Population exchanges in history - analysis

Population transfers have historically been used both to erase, and, alternatively, to protect, various ethnic groups. 

Blotting memory

In its more nefarious version, the surviving inhabitants of a conquered land have been forcibly resettled within the original borders of the victorious nation, where they were expected to adopt the language and culture of their new hosts, while their homeland was repopulated by the victors. The potential for a future rebellion was thus all but removed, as the dissociation of the defeated from their land and their assimilation into the dominant culture diminished thoughts of independence. Some such conquests were unprovoked while others were intended as a prophylactic against future aggression.

Lost tribes

Assyrian King Shalmaneser V laid siege to the capital city of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, Samaria, in an unprovoked attack more than twenty five centuries ago. When the city fell three years later, he had his army raze it “into a heap in the field, into a place for planting vineyards." (Micah 1:6). The Assyrians even overturned the city's foundations before carrying out an immense population exchange:

Israel went in exile from their land to Assyria until this day. They then took all of its inhabitants, including the remaining inhabitants of the northern kingdom and their king, as captives.

And the king of Assyria brought [people] from Babylonia and from Cuthah and from Avva and from Hamath and from Sepharvaim, and he settled them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel, and they took possession of Samaria and dwelt in its cities. [Kings II, 17:23-24, emphases added].

So thorough was the king's dissociation of the Northern Kingdom's Jews from their homeland that they fully assimilated into Assyrian culture, failed to return to Israel in the Second Temple era and became known as the ten lost tribes (as opposed to the tribes of the Southern Kingdom of Israel, who comprise the Jewish nation today). 

At the same time, some Samaritans, descendants of the Assyrian invaders, continue to live near ancient Samaria in a village called Kiryat Luza.

“Carthago delenda est”

Unlike the siege of Samaria, the Roman Empire destroyed Carthage four centuries later in response to Carthaginian general Hannibal's earlier aggressions in the Second Punic War, including an invasion and 14-year occupation of a large portion of mainland Italy. Growing up and serving in the Roman army during that war, Cato the Elder entered politics and concluded many of his speeches with "Carthago delenda est" (Carthage must be destroyed). 

The Third Punic War, which began after Cato's death, realized his dream. The Romans burned every Carthaginian ship, deported 50,000 civilians as slaves and turned the city into rubble. Unsubstantiated legend describes boats delivering tons of salt to sow the fields of Carthage into infertility. Eventually, Julius Caesar sent Romans to reestablish the city. Carthage never again rose against Rome.

Preserving life

History has also been witness to two-sided population exchanges which helped reduce conflicts and protected life for both populations. Lehigh University Professor Chaim Kaufmann described such transfers in, “When All Else Fails: Ethnic Population Transfers and Partitions in the Twentieth Century," published in the journal International Security in 1998. He summarized the topic by pointing to the partial reversal in the mid-twentieth century trend of opposing any transfers:

Until recently, there has been a near consensus among policy makers and scholars that the objective of ethnic conflict management should be to support and preserve integrated, multi-ethnic societies. In the last few years, however, the idea that separating the warring populations may be the best solution to many of the most intense ethnic conflicts has been gaining ground. [Emphasis added].

Kaufmann added that the reversal was consistent with emerging data: 

A growing body of scholarship that focuses on the role of intergroup security dilemmas in ethnic conflicts argues that intermixed population settlement patterns can promote escalation of violence, implying that separation of warring groups may dampen conflict. [Emphasis added].

According to the paper's abstract, politicians must consider that, sometimes, “massive violence is all but guaranteed” in the absence of resettlement.

Kaufmann argues that when intergroup violence and mutual security threats are so severe that massive violence is all but guaranteed, separation represents, in effect, the lesser of two evils. [Emphasis added].

India Pre-partition - Muslim, Hindus, Sikhs

Until the end of World War II, British control of India quelled violence between the nations' Hindu majority and its Muslim minority, which was outnumbered more than three to one. Anticipating violence following a British exit, though, Muslims began an independence movement for the majority Muslim regions of India. 

In the 1930s, India's Muslims created the acronym Pakistan for the northwest provinces: Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan, choosing that order of letters because Pakistan means “the land of the pure” in Persian, as opposed to the impure lands of non-Muslims. They likewise called for an independent majority Muslim state in northeastern Bengal, choosing the name, “Banglastan.”

All-India Muslim League leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah strengthened the independence movement in 1940 by declaring that India's Muslims are primarily Muslims and only secondarily citizens of India. Immediately after World War II, Britain announced it would soon grant India independence, creating fear among the nation's Muslim minority of Hindu attacks and bolstering Jinnah's movement. 

However, just as Muslims feared abuse in majority Hindu areas of India, Hindus feared the same if the national Indian government was not able to protect them in a newly independent Muslim state. For this reason, Hindu leader Mahatma Gandhi pressed the British to preserve India as one state. Britain initially agreed with Gandhi.

When the U.K. adopted a Cabinet Mission Plan in 1946 that did not provide for a fully independent Pakistan, Jinnah called for a struggle, threatened war and declared August 16, 1946 as a "Direct Action Day." Muslim rioters attacked Hindus in Calcutta sparking revenge attacks that led to the murder of some 4,000 Hindus and Muslims in what become known as the Great Calcutta Killing. The ethnic violence spread as Hindus attacked Muslims in Bihar and Garhmukteshwar, Muslims attacked Hindus in Bengal, and Muslims attacked both Hindus and Sikhs in Rawalpindi.

Partition 

The rising violence and threats of all out civil war led Britain to reluctantly accept a partition plan dividing India into two states, India and Pakistan, which itself was divided into two non-contiguous areas: West Pakistan (today Pakistan) and East Pakistan (today independent Bangladesh).

Those assured of a majority under the partition plan did not now sit secure in the knowledge of their inviolability, though. Rather, they reigned terror on the minorities who saw their worst fears realized within the newly created borders: 

Muslims left India for Pakistan, mostly heading west, while Hindus and Sikhs made the opposite journey. As many as 20 million people fled. Both sides left devastation in their wake. Documentation is scarce, but hundreds of thousands, and as many as two million people, were killed. There are no tallies for how many were raped.  [Emphases added].

The attacks went well beyond simple killings:

There are numerous eyewitness accounts of the maiming and mutilation of victims. The catalogue of horrors includes the disemboweling of pregnant women, the slamming of babies' heads against brick walls, the cutting off of the victim's limbs and genitalia, and the displaying of heads and corpses. While previous communal riots had been deadly, the scale and level of brutality during the Partition massacres were unprecedented. [Emphases added].

Women and babies were treated in particularly brutal fashion:

Pregnant women had their breasts cut off and babies hacked out of their bellies; infants were found literally roasted on spits. [Emphasis added].

What went wrong

The transfer of some 20 million people into more homogeneous settings increased stability eventually, though religious and land disputes saw India and Pakistan return to war three times since their 1947 war that accompanied the partition. But had the British arranged population transfers in an orderly manner, before withdrawing their troops and granting independence to the two nations, many or even most of the millions of murders and incidents of torture may have been avoided. 

Even now, some criticize the population transfers for not being being complete. Though Pakistan and Bangladesh are both more than 90% Muslim and mostly free of sectarian violence, India is a bit less than 80% Hindu and violent conflict continues to plague the nation. In a twist from partition era violence, much of the violence in India today is instigated by the minority population of some 200 million Muslims - a minority larger than the entire population of most nations . 

Ad hoc population exchange - Greek, Turkish Cypriots

Cypus was another British colony comprising competing ethnic groups. The U.K. granted independence to Cyprus in 1960 with constitutional protections for the Turkish Cypriot minority that was outnumbered four to one by Greek Cypriots. 

Those safeguards, like legislative veto power, failed to provide practical safety and, just three years into independence, violence broke out when Greek Cypriot police officers killed two Turkish Cypriots. The rioting that followed left hundreds dead on both sides while tens of thousands of Turkish Cypriots relocated to majority Turkish areas on the island nation. 

The conflict continued until 1974 when Turkey invaded the island and bombed Greek positions. Eventually, after hundreds more deaths on each side, the war ended with close to 200,000 Greek Cypriots forcibly transferred out of the northeastern, Turkish dominated part of the island. Some 50,000 Turkish Cypriots were likewise expelled from southern region. While tensions remain, the killing has stopped as the two groups follow an informal division of the nation along ethnic lines.

More orderly transfer - German repatriations

The transfer of Germans out of various European nations at the conclusion of World War II was planned and not a spontaneous reaction to violence after the redrawing of borders as in India. 

One example is Czechoslovakia, which inherited, to its detriment, the Sudetenland as a result of the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I. The more than three million Germans living in the Sudetenland constituted nearly a quarter of the overall Czechoslovakian population and provided Adolf Hitler with an excuse to interfere with domestic Czechoslovakian policy. 

Under Hitler's agitation and backing, Sudeten Nazis demanded autonomy, which Czechoslovakia granted. This concession led to demands for additional ones, as Sudeten Nazis then demanded annexation of their land by Germany. Hitler coerced England and France to agree and their capitulation allowed him to invade the Sudetenland without opposition. 

The invasion quickly led to the collapse of the rest of Czechoslovakia and to terrible suffering among its non-German citizens during the Second World War. Eager to avoid a repeat disaster, and distrustful of its German residents, Czechoslovakia planned the expulsion of Germans at the end of the war, a move supported by Winston Churchill in a 1944 speech to the House of Commons: 

Expulsion is the method which, insofar as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble... A clean sweep will be made. I am not alarmed by the prospect of disentanglement of populations, not even of these large transferences, which are more possible in modern conditions than they have ever been before. [Emphases added].

Over the objections of the newly formed “American Committee Against Mass Expulsion,” Czechoslovakia expelled more than 3 million Germans. Additional expulsions of Germans from the Baltic States, Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania and other nations made for a total of about 16 million deportations of Germans after World War II. 

Those nations were relieved of the threat of a fifth column remaining within their borders and never allowed them back. 

Despite the more orderly nature of the expulsions, though, the destitute state of the world following WWII led to the starvation and death of hundreds of thousands of the deportees. Many of the deaths are attributable to forced labor conditions the Soviets imposed on some deportees, making it difficult to accurately estimate the loss of life during the expulsions. In any case, other than the deaths of Germans in the Soviet Union, the deaths of deported Germans were less connected with sectarian violence and more with post-war conditions. 

Two-way population transfer by agreement - Hungary and Czechoslovakia 

After Hungary signed a ceasefire with the Allies in 1945, Slovakia immediately deported approximately 30,000 Hungarians from its southern region. The deportations were halted under opposition from the allies, but resumed after the bilateral Czechoslovak–Hungarian Population Transfer Agreement was signed the following year by Hungary and the newly reformed Czechoslovakia. 

Pursuant to the agreement, an additional group of approximately 90,000 Hungarians were deported from Czechoslovakia while some 72,000 Czechoslovakians voluntarily left Hungary. The exchange, which was yet more orderly than the one-way transfer of the German population from Czechoslovakia, achieved the aim of removing a large part of what was considered a fifth column - a domestic population siding with a fascist enemy.

Instead of reports of violence against, and deaths of, those transferred, the challenges presented by the transfers were limited to insufficient nutrition and inadequate clothing and shoes of those Hungarians who were included in work programs in the Czech lands:

The report of the District National Committee in Loket from December 1946 drafted for the Czechoslovak Foreign Office suggests that Hungarians were not equipped with adequate clothing and shoes. However, they were provided with housing they chose. They were not in a “bad position” in terms of money. . . . Hungarian . . . visited several Hungarian agricultural families in the region of Kolín; the families confirmed that they were looked after and their work was paid, but complained of the recruitment conditions and poor allotments of clothing. . . . 

Complaints of Hungarian labourers against treatment by their employers due to their Hungarian origin, against insufficient nutrition and clothing, etc., were considered by the Czechoslovak authorities more seriously particularly from the beginning of 1948 in order to keep as many Hungarians as possible as workers in the Czech lands. [Emphases added].

Two-way transfer in progress - Jews, Arabs

Rome's first century conquest of the Land of Israel, including massacres that destroyed close to one thousand villages, the sale of many survivors into slavery and the expulsion of others, led to the mass resettlement of surviving Jews. They were relocated throughout the Roman Empire; in North Africa, Europe and the Near East.

Subsequent expulsions continued forcibly transferring the Jewish population, with some one million Jews settling throughout the Middle East by the 19^th century.

The push for and creation of the modern State of Israel, though, led to savage anti-Jewish riots throughout the Arab and Muslim world, with some 900,000 Jews who survived the violence forced out. [Emphasis added].

Between 1920 and 1970, 900,000 Jews were expelled from Arab and other Muslim countries: from Morocco to Iran, from Turkey to Yemen, including  places where they had lived for twenty centuries. The 1940s were a turning point in this tragedy . . . [Emphasis added].

During the attacks, the local Jewish populations failed to receive assistance from their various host governments:

A series of pogroms and related events, such as riots, arrests, murders of public figures, and destruction of synagogues, occurred while colonial powers and Arab state police looked on passively. That gave the Jews the signal that it was time to leave. [Emphases added].

In the relatively small Jewish community of Tripoli, Libya, alone, numbering less than 40,000, rioters killed dozens of children and more than one hundred adults while plundering hundreds of Jewish homes and businesses with the help of the Libyan army:

In Libya, riots against those living in the Jewish quarters occurred in Tripoli in January 1945. Sixty percent of Jewish possessions were destroyed and 135 people were killed; soldiers acted as accomplices to the rioters. Jews were forced to evacuate.

Rather than protect the Jewish minority, the Libyan government urged them to leave “temporarily,” allowing each to take a suitcase and the equivalent of $50. The government later made the expulsion permanent and confiscated the property left behind.

Economic pressure combined with physical violence to threaten other Jewish communities in the Middle East as well, some even being required to pay a ransom to leave:

In Turkey, capital taxation was imposed only on Jews in 1942. Iran confiscated Jewish possessions and real estate in 1979. Morocco held Jews, anxious to emigrate to Israel, for ransom in 1961, and the World Jewish Congress had to pay $250 for each Jew who was permitted to leave the country. 

In Tunisia, in 1961-1962, Jews who were leaving the country were allowed to take with them only one dinar (the equivalent today of three U.S. dollars). Yemen, in 1949, listed Jewish possessions and properties in order to hold them for ransom. In 1947, Syria discharged Jews from public service positions; in 1949, it seized Jewish financial assets. [Emphases added].

The total assets left behind by Jews expelled from the Arab and Muslim world since 1948 has been valued at $250 billion:

Israel is preparing to demand compensation totaling a reported $250 billion from seven Arab countries and Iran for property and assets left behind by Jews who were forced to flee those countries following the establishment of the State of Israel.

Despite having to leave everything behind, the threats and violence succeeded in pushing Jews out and the Middle East, other than Israel, became mostly “Judenrein” (Jew free).

Despite European Jewry having just suffered the Holocaust, all of the approximately 900,000 expelled Jews were quickly assimilated in Europe, Israel and North America. Neither they nor their descendants maintain any kind of refugee status.

[O]f those expelled, 600,000 settled in the new state of Israel, and 300,000 in France and Canada. Today, they and their descendants form the majority of the French Jewish community and a large part of Israel’s population. 

But the new homogeneity violently achieved by the Arab and Muslim world did not eliminate domestic sectarian violence between Arabs and Jews, for Israel's Arab minority was not transferred, but has instead grown exponentially, from 156,000 in 1948 to 2,065,000 today; an increase of more than 1,300 percent.

Completing the exchange?

The forced transfer of nearly a million Jews from Arab and Muslim nations seemed, at first, to be matched by a correlating voluntary flight of Arabs from Israel in 1948. The fleeing Arabs were often responding to requests from Arab nations to temporarily leave mixed communities to allow the Arab nations to attack Jews without needing to avoid Arab casualties:

The Arab National Committee in Jerusalem, following the March 8, 1948, instructions of the Arab Higher Committee, ordered women, children, and the elderly in various parts of Jerusalem to leave their homes: “Any opposition to this order...is an obstacle to the holy war...and will hamper the operations of the fighters in these districts.” 

[Historian Benny] Morris also documented that the Arab Higher Committee ordered the evacuation of “several dozen villages, as well as the removal of dependents from dozens more” in April-July 1948. “The invading Arab armies also occasionally ordered whole villages to depart, so as not to be in their way.”

The exodus was not only voluntary, it was expected to be temporary, just until the Jews were destroyed:

All of those who left fully anticipated being able to return to their homes after an early Arab victory, as Palestinian nationalist Aref el-Aref explained in his history of the 1948 war:

The Arabs thought they would win in less than the twinkling of an eye and that it would take no more than a day or two from the time the Arab armies crossed the border until all the colonies were conquered and the enemy would throw down his arms and cast himself on their mercy.

Not only was the exodus not forced, it was against the wishes of Jewish leaders and despite Jewish efforts to the contrary:

Meanwhile, Jewish leaders urged the Arabs to remain in Palestine and become citizens of Israel. The Assembly of Palestine Jewry issued this appeal on October 2, 1947:

We will do everything in our power to maintain peace and establish a cooperation gainful to both [Jews and Arabs]. It is now, here and now, from Jerusalem itself, that a call must go out to the Arab nations to join forces with Jewry and the destined Jewish State and work shoulder to shoulder for our common good, for the peace and progress of sovereign equals.

Israel even enshrined its opposition to transfer in its Proclamation of Independence:

In the midst of wanton aggression, we yet call upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve the ways of peace and play their part in the development of the State, on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its bodies and institutions. [Emphasis added].

When declarations did not work, Israeli leaders went to the field to discourage resettlement. The efforts were largely in vain, though, as residents feared an Arab backlash. 

In fact, David Ben-Gurion had sent Golda Meir to Haifa to try to persuade the Arabs to stay, but she was unable to convince them because of their fear of being judged traitors to the Arab cause. [Emphases added].

In the end, some 650,000 Arabs left. Jewish leaders then went to work to increase the Arab percentage of the population, offering to rebuild Arab homes damaged during the Independence War and repatriating more than 60,000 Arabs. The government increased the Arab population further by granting citizenship to some 130,000 Arabs from foreign nations who married Israeli Arabs and to about 20,000 East Jerusalem Arabs who were formerly Jordanian citizens or the descendants of Jordanians.

In all, the Arab share of Israel's population has grown from about 12% in 1950 to over 21% today, not including the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. With Hamas now forcing Israel to battle them in hundreds of thousands of residential apartments in Gaza, the resulting damage to those residential units makes their continued stay there impossible. 

Modern transportation and supply lines could make for a safe resettlement of Gazans and provide them with access to quality medical care and accommodations. The question now is whether the million plus population of Gaza will be assimilated into viable economies in the international community or be forced to continue living, against their will in most cases, in a war torn land in tents and other temporary housing. 

If the latter, the forcible confinement of Gazans in Gaza would perpetuate their unique status as war refugees locked in place.

See our previous coverage of population transfers and the Middle East:

1. Dutch leader 'would applaud massive voluntary relocation' of Gazans
2. Former US ambassador to UN calls to resettle Gaza's population
3. Globalists cremate care for Gaza refugees
4. Arab kings, Egypt block Iran at summit on Israel
5. 'Our revolution is a phase of world revolution: it is not limited to reconquering Palestine'
6. 'Victory means total destruction, occupation, expulsion, and settlement' - Former Knesset Deputy Speaker
7. Israel: Pressure builds for total victory while leaders stall - analysis
8. 'Don't starve; you can release kidnapped children and surrender anytime' - former US Naval Officer
9. 8 ways Bibi betrayed the Jewish nation - analysis
10. State Department pressing allies to concede to Marxist revolutionaries