On the Move

In this beautifully illustrated book, historian Tina De Gendt and illustrator and author of graphic novels Aimée de Jongh show that migration is common to all eras. They take the reader through prehistory, when early humans were continually on the move as nomads, to the period in which societies gradually became sedentary and the first cities and trade routes came into being. Voyages of conquest and discovery, wars, droughts, famines and attempts to build a new life: the reasons for migrating were as numerous then as they are today.

In six chapters the authors shed light on thirty-three migration flows in world history, from the remote corners of the Chinese empire to the House of Wisdom in Baghdad that collected all the world’s knowledge. De Gendt and De Jongh in no way limit themselves to Western history, which makes the book exceptionally valuable. Every spread, with a large drawing, opens with a fictional account by a migrant and describes in brief what their particular migration was about, after which several concepts from the same period are explained. ‘On the Move’ forms a starting point for looking more deeply into certain subjects. A much-needed book that shows convincingly, and with empathy, that all humans are migrants – or at the very least, descendants of those who once set out in search of a life elsewhere.