Refugees (Gatrell, 1914-1918-online)

A peer reviewed article in 1914-1918-online, the International Encyclopedia of the First World War, by historian Peter Gatrell of the University of Manchester, a leading scholar of refugee history. It states that the First World War displaced at least ten million people either internally or across an international frontier, and gives named regional figures: upwards of 400,000 Belgian refugees who fled to Holland and 200,000 to France in the war's first three months, 1.85 million refugees in France by September 1918, 386,000 refugees in Austria by the end of 1915, up to half a million Serbian civilians displaced under occupation, and up to 250,000 Armenians who crossed the Russian border in 1915 evading deportation. Its strength is a named, specialist historian's own peer reviewed synthesis. Its limit is that Gatrell states his ten million figure as a floor, at least ten million, rather than giving his own precise upper bound in this article.