Free World?

Peter Gatrell is Professor of Economic History at the University of Manchester. His previous publications include Homelands: War, Population and Statehood in Eastern Europe and Russia, 1918–1924 (co-edited, 2004), and Warlands: Population Resettlement and State Reconstruction in the Soviet-East European Borderlands, 1945–1950 (co-edited, 2008).

• Introduction; 1. Free World?; 2. Sites of confrontation, crucibles of displacement: towards World Refugee Year; 3. World Refugee Year: the politics of a global campaign; 4. World Refugee Year presences and absences; 5. Bricks or dynamite? Achievements, disappointments, opportunities; Conclusion. Global politics, humanitarianism and refugees in the modern era.

'Peter Gatrell has written a fine book which recounts and details a little remembered period of the history of humanitarian assistance to refugees some fifty years ago. Free World? is an important contribution to our understanding of refugee policy in the early period of the Cold War. Unlike most other studies, this book focuses on the roles of individuals and civil society rather than international organizations and states in responding to refugee problems. The book will be of particular interest to students of transnational history and transnational advocacy networks as well as to those who research and write about protracted refugee situations.' Journal of Refugee Studies