30 Years of Displacement

What can the migratory processes of refugees prior to the era of globalization teach us about our modern predicament?

Somali refugees at a camp in Dabaab, Kenya, 2011

Refugees Recomposed

The word “refugee” conjures certain images and associations in the western consciousness. Images of Somali refugees migrating into Kenya, Ethiopia, and Yemen have been broadcast across our television screens and buried in the “world” sections of our newspapers since the implosion of the of the Siad Barre (“Seeyad Barruh”) regime in 1991. More recently, the Syrian revolution against the violent rule of President Bashar al-Assad has prompted the forced migration of 2.1 million people into neighboring countries like Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. The tremendous size of this displaced population, and the tepid response on the part of the west to contribute aid, has prompted David Miliband, the chief executive of the International Rescue Committee, to state earlier this month that “it appears that the world has become desensitized to the mounting human misery.” By most accounts, the traditional image of refugees who bear the weight of this misery are often people of color, typically with limited educations, lacking in economic opportunity, and flee what tend to be characterized as “third world” conditions and the social and political unrest that accompany these living conditions.

Miliband’s remark gestures toward the ubiquity with which digital and print journalism circulate images of these movements of forced migration and the traditional sociocultural and economic profile of the displaced migrant. The pervasive, smoldering nature of these events and Miliband’s comments suggest a fatigue, a global malaise about the dilemma faced by so many affected people. Is it possible that the existence and migratory patterns of these refugees are simply a product of the modern sociopolitical condition? Sociologists Philomena Essed, Georg Frerks, and Joke Schrijvers have said that “although change and (forced) migration have always characterized human society, the global processes that have taken place during the last quarter of the twentieth century have brought about unprecedented change. Accompanied by major social transformations throughout the world in all areas of human life, globalization has affected the political, economic, social, cultural, environmental and interpersonal domains of an increasing number of people.” Indeed, the tools of our modern descriptive parlance, refugee, third world, are products of the twentieth century. However, as forced migration has been with human society for as long as wars have been present to displace communities, what can we learn from the migratory processes of refugees prior to the era of globalization referenced by Essed, Frerks, and Schirijvers? Can we contest the speciously specific portrait of the forced migrant as one who is displaced by the social uncertainties of the globalized world to find refuge in the camps and tent villages of barren and sterile fields?

I am choosing to utilize the term “recomposition” as a description for the efforts to rehabilitate community, culture, and identity in the aftermath of forced migration by the cultural groups driven to settle in new areas. I will be looking at a violent conflict that politically destabilized and socially upended central Europe during the first half of the 17th century: the 30 Years War. I would like to challenge our modern notion of the refugee with an early modern community of displaced Europeans who restored their identities and regained their sense of agency by making contact with a bygone Christian past.

From 1568, the Netherlands was involved in an armed revolt against Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. The Dutch contested the taxation and religious restrictions imposed on them by the Spanish crown as a northern province of the Habsburg Dynasty. By 1618 this revolt expanded into a war that included most of central Europe. This wider leg of the war continued until 1648, constituting 30 years of conflict that, when it finally concluded, set in motion a series of political and social events that redrew national boundaries, altered governmental systems, and significantly weakened the authority of the Holy Roman Empire. For many caught in the crossfire of this conflict, life was precarious and the prospect of a peaceful future was in question. For those that had the means, migration into more peaceful areas of Europe was an option.

Justus Lipsius, a Flemish humanist, writer, and academic, fled from his home in what is modern day Belgium in search of more peaceful areas to settle not wracked by war and destruction. In De Constantia (Constancy), a book published in 1594, Lipsius describes his experience as a forced wanderer caught between national borders and between national identities. In a conversation with a friend near Vienna, he frets about his anxious, ceaseless, migratory state. In a bit of advice that sets the tone of the rest of the book, and indeed the rest of Lipsius’ life, his friend, Languis, offers the following bit of wisdom:

“O’ fond youth, what childishness is this? Or what leads you to seek safety by flying away? Your country, I confess is tossed and turmoiled grievously: what part of Europe is at this day free? […] Lipsius, you must not forsake your country, but your affections. Our minds must be so confirmed and conformed that we may be at rest in troubles, and have peace even in the midst of war.”

With this remark, Lipsius gains the realization that only by changing his attitude will he make peace with the uncertainty and chaos around him. For him, reconstituting one’s life amidst existential struggle was a matter of changing one’s perception. However, not everyone displaced by the war was content to simply seek safety and certainty within their own consciousness. Others fled Europe entirely.

During this period of conflict, tales of the mysterious, Islamic east tempted war weary Europeans into countries such as Turkey. As of 1453, Turkey fell to the Ottomans, who revitalized Constantinople, its largest city, into the cosmopolitan metropolis of Istanbul. By the 16th century, Istanbul was an attractive destination for European merchants and diplomats. One such Diplomat, the Flemish writer Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (“Auger Gislain de Busbecq”) described his time as an ambassador to the Ottoman court in a book titled The Turkish Letters. Busbecq describes the thrift and selflessness exhibited by the Ottoman Turks, and the comparatively meritocratic natureof their society that undoubtedly intrigued European readers.

Melchior Lorck, a Danish artist and printmaker, accompanied Busbecq to produce images of Istanbul that rendered the ambassador’s descriptions into striking, visual form. One such image, Prospect of Constantinople,

features a self-portrait of the artist surveying the city from afar. From this purview we see ancient Christian Byzantine buildings situated amongst Muslim mosques and Ottoman prisons. Lorck’s Prospect confounds time by depicting a city that is marked by its Christian past and its Muslim present. It was precisely this perplexing of temporalities that was apprehended by those displaced Europeans who found themselves finding safe haven in Istanbul, enchanted by these images and stories of Turkish thrift, selflessness, and tolerance.

European immigration into Istanbul during the 15th century was minimal, but by the early decades of the 17th century, the number of Jews and Christians grew, condensing into the neighborhood of Galata. The population increase prompted one traveler to remark,

“this city is more Christian or Jewish than Turkish. All the Frankish merchants, i.e., French, British, Dutch, Venetians, Genoese and others, live in Galata because of the

residence of their ambassadors, and because their ships land there”.(129) This observation is likely an exaggeration, but it does suggest that Istanbul had in place a political, economic, and social infrastructure receptive to European immigration and settlement. In fact, as long as these minority citizens paid their taxes without interruption, contributed to the city’s commercial activities, and found membership within a cultural and ethnic group, life in Istanbul was not too dissimilar from the popular published accounts.

Finding membership within a spatially specific Jewish or Christian community in Istanbul allowed migrants to create protective buffers between themselves and the dominant population; it also permitted them to carve out spaces of European culture within the Muslim city. These spaces, and the efforts taken by these migrants to reconstitute some form of their prior cultural identities, effectively folded temporalities in on themselves.

The Church of Saints Peter and Paul, located within the European section of Galata, traces its history to the 16th century and was a vital part of the Christian community during the early decades of the 17th century. As a structure, it functioned as the fulcrum around which the community moved and secured its civic and political activities. The church’s interior spaces provided a site of cultural intersection and the performance of restored European Christian identities. However, one devotional object in particular seems to have been the adhesive that kept the community together and lent it stability - a Byzantine icon of the Virgin and Christ child.

The image of the Virgin Mary, or Theotokos, that resides within the church is a remnant of Istanbul’s distant past as the Byzantine city of Constantinople. This icon, a type referred to as a Hodegetria icon, was installed in this church in 1640, 8 years before the end of the 30 Years War. The entire piece is covered in silver (of unknown origin) as the Virgin stands with her arms outstretched in a welcoming embrace; the Christ child is nestled into her chest. As a system of religious and cultural symbolism, this Hodegetria icon functioned as a visual and conceptual bridge to the city’s distant past and its former Christian glory. As an icon within old Byzantine contexts of warfare, the Theotokos of the Hodegetria held a powerful significance. In times of war, similar images of the Theotokos, or “the one who gives birth to God”, functioned as cult images that were paraded out into the battle field as a signal of hope and protection. The persona of the Theotokos, herself, was felt to embody the qualities of divine invincibility and maternal selflessness and sacrifice. She functioned as the calm and welcoming center amidst the chaos of war - powerful associations undoubtedly recognized by 17th century Europeans fleeing their own destructive conflict. These characteristics cast Mary as a virgin warrior akin to Athena, the Greek goddess of war. In times past, the Mother of God was the protector of Christian Byzantines; now she is a minority citizen in Istanbul offering understanding and protection to a flock whose geographical displacement is matched only by her own temporal displacement.

Much like Melchior Lorck’s Prospect of Constantinople, the Hodegetria of the Church of Saints Peter and Paul collapses the chasm between epochs of the Turkish city. Within the frame of the Hodegetria, Christian past and Muslim present were folded in on each other to be apprehended and untangled by the Christian refugee. In this context, the experiences of displaced Europeans who found themselves in a country that was not their own was less about being a cultural and ethnic “other”, but about the processes that people engage with to reclaim lost identities and the cultural objects that grant them a sense of personal agency and communal cohesion.