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Island Refuge, Paperback Book

Island Refuge Paperback

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A two-thousand-year history of the exiles and refugees who have shaped modern BritainFor most of its history, Britain has cherished its outward image as a safe haven for those displaced by religious persecution, political violence, and economic crisis - an island of stability in the midst of a cruel, chaotic world.

Yet in the aftermath of the 2015 refugee crisis and the Brexit referendum, Britain has been presented by some in an entirely different light: as an unchanging island fortress, holding back the tides of invaders and immigrants since the days of the Anglo-Saxons and the Norman Conquest.In Island Refuge, migration scholar Matthew Lockwood illustrates that this populist conception of Britain's past is dangerous and downright wrong.

Exiles and refugees have not only been a constant presence in Britain across the centuries but have been intrinsic to shaping Britain as it is today.

Stretching from the exiles of the Roman Empire to refugees of the 2022 invasion in Ukraine, Island Refuge presents a unique window into the vital role of foreign communities in the construction of modern Britain.

Amongst many others, this book illuminates the stories of Dutch 'strangers' who helped revolutionize poor relief, the Huguenots who transformed our silk and banking industry, the former enslaved persons who brought down the slave trade, and the WWII refugees who changed British science, art, literature and philosophy forever.Whilst critics of immigration and opponents of asylum seekers present a picture of an ageless culture upended by an unprecedented arrival of foreigners on Britain's undiluted shores, Island Refuge makes clear that Britain is not an island refuge from the world, but an island refuge for the world - not a country burdened by refugees, but instead transformed by them.

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