While the current discussion of ethnic, trade, and commercial diasporas, global networks, and transnational communities constantly makes reference to the importance of families and kinship groups for understanding the dynamics of dispersion, few studies examine the nature of these families in any detail. This book, centered largely on the European experience of families scattered geographically, challenges the dominant narratives of modernization by offering a long-term perspective from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century. Paradoxically, “transnational families” are to be found long before the nation-state was in place. Christopher H. Johnson is Professor Emeritus of History and member of the Academy of Scholars at Wayne State University. David Warren Sabean is Henry J. Bruman Professor of German History at the University of California at Los Angeles. Simon Teuscher is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Zurich. Francesca Trivellato is Professor of History at Yale University.