Synopses & Reviews
A landmark work on human migration around the globe,
Cultures in Contact provides a history of the world told through the movements of its people. It is a broad, pioneering interpretation of the scope, patterns, and consequences of human migrations over the past ten centuries. In this magnum opus thirty years in the making, Dirk Hoerder reconceptualizes the history of migration and immigration, establishing that societal transformation cannot be understood without taking into account the impact of migrations and, indeed, that mobility is more characteristic of human behavior than is stasis.
Signaling a major paradigm shift, Cultures in Contact creates an English-language map of human movement that is not Atlantic Ocean-based. Hoerder describes the origins, causes, and extent of migrations around the globe and analyzes the cultural interactions they have triggered. He pays particular attention to the consequences of immigration within the receiving countries. His work sweeps from the eleventh century forward through the end of the twentieth, when migration patterns shifted to include transpacific migration, return migrations from former colonies, refugee migrations, and distinct regional labor migrations in the developing world. Hoerder demonstrates that as we enter the third millennium, regional and intercontinental migration patterns no longer resemble those of previous centuries. They have been transformed by new communications systems and other forces of globalization and transnationalism.
Review
“The people of the world have always been migratory. Exhaustive, encyclopedic, and challenging, Hoerder’s book links world historic events to global and regional migration flows, within and across cultural borders. And he does it without losing sight of the men and women who moved, changed, suffered, prospered and intermingled. A must-read for all historians of the world and its interconnected cultures.”—Donna R. Gabaccia, author of Immigration and American Diversity: A Social and Cultural History
Review
andldquo;We have long known that the worldandrsquo;s peoples have been in constant movement for a very long time. Now we have an encyclopedic overview of who has moved where and why for the last thousand years, based on impressively wide reading. This overview will shake up a lot of preconceptions.andrdquo;andmdash;Immanuel Wallerstein, author of The End of the World as We Know It: Social Science for the Twenty-First Century
Review
andrdquo;This book is breathtaking in its scope and detail. Hoerder has done world history a great service, speaking to multiculturalism while providing the nuts and bolts of migration history over time and space.andrdquo;andmdash;Nancy Green, author of Ready-To-Wear and Ready-To-Work: A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York
Review
andldquo;A formidable piece of work. It is of particular importance because Hoerder shows in great detail that it is necessary to move from a focus on the Atlantic migration system in order to give due weight to migration flows in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific world. . . . Hoerderandrsquo;s cast is a fascinating one, with particular attention to peoples, such as Armenians and Jews, that have had high rates of migration, but also with due attention to others that are generally neglected, such as Central Asian peoples.andrdquo;
Review
andquot;[A] massive and definitive study on migration in the second millennium. . . . Highly recommended. All academic libraries. . . .andquot;
Review
"This encyclopaedic work is surely the definitive history of migration. . . .
Cultures in Contact is an extraordinary effort. His analysis of vast amounts of data is truly spectacular, as is his conscious refusal to be deterministic. Hoerder’s book is an achievement that will set the agenda for migration studies for generations to come. It has defined the field and provided us with a source-book which the next generation of scholars can build on."
- Pramod K. Nayar, Canadian Ethnic Studies
Review
"This book is destined to be often consulted. . . . The research behind the book is massive. . . . The most interesting passages deal with cultural consequences of migration-for food, music, dance, and so forth-but the most useful aspect of the book, I suspect, will prove the wealth of data on migration itself." J.R. McNeil, International History Review
Review
"[A] pleasure to read. . . . Hoerder has achieved the enormous feat of moving a field forward by globalizing the study of human movements. . . . He has given the history of migration a new starting point and a challenging new context." Leslie Page Moch, International Review of Social History (symposium on Hoerder’s book)
Review
"
Cultures in Contact is a landmark work, a broad and pioneering interpretation of the scope, patterns and consequences of human migrations around the globe over the past ten centuries. . . . Hoerder's work links world historical events to global and regional migration flows, within and across cultural borders without losing sight of the individual men and women who moved, changed, suffered, prospered and intermingled with their fellow human beings."
Annemarie Steidl, European History Quarterly
Review
andquot;Cultures in Contact reflects immense learning deployed over vast swaths of the globe. It breaks out of the Atlantic-centered perspective that has blinkered most European and Euro-American studies of migration, and for the period since 1500 it strives to bring Asian, African, and Pacific migrations into a larger world-system history of migration. . . . Hoerder's study of migration systems . . . does an outstanding job of synthesizing a vast library of scholarship on human migrations while also contributing to the growing body of global historical analysis. Cultures in Contact offers not only a survey of world migrations over the past millennium but also a synopsis of global history viewed from the perspective of migratory processes.andquot;
Review
andquot;[A] truly significant book which derives its authority from cross-cultural primary research, as well as secondary reading, on a scale that few previous authors have attempted. . . . [H]e has designed the book to ensure that readers interested in but one aspect of his story will be able to follow it intelligently, and his advancing argument is clarified by a sequence of original maps that will also serve as a vital teaching aid to all students of historical migration.andquot;
Review
andquot;This is a book of enormous scope, ambition, and achievement. . . . Hoerder's work is a major synthesis and intervention in the field, and he is to be congratulated for his notable accomplishment.andquot;
Review
"[S]tunning. . . . [A] fine book, a well illustrated tour de force. . . ." Robin Cohen - Journal of American Ethnic History
Review
andquot;This extraordinary book, written on Braudelian scale, is the most complex and comprehensive history of human migration yet. . . .[A] masterwork. . . . This volume should stand for a long time as the authoritative synthesis of the vast array of human migrations, bitter or sweet, that have happened over the last ten centuries.andquot;
Review
andquot;Through a remarkable collection of closely described cases, he elucidates both the structural similarities and the cultural distinctiveness of migrations in Medieval Europe, the Ottoman Empire, trading posts, fur empires, forced migration, proletarian and contract-labor migration, and the current andquot;un-mixingandquot; of peoples into nation-states. Hoerder's more than 50 maps . . . convey original and thought-provoking demonstrations of interactions among migration systems.andquot;
Review
andquot;The book represents an impressive, almost unbelievable, accomplishment. . . . Furthermore, the book is user-friendly. . . . Hoerder's book will become a classic and remain for years a valuable reference for anyone working on any aspect of the history of human migration since 1000 AD.andquot;
Review
andquot;This book will change the way you think about human mobility. . . . Cultures in Contact is a very large book, even encyclopedic. . . . Pick a place, a time, a people of meaning to you-then plunge in. You will be amazed at what you learn about how you came to be where you are.andquot;
Review
andquot;[S]tunning. . . . [A] fine book, a well illustrated tour de force. . . .andquot;
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. [717]-746) and index.
Synopsis
Analysis of migrations--regional, interregional, continent-wide, and global--and the resulting cultural interactions and societal changes.
About the Author
“The people of the world have always been migratory. Exhaustive, encyclopedic, and challenging, Hoerder’s book links world historic events to global and regional migration flows, within and across cultural borders. And he does it without losing sight of the men and women who moved, changed, suffered, prospered and intermingled. A must-read for all historians of the world and its interconnected cultures.”—Donna R. Gabaccia, author of Immigration and American Diversity: A Social and Cultural History“We have long known that the world’s peoples have been in constant movement for a very long time. Now we have an encyclopedic overview of who has moved where and why for the last thousand years, based on impressively wide reading. This overview will shake up a lot of preconceptions.”—Immanuel Wallerstein, author of The End of the World as We Know It: Social Science for the Twenty-First Century”This book is breathtaking in its scope and detail. Hoerder has done world history a great service, speaking to multiculturalism while providing the nuts and bolts of migration history over time and space.”—Nancy Green, author of Ready-To-Wear and Ready-To-Work: A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York
Table of Contents
1. Worlds in motion, cultures in contact -- Part I: The Judeo-Christian-Islamic Mediterranean and Eurasian worlds to the 1500s -- 2. Antecedents: migration and population changes in the Mediterranean-Asian worlds -- 3. Continuities: mobility and migration from the eleventh to the sixteenth century -- 4. The end of intercivilizational contact and the economics of religious expulsions -- 5. Ottoman society, Europe, and the beginnings of colonial contact -- Part II: Other worlds and European colonialism to the eighteenth century -- 6. Africa and the slave migration systems -- 7. Trade-posts and colonies in the world of the Indian Ocean -- 8. Latin America: population collapse and resettlement -- Fur empires and colonies of agricultural settlement -- 10. Forced labor migration in and to the Americas -- 11. Migration and conversion: worldviews, material culture, racial hierarchies -- Part 3: Intercontinental migration systems to the nineteenth century -- 12. Europe: internal migrations from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century -- 13. The Russo-Siberian migration system -- 14. The Proletarian mass migrations to the Atlantic economies -- 15. The Asian contract labor system (1830s to 1920s) and transpacific migration -- 16. Imperial interest groups and Subaltern cultural assertion -- Part IV: Twentieth-century changes -- 17. Forced labor and refugees in the Northern Hemisphere to the 1950s -- 18. Between the old and the new, 1920s to 1950s -- 19. New migration systems since the 1960s -- 20. Intercultural strategies and closed doors in the 1990s.