Overview

Migration is the talk of the town. On the whole, however, the current situation is seen as resulting from unique political upheavals. Such a-historical interpretations ignore the fact that migration is a fundamental phenomenon in human societies from the beginning and plays a crucial role in the cultural, economic, political and social developments and innovations. So far, however, most studies are limited to the last four centuries, largely ignoring the spectacular advances made in other disciplines which study the ‘deep past’, like anthropology, archaeology, population genetics and linguistics, and that reach back as far as 80.000 years ago. This is the first book that offers an overview of the state of the art in these disciplines and shows how historians and social scientists working in the recent past can profit from their insights.

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9789004205628

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Reviews

Reading this book is rewarding in many ways. It raises the awareness that migration is an intrinsic feature of human existence, indicative of as well as instrumental to development. The confrontation with 200,000 years' development of the 'homo sapiens' puts the present perception of 'globalisation' into a perspective, which opens up a considerably wider scope for the future. The confrontation of the diverse approaches not only widens our horizon but serves, at the same time, as an antidote against prejudices based on incidental single aspects. Jorn Janssen, CLR-News, No 2 (2010) 75-76. Gelungen ist [es] den Herausgebern mit der Fokussierung auf die historischen Migrationsprozesse in Ozeanien, Afrika und den Amerikas der letzten 100.000 Jahre. Nachhaltig zeigen die Beitrage des Sammelbandes, dass Migration eher das aussergewohnliche Normale als die aktuelle Ausnahme darstellt; oder, wie es die Herausgeber formulieren wurden: World History ist Migration History Andreas Huebner, KULT_online, No 27 (2011)

Author Information

Jan Lucassen, Ph.D. (1984) in History, University of Utrecht, is senior research fellow at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam and professor in social history at the Free University of Amsterdam. He has published extensively on migration and labour history, including Global Labour History: a state of the art (Peter Lang, 2006). Leo Lucassen, Ph.D. (1990) in History, University of Leiden, is professor of Social History at the Leiden University. He has published extensively on migration and integration, including The Immigrant Threat (University of Illinois Press, 2005). Patrick Manning, Ph D. (1969) in History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of World History at the University of Pittsburgh. He has published widely on African history, migration and global history, including Migration in World History (Routledge, 2005).

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