Making Minorities History: Population Transfer in Twentieth-Century Europe

在一代人的时间里，欧洲的民族志地图是如何从像波洛克的画变成看起来像罗斯科的？换句话说：欧洲的少数民族到底发生了什么？《使少数民族成为历史》(MMH)试图通过研究二十世纪欧洲强制重新安置少数民族的国际计划的发展来解决这一问题。它展示了各国如何试图不仅通过单边行动，而且越来越多地通过多边渠道，在国际法的保护下，以国际和平与和解的名义，消除欧洲大陆的“人种错位”和问题人口。该项目的主要重点是“人口迁移”的概念--即为了构建同质的民族国家(从而将它们之间的紧张关系降至最低)，少数民族可以以有序的方式集体搬迁，经济和政治干扰最小，只要有足够的规划、官僚作风和国际支持。从19世纪90年代末这个概念的出现到20世纪40年代的顶峰，以及冷战期间它在地缘政治和历史学上的余生，MMH追溯了这一概念的兴衰，探讨了人口转移的历史背景和学术环境，在这种环境中，人口转移最初被视为一个边缘概念，被少数政治幻想者和极端民族主义者宣传为可接受的、进步的国家政策工具，就像它服从于独裁政权和法西斯独裁者一样，也服从于资产阶级民主国家和诺贝尔和平奖获得者。除了提供与这一想法最密切相关的主要思想家、政治家、国际名人、政治运动和政权的背景外，MMH还提供了具体的例子(希腊、南蒂罗尔、捷克斯洛伐克、波兰)，这些国家都在实施人口转移。MMH的研究表明，国际社会对“人口转移”的广泛接受进一步证明了20世纪中叶欧洲的自由主义危机。面对围绕少数民族的看似不可调和的争端，以及这些争端对欧洲大陆的和平与稳定构成的危险，一个受到威胁的自由秩序寻求了一个在道德和政治上可以接受的解决方案--除了仓促驱逐或彻底肉体灭绝--来处理这些问题人口，并通过这样做将强制重新安置重新塑造为一种人道主义行为。然而，MMH的研究表明，欧洲人接受“人口转移”这一概念的意义超越了意识形态或国家的边界，并见证了世纪中叶人们对现代官僚国家能力的近乎无限的信念--现代官僚国家配备了现代科学和技术的进步，以消除欧洲“不整洁”的历史发展的缺陷。

How in the space of a generation did the ethnographic map of Europe go from resembling a Pollock painting to looking like a Rothko? In other words: what ever happened to Europe's national minorities? Making Minorities History (MMH) seeks to address this question by looking at the development of international schemes for the compulsory resettlement of national minorities in twentieth-century Europe. It shows how states attempted to rid the Continent of its 'ethnographic misfits' and problem populations not only through unilateral action but increasingly through multilateral channels, under the umbrella of international law and in the name of international peace and reconciliation.The main focus of the project is on the concept of 'population transfer' - the idea that, in order to construct homogeneous nation-states (and thereby minimize tensions between them), national minorities could be relocated en masse in an orderly way with minimal economic and political disruption as long as there was sufficient planning, bureaucratic rigour and international support. Tracing the rise and fall of the concept from its emergence in the late 1890s through its 1940s zenith and its geopolitical and historiographical afterlife during the Cold War, MMH explores the historical context and intellectual milieu in which 'population transfer' developed from being initially regarded as a marginal idea propagated by a handful of political fantasists and extreme nationalists into an acceptable and 'progressive' instrument of state policy, as amenable to authoritarian regimes and fascist dictators as it was to bourgeois democracies and Nobel Peace Prize winners. As well as providing background on the key thinkers, politicians, international celebrities, political movements and regimes most closely associated with the idea, MMH also offers concrete examples (Greece, South Tyrol, Czechoslovakia, Poland) wherever a 'population transfer' was put into practice. MMH demonstrates that widespread international acceptance of 'population transfer' provides yet further evidence of a crisis of liberalism in mid-twentieth century Europe. Faced with seemingly irreconcilable disputes over national minorities and the dangers these posed for the peace and stability of the Continent, a threatened liberal order sought a morally and politically acceptable solution - short of precipitate expulsion or outright physical extermination - for dealing with these problem populations, and in doing so recast forcible resettlement as a humanitarian act. MMH shows, however, that the significance of the European embrace of the concept of 'population transfer' extends beyond the frontiers of ideology or nation and bears witness to the almost limitless faith that the mid-century mindset had in the capacity of the modern bureaucratic state, equipped with the advances of modern science and technology, to iron out the imperfections of Europe's 'untidy' historical development.