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Population transfer orresettlement is a type ofmass migration that is often imposed by a state policy or international authority. Such mass migrations are most frequently spurred on the basis ofethnicity or religion, but they also occur due toeconomic development. Banishment orexile is a similar process, but is forcibly applied to individuals and groups. Population transfer differs more than simply technically from individually motivatedmigration, but at times ofwar, the act of fleeing from danger orfamine often blurs the differences.

Often the affected population istransferred by force to a distant region, perhaps not suited to their way of life, causing them substantial harm. In addition, the process implies the loss ofimmovable property and substantial amounts of movable property when rushed. This transfer may be motivated by the more powerful party's desire to make other uses of the land in question or, less often, by security or disastrous environmental or economic conditions that require relocation.^{[citation needed]}

The first known population transfers date back to theMiddle Assyrian Empire in the13th century BCE, with forced resettlement beingparticularly prevalent during the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The single largest population transfer in history was thePartition of India in 1947 that involved up to 12 million people inPunjab Province with a total of up to 20 million people acrossBritish India,^[1][2][3][4] with the second largest being theflight and expulsion of Germans after World War II, which involved more than 12 million people.

Before the forcible deportation of Ukrainians (includingthousands of children) to Russia during theRussian invasion of Ukraine,^[5][6] the last major population transfer in Europe was the deportation of 800,000 ethnicAlbanians during theKosovo War in 1999.^[7] Moreover, some of the largest population transfers in Europe have been attributed to theethnic policies of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.

Population transfers can also be imposed to furthereconomic development, for instance China relocated 1.3 million residents in order to construct theThree Gorges Dam.^[8]

The earliest known examples of population transfers took place in the context of war and empire. As part ofSennacherib's campaignagainst King Hezekiah of Jerusalem (701 BCE) "200,150 people great and small, male and female" were transferred to other lands in theNeo-Assyrian Empire. Similar population transfers occurred under theAchaemenid andByzantine Empires. Population transfers are considered incompatible with the values of post-Enlightenment European societies, but this was usually limited to the home territory of the colonial power itself and population transfers continued in European colonies during the 20th century.^[9]

Population exchange is the transfer of two populations in opposite directions at about the same time. In theory at least, the exchange is non-forcible, but the reality of the effects of these exchanges has always been unequal, and at least one half of the so-called "exchange" has usually been forced by the stronger or richer participant. Such exchanges have taken place several times in the 20th century:

• Thepartition of India and Pakistan
• The mass expulsion of Anatolian Greeks and Balkan Turks from Turkey and Greece, respectively, during their so-calledGreek-Turkish population exchange. It involved approximately 1.3 million Anatolian Christians (majority Greek) and 354,000 Balkan Muslims (majority Turkish), most of whom were forcibly made refugees andde juredenaturalized from their homelands.
• The 1940 peacefulpopulation exchange between Bulgaria and Romania
• The Cyprus population exchange following theTurkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 that led to displacement of 140,000 Greeks from the north and around 60,000 Turks that have relocated from the south to the north.^[10]

Ethnic dilution is the practice of enacting immigration policies to relocate parts of an ethnically and/or culturally dominant population into a region populated by an ethnic minority or otherwise culturally different or non-mainstream group to dilute and eventually to transform the native ethnic population into the mainstream culture over time.

According to the political scientistNorman Finkelstein, population transfer was considered as an acceptable solution to the problems of ethnic conflict until aroundWorld War II and even for a time afterward. Transfer was considered a drastic but "often necessary" means to end an ethnic conflict or ethniccivil war.^[11] The feasibility of population transfer was hugely increased by the creation ofrailroad networks from the mid-19th century.George Orwell, in his 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language" (written during theWorld War II evacuation and expulsions in Europe), observed:

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things... can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.... Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is calledtransfer of population orrectification of frontiers."

The view of international law on population transfer underwent considerable evolution during the 20th century. Prior toWorld War II, many major population transfers were the result of bilateral treaties and had the support of international bodies such as theLeague of Nations. Theexpulsion of Germans after World War II from Central and Eastern Europe after World War II was sanctioned by the Allies in Article 13 of the Potsdam communiqué, but research has shown that both the British and the American delegations at Potsdam strongly objected to the size of the population transfer that had already taken place and was accelerating in the summer of 1945. The principal drafter of the provision,Geoffrey Harrison, explained that the article was intended not to approve the expulsions but to find a way to transfer the competence to the Control Council in Berlin to regulate the flow.^[12]The tide started to turn when the Charter of theNuremberg Trials of German Nazi leaders declared forced deportation of civilian populations to be both a war crime and a crime against humanity.^[13] That opinion was progressively adopted and extended through the remainder of the century. Underlying the change was the trend to assign rights to individuals, thereby limiting the rights of states to make agreements that adversely affect them.

There is now little debate about the general legal status of involuntary population transfers: "Where population transfers used to be accepted as a means to settle ethnic conflict, today, forced population transfers are considered violations of international law."^[14] No legal distinction is made between one-way and two-way transfers since the rights of each individual are regarded as independent of the experience of others.

Article 49 of theFourth Geneva Convention (adopted in 1949 and now part ofcustomary international law) prohibits mass movement ofprotected persons out of or into territory underbelligerentmilitary occupation:^[15]

Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.... The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.

An interim report of the United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities (1993) says:^[16]

Historical cases reflect a now-foregone belief that population transfer may serve as an option for resolving various types of conflict, within a country or between countries. The agreement of recognized States may provide one criterion for the authorization of the final terms of conflict resolution. However, the cardinal principle of "voluntariness" is seldom satisfied, regardless of the objective of the transfer. For the transfer to comply with human rights standards as developed, prospective transferees must have an option to remain in their homes if they prefer.

The same report warned of the difficulty of ensuring true voluntariness:

"some historical transfers did not call for forced or compulsory transfers, but included options for the affected populations. Nonetheless, the conditions attending the relevant treaties created strong moral, psychological and economic pressures to move."

The final report of the Sub-Commission (1997)^[17] invoked numerous legal conventions and treaties to support the position that population transfers contravene international law unless they have the consent of both the moved population and the host population. Moreover, that consent must be given free of direct or indirect negative pressure.

"Deportation or forcible transfer of population" is defined as acrime against humanity by theRome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Article 7).^[18] TheInternational Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has indicted and sometimes convicted a number of politicians and military commanders indicted for forced deportations in that region.

Ethnic cleansing encompasses "deportation or forcible transfer of population" and the force involved may involve other crimes, including crimes against humanity.Nationalist agitation can harden public support, one way or the other, for or against population transfer as a solution to current or possible future ethnic conflict, and attitudes can be cultivated by supporters of either plan of action with its supportivepropaganda used as a typical political tool by which their goals can be achieved.

Two famous transfers connected with thehistory of France are the banning of the religion of the Jews in 1308 and that of theHuguenots, FrenchProtestants by theEdict of Fontainebleau in 1685. Religious warfare over the Protestants led to many seeking refuge in the Low Countries, England and Switzerland.^[19] In the early 18th century, some Huguenots emigrated tocolonial America. In both cases, the population was not forced out but rather their religion was declared illegal and so many left the country.

According to Ivan Sertima,Louis XV ordered all blacks to be deported from France but was unsuccessful. At the time, they were mostlyfree people of color from the Caribbean and Louisiana colonies, usually descendants of French colonial men and African women. Some fathers sent their mixed-race sons to France to be educated or gave them property to be settled there. Others entered the military, as didThomas-Alexandre Dumas, the father ofAlexandre Dumas.^[20]

Some Algerians were also forcefully removed from their native land by France in the late 19th century, and moved to the Pacific, most notably to New Caledonia.^[21][22]

After theCromwellian conquest of Ireland andAct of Settlement in 1652, most indigenousIrish Catholic land holders had their lands confiscated and were banned from living in planted towns. An unknown number, possibly as high as 100,000Irish were removed to the colonies in the West Indies and North America asindentured servants.^[23]

In addition, the Crown supported a series of population transfers into Ireland to enlarge the loyal Protestant population of Ireland. Known asthe plantations, they had migrants come chiefly from Scotland and the northern border counties of England. In the late eighteenth century, the Scots-Irish constituted the largest group of immigrants from the British Isles to enter theThirteen Colonies before theAmerican Revolutionary War.^[24]

Theenclosures that depopulated rural England in theBritish Agricultural Revolution started during theMiddle Ages. Similar developments inScotland have lately been called theLowland Clearances.

TheHighland Clearances were forced displacements of the populations of theScottish Highlands andScottish Islands in the 18th century. They led to mass emigration to the coast, theScottish Lowlands and abroad, including to the Thirteen Colonies, Canada and the Caribbean.

Historically, expulsions ofJews and ofRomani people reflect the power of state control that has been applied as a tool, in the form of expulsion edicts, laws, mandates etc., against them for centuries.

After theMolotov–Ribbentrop Pact dividedPoland duringWorld War II, Germans deportedPoles andJews fromPolish territories annexed by Nazi Germany, and theSoviet Union deported Poles from areas of Eastern Poland,Kresy to Siberia and Kazakhstan. From 1940,Adolf Hitler tried to get Germans to resettle from the areas in which they were the minority (the Baltics, South-Eastern and Eastern Europe) to theWarthegau, the region aroundPoznań, GermanPosen. He expelled the Poles and Jews who formed there the majority of the population. Before the war, theGermans were 16% of the population in the area.^[25]

TheNazis initially tried to press Jews to emigrate and in Austria succeeded in driving out most of the Jewish population. However, increasing foreign resistance brought the plan to a virtual halt. Later on, Jews were transferred toghettoes and eventually todeath camps. Use offorced labor in Nazi Germany during World War II occurred on a large scale. Jews who had signed over properties in Germany and Austria during Nazism, although coerced to do so, found it nearly impossible to be reimbursed after World War II, partly because of the ability of governments to make the "personal decision to leave" argument.

The Germans abducted about 12 million people from almost twenty European countries; about two thirds of whom came fromEastern Europe.^[26]After World War II, when theCurzon line, which had been proposed in 1919 by the Western Allies as Poland's eastern border, was implemented, members of all ethnic groups were transferred to their respective new territories (Poles to Poland,Ukrainians to Soviet Ukraine). The same applied to theformerly-German territories east of theOder-Neisse line, where German citizens were transferred to Germany.Germans were expelled from areas annexed by theSoviet Union andPoland as well as territories ofCzechoslovakia,Hungary,Romania andYugoslavia.^[27] From 1944 until 1948, between 13.5 and 16.5 million Germans were expelled,evacuated or fled from Central and Eastern Europe. The Statistisches Bundesamt (federal statistics office) estimates the loss of life at 2.1 million^[28]

Poland andSoviet Ukraine conducted population exchanges. Poles residing east of the new Poland-Soviet border were deported to Poland (2,100,000 persons), andUkrainians that resided west of the New border were deported to Soviet Ukraine.Population transfer to Soviet Ukraine occurred from September 1944 to May 1946 (450,000 persons). Some Ukrainians (200,000 persons) left southeast Poland more or less voluntarily (between 1944 and 1945).^[29] The second event occurred in 1947 underOperation Vistula.^[30]

Nearly 20 million people inEurope fled their homes or were expelled, transferred or exchanged during the process of sorting out ethnic groups between 1944 and 1951.^[31]

In 1492 the Jewish population of Spain wasexpelled through theAlhambra Decree. Some of the Jews went to North Africa; others east into Poland, France and Italy, and other Mediterranean countries.

In 1609, was theExpulsion of the Moriscos, the final transfer of 300,000 Muslims out of Spain, after more than a century of Catholic trials, segregation, and religious restrictions. Most of the Spanish Muslims went to North Africa and to areas ofOttoman Empire control.^[32]

In September 1940, with the return ofSouthern Dobruja byRomania toBulgaria under theTreaty of Craiova, apopulation exchange was carried out. 103,711 Romanians,Aromanians andMegleno-Romanians were compelled to move north of the border, while 62,278 Bulgarians living in NorthernDobruja were forced to move into Bulgaria.^[33][34][35]

Around 360,000Bulgarian Turks fled Bulgaria during theRevival Process.^[36]

During theYugoslav wars in the 1990s, the breakup ofYugoslavia caused large population transfers, mostly involuntary. As it was a conflict fueled byethnic nationalism, people of minority ethnicities generally fled towards regions that their ethnicity was the majority.

The phenomenon of "ethnic cleansing" was first seen inCroatia but soon spread toBosnia. Since theBosnian Muslims had no immediate refuge, they were arguably the hardest hit by the ethnic violence. United Nations tried to createsafe areas for Muslim populations of eastern Bosnia but in theSrebrenica massacre and elsewhere, the peacekeeping troops failed to protect thesafe areas, resulting in the massacre of thousands of Muslims.

TheDayton Accords ended the war inBosnia and Herzegovina, fixing the borders between the two warring parties roughly to those established by the autumn of 1995. One immediate result of the population transfer after the peace deal was a sharp decline in ethnic violence in the region.

A massive and systematic deportation ofSerbia'sAlbanians took place during theKosovo War of 1999, with around 800,000 Albanians (out of a population of about 1.5 million) forced to fleeKosovo.^[37] Albanians became the majority in Kosovo at the wars end, around 200,000 Serbs and Roma fled Kosovo. When Kosovo proclaimed independence in 2008, the bulk of its population was Albanian.^[38]

A number of commanders and politicians, notably Serbia and Yugoslav PresidentSlobodan Milošević, were put on trial by the UN'sInternational Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for a variety ofwar crimes, including deportations and genocide.

Following theGreco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, the League of Nations defined those to be mutually expelled as the "Muslim inhabitants of Greece" to Turkey and moving "the Christian Orthodox inhabitants of Turkey" to Greece. The plan met with fierce opposition in both countries and was condemned vigorously by a large number of countries. Undeterred,Fridtjof Nansen worked with both Greece and Turkey to gain their acceptance of the proposed population exchange. About 1.5 million Christians and half a million Muslims were moved from one side of the international border to the other.

When the exchange was to take effect (1 May 1923), most of the prewar Orthodox Greek population of Aegean Turkey had already fled due to persecution and theGreek Genocide, and so only the Orthodox Christians of central Anatolia (bothGreek andTurkish-speaking), and thePontic Greeks were involved, a total of roughly 189,916.^[39] The total number ofMuslims involved was 354,647.^[40]

The population transfer prevented further attacks on minorities in the respective states, and Nansen was awarded aNobel Peace Prize. As a result of the transfers, the Muslim minority in Greece and the Greek minority in Turkey were much reduced.Cyprus and theDodecanese were not included in the Greco-Turkish population transfer of 1923 because they were under direct British and Italian control respectively. For the fate ofCyprus, see below. The Dodecanese became part of Greece in 1947.

In 1939, Hitler andMussolini agreed to give the German-speaking population of South Tyrol a choice (theSouth Tyrol Option Agreement): they could emigrate to neighbouringGermany (including the recently-annexedAustria) or stay in Italy and accept to be assimilated. Because of the outbreak of World War II, the agreement was only partially consummated.

After theTurkish invasion of Cyprus and subsequentdivision of the island, there was an agreement between theGreek representative on one side and theTurkish Cypriot representative on the other side under the auspices of theUnited Nations on August 2, 1975. The Government of the Republic of Cyprus would lift any restrictions in the voluntary movement of Turkish Cypriots to the Turkish-occupied areas of the island, and in exchange, the Turkish Cypriot side would allow all Greek Cypriots who remained in the occupied areas to stay there and to be given every help to live a normal life.^[41]

Around 150,000 people (amounting to more than one-quarter of the total population of Cyprus, and to one-third of itsGreek Cypriot population) were displaced from the northern part of the island, where Greek Cypriots had constituted 80% of the population. Over the course of the next year, roughly 60,000Turkish Cypriots,^[42] amounting to half the Turkish Cypriot population,^[43] were displaced from the south to the north.^[44]

Shortly before, during and immediately afterWorld War II,Joseph Stalin conducted a series of deportations on a huge scale, which profoundly affected the ethnic map of theSoviet Union. Over 1.5 million people were deported toSiberia and theCentral Asian republics. Separatism, resistance to Soviet rule and collaboration with theinvading Germans were cited as the main official reasons for the deportations. After World War II, the population ofEast Prussia was replaced by the Soviet one, mainly byRussians. Many Tartari Muslims were transferred to Northern Crimea, now Ukraine, while Southern Crimea and Yalta were populated with Russians.

At the conclusion of theYalta Conference, theAllies made numerous promises, one of them was their promise to return allSoviet citizens who found themselves in the Allied zone to the Soviet Union (Operation Keelhaul). That policy immediately affected theSoviet prisoners of war who were liberated by the Allies, and it was extended to allEastern Europeanrefugees. Outlining the plan to force refugees to return to theSoviet Union, the codicil was kept secret from the American and British people for over 50 years.^[45]

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Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have reportedly been forcibly deported to Russia during the2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.^[6] Because of Russia's deporting of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia, the international criminal court issued an arrest warrant forVladimir Putin the president of Russia andMaria Lvova-Belova Russia's commissioner for children's rights.^[46] As of 21 November 2023 there was 6,338,100 Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Most (5,946,000) have gone to European countries but a minority (392,100) went to countries outside of Europe^[47]

TheInca Empire dispersed conquered ethnic groups throughout the empire to break down traditional community ties and force the heterogeneous population to adopt theQuechua language and culture. Never fully successful in thepre-Columbian era, thetotalitarian^{[citation needed]} policies had their greatest success when they were adopted, from the 16th century, to create a pan-Andean identity defined againstSpanish rule. Much of the current knowledge of Inca population transfers comes from their description by the Spanish chroniclersPedro Cieza de León andBernabé Cobo.

The Spanish conquerors continued these Inca policies settling for example thousands of indigenousyanakuna from what is today Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru in thenewly conquered central Chile.^[48] In 1666 the Spanish resettled theQuilmes people from the vicinity ofSan Miguel de Tucumán more than 1,000 km southeast inQuilmes next toBuenos Aires.^{[citation needed]}

During theFrench and Indian War (the North American theatre of theSeven Years' War between Great Britain and France), the British forcibly relocated approximately 8,000Acadians from theCanadianMaritime Provinces, first to theThirteen Colonies and then to France. Thousands died of drowning, starvation, or illness as a result of the deportation. Some of the Acadians who had been relocated to France then emigrated toLouisiana, where their descendants became part of the French-American cultural group known asCajuns.

Beginning with theIndian Act, but underlying federal and provincial policies towards Indigenous peoples throughout the 1800s and 1900s, the Canadian Government pursued a deliberate policy of forced relocation against hundreds of Indigenous communities. TheCanadian Indian residential school system and theIndian reserve system (which forced Indigenous peoples off traditional territories and into small parcels of crown land in order to establish agricultural and industrial developments, and to begin the process ofsettler colonialism) are key to this history and have been seen by many scholars as evidence of the government's intent to "extinguish Aboriginal title through administrative and bureaucratic means".^[49] The efforts to displace Indigenous peoples from their traditional territories were also carried out by more brutal means. ThePass system, which controlled the supply of food and resources, movement in and out of reserve lands, and all other aspects of Indigenous peoples' lives, was implemented via the Indian Act in direct response to the 1885North-West Rebellion, in which Cree, Metis, and other Indigenous peoples resisted the seizure of land and rights by the government. TheNorth-West Mounted Police, precursor to theRoyal Canadian Mounted Police, were likewise established as a direct response to Indigenous resistance against colonialism. Their purview was to carry outJohn A. Macdonald's colonial and national policies, especially inRupert's Land, what would become the Prairie provinces.

TheHigh Arctic relocation took place during the Cold War in the 1950s, when 87 Inuit were moved by the Government of Canada to theHigh Arctic. The relocation has been a source of controversy, and is an understudied aspect of forced migration instigated by the Canadian federal government to assert its sovereignty in theFar North against the Soviet Union. Relocated Inuit peoples were not given sufficient support and were not given a say in their relocation.

Numerous otherindigenous peoples of Canada have been forced to relocate their communities to different reserve lands, including the'Nak'waxda'xw in 1964.

Japanese Canadian Internment refers to the detainment of Japanese Canadians following theattack on Pearl Harbor and the Canadian declaration of war on Japan during World War II. The forced relocation subjected Japanese Canadians to government-enforced curfews and interrogations and job and property losses. The internment of Japanese Canadians was ordered by Prime MinisterMackenzie King, largely because of existing racism. However, evidence supplied by theRoyal Canadian Mounted Police and theDepartment of National Defence show that the decision was unwarranted.

Until 1949, four years after World War II had ended, all persons of Japanese heritage were systematically removed from their homes and businesses and sent to internment camps. The Canadian government shut down all Japanese-language newspapers, took possession of businesses and fishing boats, and effectively sold them. To fund the internment itself, vehicles, houses, and personal belongings were also sold.

During and after theAmerican Revolutionary War, manyLoyalists were deprived of life, liberty or property or suffered lesser physical harm, sometimes underacts of attainder and sometimes by main force.Parker Wickham and other Loyalists developed a well-founded fear. As a result, many chose or were forced to leave their former homes in what became the United States, often going toCanada, where the Crown promised them land in an effort at compensation and resettlement. Most were given land on the frontier in what became Upper Canada and had to create new towns. The communities were largely settled by people of the same ethnic ancestry and religious faith. In some cases, towns were started by men of particular military units and their families.

In the 19th century, theUnited States government removed an estimated number of 100,000^[50]Native Americans to federally-owned and -designatedIndian reservations. Native Americans were removed from the Eastern to the Western States. The most well-known removals were those of the 1830s from the Southeast, starting with theChoctaw people. Under the 1830Indian Removal Act, the Five Civilized Tribes were relocated from their place, east of theMississippi River, to theIndian Territory in the west. The process resulted in great social dislocation for all, numerous deaths, and the "Trail of Tears" for theCherokee Nation. Resistance to Indian removal led to several violent conflicts, including theSecond Seminole War inFlorida.^{[citation needed]}

As part of theCalifornia Genocide, in August 1863, allKonkow Maidu were to be sent to the Bidwell Ranch in Chico and then be taken to theRound Valley Reservation at Covelo in Mendocino County. Any Indians remaining in the area were to be shot. Maidu were rounded up and marched under guard west out of the Sacramento Valley and through to the Coastal Range. 461 Native Americans started the trek, 277 finished.^[51] They reached Round Valley on 18 September 1863.

TheLong Walk of the Navajo refers to the 1864 relocation of theNavajo people by the US government in a forced walk from their land in what is nowArizona to easternNew Mexico. TheYavapai people were forcibly marched fromCamp Verde Reservation toSan Carlos Apache Indian Reservation, Arizona, on February 27, 1875, following theYavapai War. The federal government restrictedPlains Indians to reservations following severalIndian Wars in which Indians andEuropean Americans fought over lands and resources. Indian prisoners of war were held atFort Marion andFort Pickens inFlorida.

After theYavapai Wars 375Yavapai perished inIndian Removal deportations out of 1,400 remaining Yavapai.^[52]

General Order No. 11 is the title of a Union Army decree which was issued during theAmerican Civil War on 25 August 1863, forcing the evacuation of rural areas in four counties in western Missouri. That decree was issued in response to an extensiveinsurgency and widespreadguerrilla warfare. The Army cleared the area in an attempt to deprive the guerrillas of local support. Union GeneralThomas Ewing issued the order, which affected all rural residents regardless of their loyalty. Those who could prove their loyalty to the Union were permitted to stay in the region but had to leave their farms and move to communities near military outposts. Those who could not do so had to vacate the area altogether.

In the process, Union forces caused considerable property destruction and a large number of deaths because of conflicts.

In the wake ofImperial Japan'sattack on Pearl Harbor, decades-long suspicions andantagonisms towards ethnic Japanese mounted, causing the US government to order the military to forcibly relocate approximately 110,000Japanese Americans along with Japanese nationals who were residing in the United States to newly constructed "War Relocation Camps," or internment camps, in 1942, where they were interned for the duration of the war.White Americans frequently bought their property at losses.

Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans who were residing on theWest Coast of the United States were all interned. InHawaii, where more than 150,000 Japanese Americans composed nearly a third of that territory's population, officials only interned 1,200 to 1,800 Japanese Americans. In the late 20th century, the US government paid some compensation to the survivors of the internment camps.

The Ottoman Empire colonized newly conquered territories by deportation (sürgün) and resettlement, often to populate empty lands and establish settlements in logistically useful places. The termsürgün is known to us from Ottoman documents and comes from the verbsürmek (to displace).^[53] This type of resettlement primarily aimed to support daily governance of the Empire, but sometimes population transfers had ethnic or political concerns.^[54]

DuringMehmet I's reignTatar andTurkmen subjects were moved to the Balkans to secure areas along the border with Christian Europe. Conquered Christians were moved to Anatolia and Thrace. These population transfers continued into the reigns ofMurad II andMehmet II.^[53]

AfterMurad II's conquest of Salonika, Muslims were involuntarily relocated toSalonika, mostly from Anatolia andYenice-i Vardar.^[53]

Mehmed the Conqueror resettled not only Muslims, but Christians and Jews as well, in his efforts to repopulate the city ofConstantinople after itsconquest in 1453.^[53]

According to the deportation decree issued in newly conquered Cyprus on 24 September 1572, one family out of every ten in the provinces of Anatolia, Rum (Sivas), Karaman and Zülkadriye were to be sent to Cyprus. These deportees were craftsmen or peasants. In exchange for relocating they would be exempt from taxes for two years.^[54]

FromBayezid II (d. 1512), the empire had difficulty with the heterodoxQizilbash movement in eastern Anatolia. The forced relocation of the Qizilbash continued until at least the end of the 16th century.Selim I (d. 1520) ordered merchants, artisans, and scholars transported to Constantinople fromTabriz andCairo. The state mandated Muslim immigration toRhodes andCyprus after their conquests in 1522 and 1571, respectively, and resettledGreek Cypriots ontoAnatolia's coast.

Knowledge among Western historians about the use ofsürgün from the 17th through the 19th century is somewhat unreliable. It appears that the state did not use forced population transfers as much as during its expansionist period.^[55]

After the exchanges in theBalkans, the Great Powers and then theLeague of Nations used forced population transfer as a mechanism for homogeneity in the post-OttomanBalkans to decrease conflict. The Norwegian diplomatFridtjof Nansen, working with theLeague of Nations as aHigh Commissioner for Refugees in 1919, proposed the idea of a forced population transfer. That was modelled on the earlier Greek-Bulgarian mandatory population transfer ofGreeks in Bulgaria to Greece and ofBulgarians in Greece to Bulgaria.

The1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, also known as "theNakba", was the ethnic cleansing of around 750,000 Palestinian Arabs during the1948 Palestine war from the part ofMandatory Palestine that became Israel. The bulk of the Palestinian refugees ended up in theGaza Strip (underEgyptian rule between 1949 and 1967) and theWest Bank (under Jordanian rule between 1949 and 1967),Jordan,Syria andLebanon.^{[56][page needed]}

During the war, theHaganah devisedPlan Dalet, which some scholars interpret to have been primarily aimed at ensuring the expulsion of Palestinians,^[57][58] but that interpretation is disputed.Efraim Karsh states that most of the Arabs who fled left of their own accord or were pressured to leave by their fellow Arabs despite Israeli attempts to convince them to stay.^[59]

The idea of the transfer of Arabs from Palestine had been considered about half a century beforehand.^{[60][page needed][61]}

For example,Theodor Herzl wrote in his diary in 1895 that theZionist movement "shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our country."^[62] That interpretation of Herzl has been disputed.^[63] Forty years later, one of the recommendations in the Report of the BritishPeel Commission in 1937 was for a transfer of Arabs from the area of the proposed Jewish state, and it even included a compulsory transfer from the plains of Palestine. That recommendation was not initially objected to by the British Government.^{[64][page needed]}

Scholars have debatedDavid Ben-Gurion's views on transfer, particularly in the context of the1937 Ben-Gurion letter, but according toBenny Morris, Ben-Gurion "elsewhere, in unassailable statements... repeatedly endorsed the idea of “transferring” (or expelling) Arabs, or the Arabs, out of the area of the Jewish state-to-be, either "voluntarily" or by compulsion."^[65]

Gush Etzion andJewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem were depopulated by following theJordanian annexation of the West Bank. The population was absorbed by the newState of Israel; and many of the locations were repopulated after theSix-Day War in 1967. During that war, Arabs again faced mass displacement, known as theNaksa. Estimates range between 280,000 and 325,000 displaced, many of whom had been living in the West Bank after being expelled or fleeing there during theNakba between 1947 and 1949.^{[66][67][68][69]}

Removal of populations from along their borders with theOttomans inKurdistan and theCaucasus was of strategic importance to theSafavids. Hundreds of thousands ofKurds, along with large groups ofArmenians,Assyrians,Azeris, andTurkmens, were forcibly removed from the border regions and resettled in the interior ofPersia.That was a means of cutting off contact with other members of the groups across the borders as well as limiting passage of peoples. UnderTahmasp I the Safavids deported a huge portion of the Kurdish population inAnatolia toKhorasan, creating the modernKhorasani Kurds. Some Kurdish tribes were deported farther east, intoGharjistan in theHindu Kush mountains ofAfghanistan, about 1500 miles away from their former homes inwestern Kurdistan.

In the ancient world, population transfer was the more humane alternative to putting all the males of a conquered territory to death and enslaving the women and children. From the 13th century BCE,Assyria usedmass deportation as a punishment forrebellions. By the9th century BCE, the Assyrians regularly deported thousands of restless subjects to other lands. Assyria forcibly resettled the inhabitants of theNorthern Kingdom of Israel in 720 BCE; these became known as theTen Lost Tribes.

WhenBritish India was going through an independence movement prior to theSecond World War, some pro-Muslim organisations (most notably the Muslim League) demanded a Muslim state consisting of two non-contiguous territories:East Pakistan andWest Pakistan. To facilitate thecreation of new states along religious lines (as opposed to racial or linguistic lines as people shared common histories and languages),population exchanges between India and Pakistan were implemented. More than 5 millionHindus andSikhs moved from present-day Pakistan to present-day India, and the same number ofMuslims moved the other way.^{[citation needed]} A large number of people, more than a million by some estimates, died in the accompanying violence. Despite the movement of large number of Muslims to Pakistan, an equal number of Muslims chose to stay in India. However, most of the Hindu and Sikh population in Pakistan moved to India in the following years. The Muslim immigrants to Pakistan mostly settled inKarachi and became known as the Urdu speakingMuhajir community.

From 1989 to 1992, the ethnic Hindu Kashmiri Pandit population was forcibly moved out ofKashmir by a minority Urdu-speaking Muslims.^{[citation needed]} The imposition ofUrdu led to a decline of usage of local languages such as Kashmiri and Dogri. The resultant violence led to the death of many Hindus and the exodus of nearly all Hindus.^{[citation needed]}

On theIndian Ocean island ofDiego Garcia between 1967 and 1973, the British government forcibly removed 2000Chagossian islanders to make way for aU.S. Armed Forces base. Despite court judgments in their favour, they have not been allowed to return from their exile inMauritius, but there are signs that financial compensation and an official apology are being considered by the British government.

In the 1880s,Abdur Rahman Khan moved the rebelliousGhilzaiPashtuns from the southern part of the country to the northern part.^[70][71] In addition, Abdur Rahman and his successors encouraged Pashtuns, with various incentives, to settle into northern Afghanistan in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

One of theKhmer Rouge's first acts was to move most of the urban population into the countryside.Phnom Penh, its population of 2.5 million people including as many as 1.5 million wartime refugees living with relatives or in urban area, was soon nearly empty. Similar evacuations occurred atBattambang,Kampong Cham,Siem Reap,Kampong Thom and throughout the country's other towns and cities. The Khmer Rouge attempted to turnCambodia into a classless society by depopulating cities and forcing the urban population ("New People") into agriculturalcommunes. The entire population was forced to become farmers inlabor camps.

In theCaucasian region of theformer Soviet Union, ethnic population transfers have affected many thousands of individuals inArmenia,Nagorno-Karabakh andAzerbaijan proper; inAbkhazia,South Ossetia andGeorgia proper and inChechnya and adjacent areas withinRussia.

• During theKurdish rebellions in Turkey from 1920 and until 1937, hundreds of thousands ofKurdish refugees were forced to relocate.
• After the creation of the State of Israel and theIsrael Independence War, a strong wave ofanti-Semitism in theArab countries forced manyJews toflee to Europe, the Americas and Israel. The number estimated is between 850,000 and 1,000,000 people. Those who arrived to Israel were put inrefugee camps until the state had helped them to recover.^[72][73]
• Up to 3,000,000 people, mainly Kurds,have been displaced in theKurdish–Turkish conflict,^[74] an estimated 1,000,000 of which were still internally displaced as of 2009.^[75]
• For decades,Saddam Hussein forciblyArabized northern Iraq.^[76] Sunni Arabsdrove out at least 70,000 Kurds from westernMosul to replace them with Sunni Arabs.^[77] Now, only eastern Mosul is Kurdish.^[78]
• During theFirst Gulf War, a survey reported that 732,000 Yemeni immigrantswere forced to leaveGulf Countries to return to Yemen. Most of them had been inSaudi Arabia.^[79]
• After the First Gulf War,Kuwaiti authoritiesexpelled nearly 200,000 Palestinians from Kuwait.^[80] That was partly a response to the alignment ofPLO leaderYasser Arafat with Saddam Hussein.
• In August 2005,Israel forcibly transferred all 10,000Israeli settlers from theGaza Strip and the north of theWest Bank.^{[81][82][83][84]}
• About 6.5 millionSyrian refugees moved within the country, and 4.3 million left for neighboring countries because of theSyrian Civil War. Many were displaced by the fighting, with forced expulsions taking place against both Sunni Arabs and Alawites.^[85]

In the context of the1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia thousands of people were resettled from northern to southern Ethiopia. The official reason given by the government was that people would be moved from the drought-affected northern regions to the south and south-west, where arable land was plentiful. Others argued that resettlement was a ploy to depopulate areas of unrest in theEthiopian Civil War.

African people from across southern Africa were forced to move into 'homelands' orBantustan, which were territories that the white National Party administration of South Africa set aside for black inhabitants of South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia), as part of its policy ofapartheid.

When Syrah Resources started theBalama mine, an open pit mine for graphite inCabo Delgado Province in 2015, farmers has to be resettled. By 2025, farmers grievances still remained unsttled leading to protests that eventually led Syrah Resources to suspend operations.^[86]

• Demographic engineering
• Deportation
• Development-induced displacement
• Diaspora
• Emigration
• Ethnic cleansing
• Exile
• Expulsions and exoduses of Jews
• Forced displacement
• Forced migration
• Genocide
• Immigration
• Internment of German Americans
• Internment of Italian Americans
• Kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany
• Political cleansing of population
• Political migration
• Population cleansing
• Refugee
• Replacement migration
• Third country resettlement
• Villagization
• Voluntary return
• World War II evacuation and expulsion

• Sonn, Tamara (2004).A Brief History of Islam. Blackwell Publishing Limited.ISBN 978-1-4051-0900-0.

• Basso, Andrew R. (2024).Destroy Them Gradually: Displacement as Atrocity. Rutgers University Press.ISBN 978-1-9788-3130-8.
• Garrity, Meghan (2022). "Introducing the Government-Sponsored Mass Expulsion Dataset".Journal of Peace Research.
• Frank, Matthew.Making Minorities History: Population Transfer in Twentieth-Century Europe (Oxford UP, 2017). 464 pp.online review
• A. de Zayas, "International Law and Mass Population Transfers,"Harvard International Law Journal 207 (1975).
• A. de Zayas, "The Right to the Homeland, Ethnic Cleansing and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,"Criminal Law Forum, Vol. 6, 1995, pp. 257–314.
• A. de Zayas,Nemesis at Potsdam, London 1977.
• A. de Zayas,A Terrible Revenge, Palgrave/Macmillan, New York, 1994.ISBN 1-4039-7308-3.
• A. de Zayas,Die deutschen Vertriebenen, Graz 2006.ISBN 3-902475-15-3.
• A. de Zayas,Heimatrecht ist Menschenrecht, München 2001.ISBN 3-8004-1416-3.
• N. Naimark, " Fires of Hatred,"Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe, Harvard University Press, 2001.
• U. Özsu,Formalizing Displacement: International Law and Population Transfers, Oxford University Press, 2015.
• St. Prauser and A. Rees,The Expulsion of the "German" Communities from Eastern Europe at the End of the Second World War, Florence, Italy, European University Institute, 2004.

• Haslam, Emily."Population, Expulsion and Transfer",Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law
• UN Report, historical population transfers and exchanges (continues at bottom of page)
• Freedom of Movement – Human rights and population transfer, UN report on legal status of population transfers
• Paul Lovell Hooper,Forced Population Transfers in Early Ottoman Imperial Strategy, A Comparative Approach, 2003, senior thesis for BA degree, Princeton University
• "Medieval Jewish expulsions from French territories"Archived 2013-03-14 at theWayback Machine, Jewish Gates
• conceptwizard.com "History in a Nutshell"Archived 2012-11-03 at theWayback Machine, population transfer statistics in the Middle East
• Lausanne Treaty Emigrants Association

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• Crimes against humanity by type

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