The 2025 Erasmus Lectures: "The Early Modern Making of the Refugee: Inventing Refugee Identities"
Date and Time
Location
The 2025 Erasmus Lectures in the History and Civilization of The Netherlands and Flanders.
Speaker: Geert Janssen (University of Amsterdam).
Sponsors: Erasmus Lectureship in the History and Civilization of The Netherlands and Flanders and the Early Modern Workshop in the Department of History, Harvard University.
Refugees have existed since antiquity, yet it was in the early modern era that they first emerged as a clearly defined social category. This lecture investigates when, where, and why certain migrant groups began to describe themselves as ‘refugees’, and shows how the war-ridden Low Countries became an unlikely crucible for the formation of refugee identities. It also considers the unintended consequences of this discursive invention - particularly for displaced communities that failed to meet its confessionalized criteria.