Exile Through the Ages

Exile is one of history’s favorite punishments. Although a guillotine or a prison cell might have been a more permanent solution for some of these leaders, some were too prominent and dangerous to execute, or too famous to ignore. In these cases, sending them away—preferably far away—was often the neatest solution. Sometimes they were spirited away across the sea, whereas at other times they were sent just far enough that their voices couldn’t stir rebellion at home. For many, exile wasn’t the end, only the beginning of another chapter. Here are twenty historical figures who were sent into exile:

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1. Napoleon Bonaparte

Perhaps the most famous figure on our list, Napoleon was sent away not once but twice. First exiled to Elba in 1814, he spent only ten months on this island before escaping with a small ship and reclaiming power for the “Hundred Days.” After his defeat at Waterloo, the British didn’t take any more chances and sent him off to Saint Helena, a lonely volcanic rock in the South Atlantic.

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2. Dante Alighieri

Florence expelled the great Italian poet in 1302 after a political skirmish between two ruling factions turned ugly. His exile inspired The Divine Comedy, where he placed plenty of his enemies in imaginative layers of Hell. He never returned to Florence and spent the rest of his life wandering through Italy, relying on the benefaction of various nobles.

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3. Victor Hugo

The author of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame spent almost 20 years in exile. After clashing with Napoleon III, Hugo was sent to live on the island of Guernsey. He spent the rest of his days staring out at the sea, hosting visitors, and writing prose that would transform him into a global literary icon.

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4. Ovid

The Roman poet was exiled by Augustus to Tomis on the Black Sea. His vague explanation as to why he fell afoul of the emperor was simply “a poem and a mistake.” There on his lonely island, he endured cold winds, barbarian neighbors, and the sad realization that no amount of pleading for a pardon would shift the emperor’s mind.

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5. Leon Trotsky

Once Lenin’s right-hand man, the charismatic communist would eventually become Stalin’s greatest threat. Trotsky was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929 and spent the next several years wandering through Turkey, France, and Norway before finally ending up in Mexico. There, amid his ongoing role in politics, he was assassinated with an ice axe in 1940.

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6. Oscar Wilde

After his trial and imprisonment for “gross indecency,” this flamboyant Irish playwright spent his final years exiled in France. There, he whiled away his time in Paris cafés and cheap hotels, his debts mounting daily and his friends disappearing one by one.

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7. Sigmund Freud’s Family

Freud himself managed to leave Austria for London after the Nazi takeover in 1938, but much of his extended family was exiled—or worse. Four of his sisters died in concentration camps, and even among those who escaped, survival came at a staggering cost.

Max Halberstadt on Wikimedia

8. Sun Yat-sen

Before being hailed as the “Father of Modern China,” this revolutionary agitator spent many years abroad in Hawaii, Japan, London, and Southeast Asia in his effort to avoid arrest by the authorities under the Qing Dynasty. Always fundraising and plotting revolution, exile offered him a rigorous tutelage in politics.

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9. Pablo Neruda

This Chilean poet-diplomat was forced into exile in the late 1940s after criticizing his government. He crossed the Andes on horseback into Argentina, and then later spent several years living in Europe. His verses, already fiery, carried a new urgency when he began writing abroad.

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10. The Dalai Lama

This religious leader has been living in exile since 1959 after the failed Tibetan uprising against China. His flight across the Himalayas into India transformed him into the most famous exile of the modern age. From Dharamshala, he’s spent decades balancing Buddhist spirituality, global politics, and celebrity status.

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11. Thomas Paine

His pamphlet titled Common Sense helped spark the American Revolution by persuading colonists to seek independence from Britain. Later, his radical defense of the French Revolution turned him into an outcast among his fellow Americans. He spent years drifting between France and the United States, often distrusted, sometimes nearly executed.

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12. José Rizal

This Philippine nationalist and writer was exiled to Dapitan by Spanish authorities. There he worked as a doctor, teacher, and civic leader. His exile didn’t silence him, and his writings went on to inspire revolution. Eventually, he was executed, becoming a national hero.

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13. Empress Eugénie

As the wife of Napoleon III, she was exiled to England after the fall of the Second Empire in 1870. She lived in a large house in Farnborough, choosing to dress exclusively in black after her son died in battle. Once the glittering empress of France, she spent her later years as a lonely figure in exile.

Sergey Lvovich Levitsky on Wikimedia

14. Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The Russian author of The Gulag Archipelago was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974 for his stirring account of the Siberian work camps. He lived in Switzerland, then Vermont, writing fiery critiques of both communism and Western materialism. When the Soviet Union collapsed, he returned home.

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15. Gertrude Bell’s Arab Allies

This entry is not one name but many who operated under a shared set of ideals. Many of the leaders who supported Bell and Lawrence of Arabia found themselves rewarded with exile once European powers divided the Middle East. Whole families were shipped off to remote lands, erased from the political maps they had fought to shape.

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16. Queen Isabella II of Spain

After being overthrown in 1868, she fled to France with her family and abdicated her throne in favor of her son. Exile turned her into a symbol of both nostalgia and failure as she lived out the rest of her life in Paris.

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17. Aristides of Athens

Known as “Aristides the Just,” this prominent Athenian statesman was exiled by ostracism: a unique democratic vote in which citizens scratched the names of people they wanted exiled on a piece of broken pottery. After a few years of exile, Aristides was recalled and helped lead Athens to victory at Salamis against the Persians.

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18. Chiang Kai-shek

After losing the Chinese Civil War, Chiang and his supporters fled to Taiwan in 1949. For decades, he claimed to be the rightful ruler of all China. While in exile, Taipei became his fortress, a shadow capital facing the mainland.

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19. Bertolt Brecht

The German playwright fled Nazi Germany, moving through Scandinavia and the U.S. He lived in Santa Monica for a while, writing plays by the Pacific. But even in America he faced suspicion and was interrogated by the House Un-American Activities Committee before finally deciding to leave for brighter pastures elsewhere.

Kolbe, Jörg on Wikimedia

20. Aung San Suu Kyi

For years, this Burmese politician was both inside and outside her country, living at times under house arrest in Myanmar, and at other times abroad in Oxford where her family lived. Although not technically in exile in the classic sense, her forced isolation worked in the same way, cutting her off from normal life.

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