immigration policies to relocate parts of an ethnically and/or culturally dominant population into a region populated by an ethnic minority or otherwise culturally different or non-mainstream group to dilute and eventually to transform the native ethnic population into the mainstream culture over time.
Changes in international law
According to the political scientist Norman Finkelstein, population transfer was considered as an acceptable solution to the problems of ethnic conflict until around World War II and even for a time afterward. Transfer was considered a drastic but "often necessary" means to end an ethnic conflict or ethnic civil war.Finkelstein, Norman Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, 2nd ed. (Verso, 2003) p.xiv – also An Introduction to the Israel-Palestine Conflict The feasibility of population transfer was hugely increased by the creation of railroad networks from the mid-19th century. George Orwell, in his 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language" (written during the World War II evacuation and expulsions in Europe), observed:
"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things... can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.... Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers."
The view of international law on population transfer underwent considerable evolution during the 20th century. Prior to World War II, many major population transfers were the result of bilateral treaties and had the support of international bodies such as the League of Nations. The expulsion of Germans after World War II from Central and Eastern Europe after World War II was sanctioned by the Allies in Article 13 of the Potsdam communiqué, but research has shown that both the British and the American delegations at Potsdam strongly objected to the size of the population transfer that had already taken place and was accelerating in the summer of 1945. The principal drafter of the provision, Geoffrey Harrison, explained that the article was intended not to approve the expulsions but to find a way to transfer the competence to the Control Council in Berlin to regulate the flow.Alfred de Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam, Routledge 1979, Appendix pp. 232–234, and A Terrible Revenge, Macmillan 2006, pp.86–87 The tide started to turn when the Charter of the Nuremberg Trials of German Nazi leaders declared forced deportation of civilian populations to be both a war crime and a crime against humanity.Alfred de Zayas, Forced Population Transfer, in: Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, online 2009, with reference to Articles 6b and 6c of the Nuremberg indictment and the relevant parts of the judgment concerning the forced transfer of Poles and Frenchmen by the Nazis That opinion was progressively adopted and extended through the remainder of the century. Underlying the change was the trend to assign rights to individuals, thereby limiting the rights of states to make agreements that adversely affect them.
There is now little debate about the general legal status of involuntary population transfers: "Where population transfers used to be accepted as a means to settle ethnic conflict, today, forced population transfers are considered violations of international law."Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, Spring 2001, p 116. No legal distinction is made between one-way and two-way transfers since the rights of each individual are regarded as independent of the experience of others.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (adopted in 1949 and now part of customary international law) prohibits mass movement of protected persons out of or into territory under belligerent military occupation:Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949.Commentary on Part III : Status and treatment of protected persons #Section III : Occupied territories Art. 49 by the ICRC
An interim report of the United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities (1993) says:
The same report warned of the difficulty of ensuring true voluntariness: "some historical transfers did not call for forced or compulsory transfers, but included options for the affected populations. Nonetheless, the conditions attending the relevant treaties created strong moral, psychological and economic pressures to move."
The final report of the Sub-Commission (1997) invoked numerous legal conventions and treaties to support the position that population transfers contravene international law unless they have the consent of both the moved population and the host population. Moreover, that consent must be given free of direct or indirect negative pressure.
"Deportation or forcible transfer of population" is defined as a crime against humanity by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Article 7). The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has indicted and sometimes convicted a number of politicians and military commanders indicted for forced deportations in that region.
Ethnic cleansing encompasses "deportation or forcible transfer of population" and the force involved may involve other crimes, including crimes against humanity. Nationalist agitation can harden public support, one way or the other, for or against population transfer as a solution to current or possible future ethnic conflict, and attitudes can be cultivated by supporters of either plan of action with its supportive propaganda used as a typical political tool by which their goals can be achieved.
In Europe France Two famous transfers connected with the history of France are the banning of the religion of the Jews in 1308 and that of the Huguenots, French Protestants by the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685. Religious warfare over the Protestants led to many seeking refuge in the Low Countries, England and Switzerland. In the early 18th century, some Huguenots emigrated to colonial America. In both cases, the population was not forced out but rather their religion was declared illegal and so many left the country.
According to Ivan Sertima, Louis XV ordered all blacks to be deported from France but was unsuccessful. At the time, they were mostly free people of color from the Caribbean and Louisiana colonies, usually descendants of French colonial men and African women. Some fathers sent their mixed-race sons to France to be educated or gave them property to be settled there. Others entered the military, as did Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, the father of Alexandre Dumas.
Some Algerians were also forcefully removed from their native land by France in the late 19th century, and moved to the Pacific, most notably to New Caledonia.
Ireland
After the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and Act of Settlement in 1652, most indigenous Irish Catholic land holders had their lands confiscated and were banned from living in planted towns. An unknown number, possibly as high as 100,000 Irish were removed to the colonies in the West Indies and North America as indentured servants.The Curse of Cromwell , A Short History of Northern Ireland, BBC