Napoleon's Exile onSaint Helena by Franz Josef Sandman (1820)The First Night in Exile – This painting comes from a series illustrating theRamayana, aHinduepic poem. It depicts prince Rama, who is wrongly exiled from his father's kingdom, accompanied only by his wife and brother.Dante in Exile by Domenico Petarlini
Exile orbanishment is primarily penal expulsion from one's nativecountry, and secondarilyexpatriation or prolonged absence from one's homeland under either the compulsion of circumstance or the rigors of some high purpose. Usually persons and peoples suffer exile, but sometimes social entities like institutions (e.g. thepapacy or agovernment) are forced from their homeland.
InRoman law,exsilium denoted both voluntary exile and banishment as acapital punishment alternative to death.Deportation was forced exile, and entailed the lifelong loss of citizenship and property.Relegation was a milder form of deportation, which preserved the subject's citizenship and property.[1]
The termdiaspora describes group exile, both voluntary and forced. "Government in exile" describes a government of a country that has relocated and argues its legitimacy from outside that country. Voluntary exile is often depicted as a form of protest by the person who claims it, to avoid persecution and prosecution (such as tax or criminal allegations), an act of shame or repentance, or isolating oneself to be able to devote time to a particular pursuit.
Banishment was used as a punishment in ancient societies such asBabylon,Greece andRome.[2] It is stipulated as the punishment forincest with one's daughter in theCode of Hammurabi,[3] formanslaughter inMosaic law, for murder inAthens according toDraco's homicide law,[4] and for rape according to the ancient Indian textManusmriti.[5] A special form of banishment known asostracism was practiced in Athens, in which citizens could vote for the expulsion of any citizen for ten years. Ostracism did not entail the loss of property or citizenship, and the ostracized person could return after ten years without disgrace or further penalty.[6] Banishment was the punishment for a variety of offenses in Ancient Rome.[4] InRoman law,exsilium denoted both voluntary exile and banishment as acapital punishment alternative to death.[1] When allowed as an alternative to death, it was accompanied by an administrative decree calledinterdictio aquae et ignis ("interdiction of water and fire"), which declared the offender anoutlaw, allowing any person who encountered him or her within the borders of the country to kill him or her.[7]Deportation was forced exile, and entailed the lifelong loss of citizenship and property.Relegation was a milder form of deportation, which preserved the subject's citizenship and property.[1] TheTang Code of 7th-century China lists a number of crimes punishable by banishment.[5]
Exile was also imposed as a punishment in many societies in medieval Europe. Germanic peoples such as the Franks and Danes are known to have used it.[5] In England, it can be traced back to the 12th century. At that time, a criminal could be allowed to claimsanctuary in a church; if they confessed to their crimes within forty days and took an oath to leave the country and not return without royal permission, they would be allowed to safely go into exile. This practice was abolished by KingJames I in 1623.[4] Banishment was also a common punishment in the Netherlands: from 1650 to 1750, at least 97 percent of non-capital sentences passed in Amsterdam included some form of banishment.[4] In 1597, the English parliament empowered magistrates to deport "rogues and vagabonds 'beyond the seas'", and in 1615 James I permitted the pardoning of felons on condition of banishment to the Americas. However, it was only after the passing of theTransportation Act of 1718 that banishment to British colonies overseas, termed "transportation", began to be applied systematically as a punishment for serious crimes. Hundreds of convicts were transported annually to the colonies and sold as servants. About 50,000 people were subjected to the punishment throughout the 18th century, including more than two-thirds of all felons convicted at London's main criminal court,Old Bailey, were transported. The practice of transportation in Britain continued well into the 19th century.[8] France also employed banishment to colonies as a punishment, but on a smaller scale than Britain; it was in use to a limited extent until the mid-20th century. TheRussian Empire[9] andQing China used exile as a means to populate frontier territories.[10] Prison colonies became obsolete as the amount of habitable unsettled territory in the world decreased, and prisons became the normal method for dealing with convicts.[11]
Banishment was frequently used as a punishment in theThirteen Colonies, but it fell into disfavor under the United States. There is no federal law in the United States controlling banishment as a punishment. In the caseCooper v. Telfair (1800), the US Supreme Court established that legislatures have the right to confiscate the property of and banish individuals who take up arms against the United States. At least one legal scholar has argued that this Supreme Court ruling "offered a definitive ruling on the legality of banishment." However, another scholar has argued that this reasoning cannot be easily used in the case of ordinary offenses, "where the security of the country is not at stake." Some US states allow intrastate banishment, although the practice is rare and its legality and constitutionality in many US jurisdictions has been described as "still an open question" by one scholar. Interstate banishment (i.e., expulsion from one US state to another) has been allowed in the United States only in isolated instances.[12]
Denaturalization, or depriving a person of their citizenship, can be viewed as a modern form of banishment.[13] Denaturalization does not necessarily result in an individual losing the right oflegal residence in the country that revokes their citizenship, but it often does.[14] Moderninternational law severely limits the circumstances under which a person can be deprived of their citizenship. Countries which permit the deprivation of citizenship after a criminal conviction for a serious offense include the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. Most states only allow the deprivation of citizenship if it will not cause the person to becomestateless.[15]
In some cases thedeposedhead of state is allowed to go into exile following acoup or other change of government, allowing a more peaceful transition to take place or to escape justice.[16]
A wealthy citizen who moves to a jurisdiction with lower taxes is termed atax exile. Creative people such as authors and musicians who achieve sudden wealth sometimes choose this. Examples include the British-Canadian writerArthur Hailey, who moved to the Bahamas to avoid taxes following the runaway success of his novelsHotel andAirport,[17] and the English rock band theRolling Stones who, in the spring of 1971, owed more in taxes than they could pay and left Britain before the government could seize their assets. Members of the band all moved to France for a period of time where they recorded music for the album that came to be calledExile on Main Street, the Main Street of the title referring to the French Riviera.[18] In 2012,Eduardo Saverin, one of the founders of Facebook, made headlines by renouncing his U.S. citizenship before his company'sIPO.[19] The dual Brazilian/U.S. citizen's decision to move to Singapore and renounce his citizenship spurred a bill in the U.S. Senate, theEx-PATRIOT Act, which would have forced such wealthytax exiles to pay a special tax in order to re-enter the United States.[20]
Iraqi academics asked to return home "from exile" to help rebuild Iraq in 2009[21]
People undertaking a religious orcivil liberties role in society may be forced into exile due to threat of persecution. For example, in Czechoslovakia,nuns were internally exiled to small villages along the northern border that had been stripped of their original German populations (such asBílá Voda) following theCommunistcoup d'état of 1948.[22]
Since theCuban Revolution, over a millionCubans have leftCuba. Most of these self-identified as exiles as their motivation for leaving the island is political in nature. At the time of the Cuban Revolution, Cuba only had a population of 6.5 million, and was not a country that had a history of significant emigration, it being the sixth largest recipient of immigrants in the world as of 1958. Most of the exiles' children also consider themselves to beCuban exiles. Under Cuban law, children of Cubans born abroad are considered Cuban citizens.[27] An extension of colonial practices, Latin America saw widespread exile, of a political variety, during the 19th and 20th century.[28] Exiled political groups often develop complex media strategies, including diaspora engagement and investigative reporting, to maintain visibility, mobilise support, and address challenges of operating outside their home country.[29]
Ivan the Terrible once exiled to Siberia an inanimate object: a bell.[30] "When the inhabitants of the town ofUglich rang their bell to rally a demonstration against Ivan the Terrible, the cruel Czar executed two hundred (nobles), and exiled the Uglich bell to Siberia, where it remained for two hundred years."[31]
Exile is an early motif inancient Greektragedy. In the ancient Greek world, this was seen as a fate worse than death. The motif reaches its peak on the playMedea, written byEuripides in the fifth century BC, and rooted in the very old oral traditions of Greek mythology. Euripides'Medea has remained the most frequently performed Greek tragedy through the 20th century.[32]
AfterMedea was abandoned byJason and had become a murderess out of revenge, she fled to Athens and married kingAigeus there, and became the stepmother of the heroTheseus. Due to a conflict with him, she must leave thePolis and go away into exile.John William Waterhouse (1849–1917), the EnglishPre-Raphaelite painter's famous pictureJason and Medea shows a key moment before, when Medea tries to poison Theseus.[33]
In ancient Rome, the Roman Senate had the power to declare the exile to individuals, families or even entire regions. One of the Roman victims was the poetOvid, who lived during the reign ofAugustus. He was forced to leave Rome and move away to the city of Tomis on the Black Sea, nowConstanța. There he wrote his famous workTristia (Sorrows) about his bitter feelings in exile.[34]Another, at least in a temporary exile, wasDante.
The German-language writerFranz Kafka described the exile of Karl Rossmann in the posthumously published novelAmerika.[35]
During theperiod of National Socialism in the first few years after 1933, many Jews, as well as a significant number of German artists and intellectuals fled into exile; for instance, the authorsKlaus Mann andAnna Seghers. So Germany's own exile literature emerged and received worldwide credit.[36] Klaus Mann finished his novelDer Vulkan (The Volcano: A Novel Among Emigrants) in 1939[37] describing the German exile scene, "to bring the rich, scattered and murky experience of exile into epic form",[38] as he wrote in his literary balance sheet. At the same place and in the same year, Anna Seghers published her famous novelDas siebte Kreuz (The Seventh Cross, published in the United States in 1942).
Important exile literature in recent years include that of the Caribbean, many of whose artists emigrated to Europe or the United States for political or economic reasons. These writers include Nobel Prize winnersV. S. Naipaul andDerek Walcott as well as the novelistsEdwidge Danticat andSam Selvon.[39]
^Berger, Adolf (1953). "Interdicere aqua et igni".Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law. p. 507.
^Ekirch, A. Roger (1987).Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718–1775. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 1, 237.ISBN978-0-19-820092-5.
^Morris, Edward E., (1898, reprinted 1973),A dictionary of Austral English, Sydney, Sydney University Press, pp. 140, 166.ISBN0424063905
^Peter Richardson,Herod: King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans, Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1996, p.98-99
^Bideleux, Robert; Jeffries, Ian (1998).A History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change. Routledge. p. 156.
^K. Chang, Jon (8 April 2019). "Ethnic Cleansing and Revisionist Russian and Soviet History".Academic Questions.32 (2): 270.doi:10.1007/s12129-019-09791-8 (inactive 12 July 2025).S2CID150711796.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of July 2025 (link)
^Powell, John (2005)."Cuban immigration".Encyclopedia of North American Immigration. Facts on File. pp. 68–71.ISBN9781438110127. Retrieved30 November 2016.
^Cf. an unabridged reading bySven Regener:Amerika, Roof Music, Bochum 2014.
^See Martin Mauthner:German Writers in French Exile, 1933–1940, Vallentine Mitchell, London 2007,ISBN978-0-85303-540-4.
^which he started in September 1936, when he came to New York. Cf. Jan Patocka in:Escape to Life. German Intellectuals in New York. A Compendium on Exile after 1933, ed. by Eckart Goebel/Sigrid Weigel. De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston 2012, p. 354.ISBN978-3-11-025867-7
^Cf. Klaus Mann:Der Wendepunkt. Ein Lebensbericht. (1949), Frankfurt am Main 2006, p. 514.
Coy, Jason Philip (2008).Strangers and Misfits: Banishment, Social Control, and Authority in Early Modern Germany. Studies in Central European Histories. Leiden: Brill.ISBN978-90-04-16174-0.
Frankot, Edda (2022).Banishment in the Late Medieval Eastern Netherlands: Exile and Redemption in Kampen. Bern: Palgrave Macmillan.ISBN978-3-030-88867-1.
Jordan, William Chester (2015).From England to France: Felony and Exile in the High Middle Ages. Princeton University Press.ISBN978-0-691-16495-3.
Kelly, Gordon P. (2006).A History of Exile in the Roman Republic. Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-0-511-58455-8.
Washburn, Daniel A. (2013).Banishment in the Later Roman Empire, 284-476 CE. Routledge Studies in Ancient History. New York: Routledge.ISBN978-1-138-11550-7.
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