“Empire of Refugees” is a valuable book about the North Caucasian Muslim migration to the late Ottoman Empire from the mid-nineteenth century until the First World War. Nearly one million Caucasians were forced to migrate to the Ottoman Empire, first because of the genocidal ethnic cleansing policies administered by the Russian Army and later due to Russian administrative reforms and new settlement policies. This forced migration, which occurred in different waves, was utilized by the Ottoman elites while the empire was shrinking—not only losing land during the height of European imperialism and different nationalisms but also experiencing a population decline, particularly the loss of non-Muslims in those areas, which placed the empire in a demographic crisis. Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky’s book is based on extensive archival research in state archives across different countries as well as family archives, giving it the unique strength of combining both top-down and bottom-up approaches to historical writing.

The book consists of three parts and seven chapters. The first part examines Muslim migrations from the North Caucasus and the Ottoman response in establishing a refugee regime. State violence in Russia, the hardships of the migration journey, and the conditions in the arrival areas resulted in extremely high mortality rates, leading to a major humanitarian crisis that was largely ignored by the Great Powers in the diplomatic sphere. The Ottoman state had a longstanding tradition of an open-door policy for Muslim and Jewish groups; in addition, the empire was seeking new legitimacy strategies by emphasizing the position of the caliphate. The Ottoman Empire portrayed itself as the homeland for Muslims, and no other state was willing to accommodate the influx of Muslim refugees. Ottoman state elites sought to take advantage of the migration waves by settling Muslim refugees in isolated areas to boost agricultural development. The Ottoman state also used the new refugee population as a security apparatus by settling them in borderlands and ethnically heterogeneous areas to counterbalance non-Muslim groups—aiming to prevent nationalist independence movements—as well as by recruiting Caucasians into the army or employing them as irregular forces during periods of sectarian violence.

The second part examines refugee settlement, focusing on three different regions of the Empire: the Balkans, the Levant, and Anatolia. The experiences of refugee settlements reveal the various reasons behind the selection of different regions and the impact of refugee settlement on local populations in the Ottoman Empire. While Caucasian refugees became a key element of the ongoing sectarian violence in the Balkans, they played a central role in the founding of Amman through their participation in the new land and agricultural regimes in the Levant. In the Balkan context, Caucasians were recruited as irregulars (başıbozuk), and in some cases, they turned to banditry due to the lack of state funding to support their livelihoods. With the loss of the Balkan territories, they were forced to migrate a second time to different provinces of the empire. In Anatolia, they played an important role in the land registration process and in the sedentarization of nomadic tribes. In Transjordan, they benefited from the Hejaz Railway, which transformed the region by integrating it into transregional networks and also into global capitalism. They had been largely isolated and faced economic hardships due to the lack of road or rail infrastructure in central Anatolia. Nearly everywhere they were settled, they experienced land conflicts with local population groups. Refugees largely adhered to Ottoman regulations to avoid losing the rights promised to them by the government. This compliance led them to register their lands, fostering a sense of belonging while also enabling them to cultivate and resell land. As a result, local groups were also compelled to register their lands, even if they had previously resisted doing so to avoid taxation and conscription. In addition to these aspects of migration, displacement also led to the creation of new structures of slavery of the Caucasians, making it more widespread and economically accessible in the Ottoman Empire.

The third part consists of two chapters on the formation of the North Caucasian diaspora and return migration to Russia. The newly established diaspora networks and associations demonstrate the search for identity markers and a shared agenda among Caucasians in the Ottoman Empire. However, there was also a demand for return migration to their Heimat, the Russian Caucasus. These return migrations, or at least the attempts, provide a basis for comparing Russian policies toward its largest minority group. While the Ottoman Empire was eager to keep them in the borderlands because their Muslim identity made them trustworthy, the Russian case was the opposite. Russia was suspicious of them from the outset because they were Muslims and, therefore, could not be settled in border areas. However, changes in politics and the economy eventually made it possible to resettle Caucasians within Russia, though they were mostly relocated to different regions according to the needs of the Russian state. This chapter is a remarkable contribution to the transimperial history of forced migrations. Moreover, considering recent scholarship, the bans on return migration and the use of passports and visas bear a striking resemblance to the Ottoman response toward its Armenian subjects in the late nineteenth century.

Hamed-Troyansky illustrates how refugees acted as active agents in seeking better settlement areas, keeping their families together, taking advantage of the Ottoman Empire’s new land policies, and negotiating with local groups such as Bedouins and Türkmen tribes. They also sought to navigate the differing travel regulations of two major empires to build new lives for themselves. While they were victims of state violence and settler colonial policies in Russia, they became perpetrators of violence in the Balkans and eastern Anatolia. Although Hamed-Troyansky acknowledges their role in these violent episodes, there remains a gap in knowledge regarding their involvement in the Hamidian massacres against the Armenians. Given that they largely left their settlements in the eastern provinces, the question of how they remained as irregulars in the region, and for how long, remains underexplored in the literature. Although there is extensive research on the roles of Kurdish tribes and the Hamidiye cavalry regiments, the extent of the Circassians’ role in the violence against Armenians is still not well studied.

This book should be included as part of graduate training in the history of global migrations, Ottoman history, and Russian history. For a comparative perspective on forced migrations and settlement policies in the late Ottoman period, this book can be read alongside Ella Fratantuono’s “Governing Migration in the Late Ottoman Empire.”Footnote ¹ Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky has made an impressive contribution to the scholarship on migration. His excellent archival work demonstrates how to integrate the perspectives of both imperial centers and refugees.