cover image The Frontier of Loyalty: Political Exiles in the Age of the Nation-State

The Frontier of Loyalty: Political Exiles in the Age of the Nation-State

Yossi Shain. Wesleyan University Press, $35 (229pp) ISBN 978-0-8195-5223-5

Political exile is an all too common condition of our century. This dense but rewarding study by an Israeli political scientist at Tel Aviv University shuttles back and forth between countries and eras to uncover common patterns running through the exile experience. A country may brand exiles living on its soil as enemies, as the French Vichy regime did in prohibiting Spanish Republican activity; alternately, as Shain notes, the host country may serve as a territorial base for exiles' operations--witness the PLO in Southern Lebanon. Shain looks at Chilean socialists in East Germany, the Dalai Lama's Tibetan government-in-exile based in India, Juan Peron holed up in Madrid, rival Iranian exile factions bent on overthrowing Khomeini. His cross-cultural survey helps explain how political refugees manage to win loyalty and recognition for their causes in the face of immediate measures against them and opposition from their native countries. (May)