Exile

For other uses, see Exile (disambiguation).

"Banish" and "Banishment" redirect here. For other uses, see Banish (disambiguation).

Exile or banishment is primarily penal expulsion from one's native country, and secondarily expatriation 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. the papacy or a government) are forced from their homeland.

Napoleon's Exile on Saint Helena by Franz Josef Sandman (1820)

The First Night in Exile – This painting comes from a series illustrating the Ramayana, a Hindu epic 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

In Roman law, exsilium denoted both voluntary exile and banishment as a capital 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 term diaspora 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.

Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile."

Internal exile

Internal exile is a form of banishment within the boundaries of one's homeland, but far away from home.

For individuals

Exiled heads of state

Main article: List of heads of state and government who have been in exile

In some cases the deposed head of state is allowed to go into exile following a coup or other change of government, allowing a more peaceful transition to take place or to escape justice.^[2]

Avoiding violence or persecution, or in the aftermath of war

Examples include:

• Iraqi academics asked to return home "from exile" to help rebuild Iraq in 2009^[7]
• People undertaking a religious or civil 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 as Bílá Voda) following the Communist coup d'état of 1948.^[8]
• Thibaw Min and Supayalat were exiled to India after Third Anglo-Burmese War, named Pataw Mu.

For groups, nations, and governments

Nation in exile

Main articles: Diaspora and Refugee

When a large group, or occasionally a whole people or nation is exiled, it can be said that this nation is in exile, or "diaspora". Nations that have been in exile for substantial periods include the Israelites by the Assyrian king Sargon II in 720 BCE, the Judeans who were deported by Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II in 586 BC, and the Jews following the destruction of the second Temple in Jerusalem in AD 70. Jewish prayers include a yearning to return to Jerusalem and the Land of Israel,^[10] such as "Next Year in Jerusalem".

After the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century, and following the uprisings (like Kościuszko Uprising, November Uprising and January Uprising) against the partitioning powers (Russia, Prussia and Austria), many Poles have chosen – or been forced – to go into exile, forming large diasporas (known as Polonia), especially in France and the United States.^[11] The entire population of Crimean Tatars (numbering 200,000 in all) that remained in their homeland of Crimea was exiled on 18 May 1944 to Central Asia as a form of ethnic cleansing and collective punishment on false accusations.^[12]

Since the Cuban Revolution, over a million Cubans have left Cuba. 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 be Cuban exiles. Under Cuban law, children of Cubans born abroad are considered Cuban citizens.^[13] An extension of colonial practices, Latin America saw widespread exile, of a political variety, during the 19th and 20th century.^[14] 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.^[15]

Government in exile

Main article: Government in exile

During a foreign occupation or after a coup d'état, a government in exile of a such afflicted country may be established abroad. One of the most well-known instances of this is the Polish government-in-exile, a government in exile that commanded Polish armed forces operating outside Poland, and the African-based Free French Forces government of Charles de Gaulle during the German Occupation of Poland and France in WWII. Other post-war examples include the client All Palestine Government established by the Egyptian Kingdom, and the Central Tibetan Administration, commonly known as the Tibetan government-in-exile, and headed by the 14th Dalai Lama.

For inanimate objects

Ivan the Terrible once exiled to Siberia an inanimate object: a bell.^[16] "When the inhabitants of the town of Uglich 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."^[17]

In popular culture

Drama

Jason and Medea, by John William Waterhouse, 1907

Exile is an early motif in ancient Greek tragedy. In the ancient Greek world, this was seen as a fate worse than death. The motif reaches its peak on the play Medea, written by Euripides 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.^[18]

Art

Exiled Klaus Mann as Staff Sergeant of the 5th US Army, Italy 1944

Cover of Anna Seghers' Das siebte Kreuz

After Medea was abandoned by Jason and had become a murderess out of revenge, she fled to Athens and married king Aigeus there, and became the stepmother of the hero Theseus. Due to a conflict with him, she must leave the Polis and go away into exile. John William Waterhouse (1849–1917), the English Pre-Raphaelite painter's famous picture Jason and Medea shows a key moment before, when Medea tries to poison Theseus.^[19]

Literature

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 poet Ovid, who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was forced to leave Rome and move away to the city of Tomis on the Black Sea, now Constanța. There he wrote his famous work Tristia (Sorrows) about his bitter feelings in exile.^[20] Another, at least in a temporary exile, was Dante.

The German-language writer Franz Kafka described the exile of Karl Rossmann in the posthumously published novel Amerika.^[21]

During the period 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 authors Klaus Mann and Anna Seghers. So Germany's own exile literature emerged and received worldwide credit.^[22] Klaus Mann finished his novel Der Vulkan (The Volcano: A Novel Among Emigrants) in 1939^[23] describing the German exile scene, "to bring the rich, scattered and murky experience of exile into epic form",^[24] as he wrote in his literary balance sheet. At the same place and in the same year, Anna Seghers published her famous novel Das 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 winners V. S. Naipaul and Derek Walcott as well as the novelists Edwidge Danticat and Sam Selvon.^[25]

See also

• Banishment in the Torah
• Ban (law)
• Defection
• Echols County, Georgia, the U.S. state of Georgia has at times banished criminals from all of its counties except this one.
• Émigré
• Minus six – form of exile in the Soviet Union
• Ostracism – procedure under the Athenian democracy
• Outlawry
• Penal colony
• Petalism
• Porcian Laws, the Roman laws granting citizens the right to voluntary exile in place of capital punishment
• Refugee
• Right of asylum (political asylum)
• Shimanagashi
• Category:Exiles by nationality
• Category:Armies in exile