During the First Civil War, political emigration occurred in Rome. The author of the paper distin­guishes three stages of this emigration. The first concerns the period immediately after the outbreak of the First Civil War in 88 BC. At that time, a small group of refugees escaping Sullan repression reached Spain and Africa. The second stage involved the persecution that broke out in Rome after the victory of Cinna and Marius. In this case, emigration concerned a much wider population. First, refugees fled to the East to join Sulla, but they also sought out asylum in other parts of the Republic, for example in Spain or Africa. The third stage of emigration followed the victory of L. Cornelius Sulla in the First Civil War in Italy and the introduction of proscription (82 BC). Spain became the main destination for refugees, and their number was so great that they established their own center of power, organized armed forces, and resisted Sullan troops for several years.

In the paper, the author presents the reasons emigrants had for leaving Italy, the scale of the phenomenon, the main directions and circumstances of emigration, its nature as well as the actions undertaken by refugees to return to Italy.

Caesar’s Commentarii de bello Gallico are a unique Roman source containing information on barbarian migrations in the 1st century BC. Despite numerous studies dedicated to Caesar’s narrative style, there still is a lack of reflection on the possible causes of migrations and the attitude of wan­dering barbarians to the Roman rule. Contemporary scholars have a tendency to see barbarians as Rome’s ‘eternal’ enemies, and often assume that they ‘must’ have manifested aggressive attitudes. By incorporating anthropological reflection and adopting the ‘other’s’ perspective, it is possible to better understand mechanisms prompting barbarians to look for a new homeland. No less of an important aspect is the reconstruction of Caesar’s way of presenting the phenomenon of migration, which allows us to explain why he treated it as hostile in every case.

Paulicians, treated as Manicheans and persecuted in Armenia and the Byzantine Empire, escaped to the Arab-occupied territories where they established a state (843–878) and kept invading Byzantium in alliance with the Emirs of Melitene. Eventually Basil I (867–886) was able to defeat John Chrisocheiros and capture Tefrike. Constantine V, Basil I and John Tzimiskes drafted Paulicians into the Byzantine army and got them relocated to the territory of the empire, hoping to use their military potential to defend the borders against the Bulgarians. Consequently, a substantial group of Paulicians found themselves in the Balkans. According to some scholars they were the predecessors of the Bogomil heresy.

After the Swedish Civil War of 1598 hundreds of exiles left their home country and fled to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, hoping for the protection of king Sigismund. Composition of this group and ways the refugees were helped are known thanks to the conducted research. The king could not support exiles too openly because of the gentry’s reluctance to strangers, but they received general salary and small privileges. However, many actions of this group are still unexplored. One can especially mention their participation in the construction of the Royal Fleet, activity of this group in Gdańsk (Danzig), and other actions carried out by the exiles in support of the Polish branch of House of Vasa.

The uprising ignited by Bohdan Chmielnicki had a multidimensional effect on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. One of its consequences was the migration of population forced by Cossaks’ actions. The gentry inhabiting the southeastern parts of the country had to flee inland fearful for their lives. Jews, who were a group prone to being persecuted by Cossacks, acted in a similar way. Refugees from the Ukrainian provinces first fled to the neighbouring city fortresses which, however, capitulated under the siege of the rebels. People who survived the slaughter, usually carried out by the Cossacks, tried to reach the central part of the country hoping to escape the rebels’ sabres and spring guns.

One of the main goals of Serbian Uprisings was to banish Muslims from the Serbian lands. After creation of the modern Serbian state, Serbia’s status was still that of a half-autonomic province, and so its authorities tried to use agreements with the Sublime Porte to achieve this goal. Although Ottoman authorities repeatedly permitted the eviction of the Muslim population from the Principality, later on they did not implement the agreements, taking advantage of the weak Serbian position. In 1833, however, things changed: The Sublime Porte allowed the Serbian authorities to banish Muslims from their territory, including the six nahiyahs then incorporated into the Serbian state (Krajina, Crna Reka, Paraćin, Kruševac, Stari Vlah and Jadar with Rađevina).

The Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 ended in a catastrophe for the Ottoman Empire. As a result of military operations, 80% of European territory inhabited by the population of four millions were irretrievably lost. A large number of Muslim refugees appeared in the Asian part of the Empire during and after the military operations. This fact was used by the High Porte to change demographic relations in Thrace and Anatolia. These activities led to construction of a homogeneous state and significantly contributed to economic changes in the areas subjected to the settlement. In the national dimension, they contributed to the development of Turkish nationalism.

As a result of war hostilities which began in the Habsburg monarchy in 1914, migrations of the civilian population started, connected with the movement of war refugees from the eastern front, i.e. Galicia, and since May 1915 also from the Italian front. Austria had to face relocation and accommodation of hundreds of thousands of civilians, who were put in special refugee camps or beyond them in various towns and cities in the monarchy with local residents or in specially adapted buildings. The article shows selected aspects of the system of barrack camps created during the First World War in the Habsburg monarchy, focusing on the efficiency of the system in the face of real challenges of the war period.

During the World War I millions of civilians all around Europe and the Near East were often forced to leave their homes unprepared and in desperate hope of finding safety and refuge in distant lands. From the very beginning of the war, refugees became the topic and subject for both propagandists and artists alike. For the purposes of this article, a selected number of examples of drawings and paintings, presenting perspectives of Latvian, Polish and Jewish subjects of the tsar, have been chosen. In the iconography, war refugees are generally presented as innocent and helpless victims of the conflict, and as a proof of the brutality and barbarity of the unfolding hostilities. The article also explores the way artists honed in on the depictions of crying women; troubled and helpless old men; small children snuggling up to their mothers and people contending with hunger, cold, fear, disease, uncertainty of the future and longing for lost homes as well as separated family members. Very often, the typical backgrounds for such scenes are ruins and burning buildings. The artists who depicted the war refugees’ fate did not always share such dramatic experiences personally. However, they clealy acknowledged the fact that it played a huge role in forming the identity of the nations they belonged to.

By focusing on the Assyrian Christians scattered around Urmia in the north-western part of Iran during World War I, the article analyzes the processes and changes that occurred in the religious life of the population under the circumstances of depravity, trauma and migration. The migrations, as it is suggested, caused two opposing tendencies among Assyrians strengthening individualization and ethnicization of the religious matters. The migratory experience played a crucial role in transforming the Church institutions as it might be seen in reference to the Assyrian Church of the East and shifting the focus away from religious authority while giving space to more emotional, private, and finally Pentecostal religiosity.

During the World War II Iran was an important centre of Polish war refugee communities. Members of Poland’s social elites (intelligentsia and also landed gentry to a certain degree) who had experienced Soviet repressions played a key role in establishing and operating a network of Polish institutions and organisations in Iran. The author focuses on profiles of members of various professional groups and examines their significance in activity of Polish governmental apparatus (social welfare, education) as well as cultural, educational and political organisations.

In December 1942 and in the following two winter months of 1943 during the race selection at transit camp in Zamość (UWZ-Lager Zamosc), Germans deported about 3,500 Polish children, who qualified as “racially worthless” from the camp. Most of them were separated from their parents. After a stay of several days or several weeks at the camp, having been crammed into unheated freight carriages, they arrived in six “death transports” to three poviats: Garwolin, Siedlce and Mińsk Mazowiecki, located in the eastern part of the Warsaw district. The article presents the attitudes of Poles rushing to save the children, disregarding the difficulties that occurred at that time in the face of the prolonged war and German terror. Both the inhabitants of the area known by surnames and those who are now nameless, joined the rescue operation. Their determination, commitment, and sacrifice during the relief operation that lasted for many months under the occupation up until the end of the war, deserve emphasis. Undoubtedly, it was a show of huge selflessness of people of goodwill to save the lives of innocent and defenceless Polish children from the Zamość region.

There were many Polish inhabitants in Hungary after the end of the World War II. They were economic emigrants who arrived at the end of the 19th century or refugees who crossed the Polish-Hungarian border in 1939. The goal of Polish representatives in Budapest (diplomats from July 1946) was to organize repatriation/re-emigration which would include both groups. The execution was not easy due to the problems with supplies, lack of money and difficulties to estimate the number of Polish people in Hungary. According to Polish government regime, repatriated people/re-emigrants were to help in rebuilding of the destroyed country, populating it, and developing Recovered Territories, whose status in the first post-war years had not been officially established yet.