An émigré (French:[emigʁe]) is a person who has emigrated, often with a connotation of political or social exile or self-exile. The word is the past participle of the French verb émigrer meaning "to emigrate".
Although the French Revolution began in 1789 as a bourgeois-led drive for increased political equality for the Third Estate, it soon turned into a violent popular rebellion. To escape political tensions and sometimes in fear for their lives, some emigrated from France, settling in neighboring countries, chiefly Great Britain, Spain, Germany, Austria, and Prussia. A few also migrated to North America.
Throughout the nineteenth century Poland was occupied by the partitioning powers of Poland: Austria, Prussia and Russia. Poles struggled for independence in a series of failed uprisings, which resulted in many having to seek refuge in Western Europe (known as the Wielka Emigracja) in order to avoid reprisals, such as being forcefully sent to the vast and harsh emptiness of Siberia. The exiles included artists, soldiers, politicians and prisoners-of-war who escaped from captivity. Most of the political émigrés based themselves in France.
Marx and Engels, drafting their strategy for future revolutions in The Communist Manifesto, suggested confiscating the property of émigrés to finance the revolution—a recommendation the Bolsheviks followed 70 years later.
After the October Revolution, more than 20,000 émigrés went to Finland and Yugoslavia, notably Pyotr Wrangel. Many however moved on to France. Paris was the favourite destination for Russian émigrés. Many others traveled east to China, especially to Harbin and Shanghai.
Twentieth-century émigrés
Aristocrats of some European countries were forced to leave their native lands by political upheavals from the beginning of the 20th century to the end of World War II opting to emigrate elsewhere such as the Serbs and Romanians in 1945 and after, Hungarians in 1956 and the Czechs and Slovaks in 1968.
After the historical electoral victory in South Africa by the ANC (African National Congress) in 1994, many Afrikaners emigrated from South Africa to other countries, citing discrimination in employment and social violence as reasons.[6]
According to the 2011 Australian census there are 145,683 South African émigrés, born in South Africa, in Australia, of whom 30,291 reside in the city of Perth or greater Perth area.[7]
