What is a diaspora? For the Greeks, from whose language the word originated, diaspora meant the dispersal of population through colonization. For Jews, Africans, Armenians, and others, the word acquired a more sinister and brutal meaning. Diaspora meant a collective trauma, a banishment into exile, and a heart-aching longing to return home. During the early modern period, trade and labor diasporas girded the mercantilist and early capitalist worlds. Today the term has changed again, often implying a positive and ongoing relationship between migrants' homelands and their places of work and settlement.<p>In this perceptive and arresting analysis, Robin Cohen illuminates the changing meanings of diaspora and the contemporary diasporic condition. This volume serves to introduce a major new series, Global Diasporas, which will prove essentail for students of race, ethnicity, nationalism, and comparative politics.<p>"Considering that <i>Global Diasporas</i> covers a huge range of subjects, it is truly masterful. It has been put into a coherent theoretical scheme, it is backed by a lot of impressive scholarship, and it is clearly, even elegantly written." -- Daniel Chirot, University of Washington<p><b>Robin Cohen</b> is professor of sociology at the University of Warwick.