No Return: Jews, Christian Usurers, and the Spread of Mass Expulsion in Medieval Europe
Beginning in the twelfth century, Jewish moneylenders increasingly found themselves in the crosshairs of European authorities, who denounced the evils of usury as they expelled Jews from their lands. Yet Jews were not alone in supplying coin and credit to needy borrowers. Across much of Western Europe, foreign Christians likewise engaged in professional moneylending, and they too faced repeated threats of expulsion from the communities in which they settled. No Return examines how mass expulsion became a pervasive feature of European law and politics—with tragic consequences that have reverberated down to the present.
Drawing on unpublished archival evidence ranging from fiscal ledgers and legal opinions to sermons and student notebooks, Rowan Dorin traces how an association between usury and expulsion entrenched itself in Latin Christendom from the twelfth century onward. Showing how ideas and practices of expulsion were imitated and repurposed in different contexts, he offers a provocative reconsideration of the dynamics of persecution in late medieval society.
Uncovering the protean and contagious nature of expulsion, No Return is a panoramic work of history that offers new perspectives on Jewish-Christian relations, the circulation of norms and ideas in the age before print, and the intersection of law, religion, and economic life in premodern Europe.
A groundbreaking new history of the shared legacy of expulsion among Jews and Christian moneylenders in late medieval Europe
Oxana Shevel is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts University and current Vice President of the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN) and the American Association of Ukrainian Studies (AAUS). Her work explores nation building and identity politics in the post-Soviet region. Her book, Migration, Refugee Policy, and State Building in Postcommunist Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2011) won the American Association for Ukrainian Studies prize for best book in the fields of Ukrainian history, politics, language, literature and culture. Her recent work has focused on the sources of citizenship policies in the post-Communist states, comparative memory politics, and religious politics in Ukraine. With Maria Popova, she is currently writing a book on the root causes of the Russo-Ukrainian war, entitled Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States, scheduled to be released in late 2023. 
