Owen Stanwood's book The Global Refuge

Huguenot refugees were everywhere in the early modern world. French Protestant exiles fleeing persecution following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, they scattered around Europe, North America, the Caribbean, South Africa, and even remote islands in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

The Global Refuge provides the first truly international history of the Huguenot diaspora. The story begins with dreams of Eden, as beleaguered religious migrants sought suitable retreats to build perfect societies far from the political storms of Europe. In order to build these communities, however, the Huguenots needed patrons, forcing them to navigate the world of empires. The refugees promoted themselves as the chosen people of empire, religious heroes who also possessed key skills that could strengthen the British and Dutch states. As a result, French Protestants settled around the world: they tried to make silk in South Carolina; they planted vineyards in South Africa; and they peopled vulnerable frontiers from New England to Suriname. This embrace of empire led to a gradual abandonment of the Huguenots' earlier utopian ambitions and ability to maintain their languages and churches in preparation for an eventual return to France. For over a century they learned that only by blending in and by mastering foreign institutions could they prosper.

While the Huguenots never managed to find a utopia or to realize their imperial sponsors' visions of profits, The Global Refuge demonstrates how this diasporic community helped shape the first age of globalization and influenced the reception of future refugee populations.

Reviews

"The story of the forced exile of Protestants from France in the seventeenth century has usually been presented as a tragedy. In this lively and fascinating study, Owen Stanwood does not play down the tribulations faced by the exiles, but also emphasizes the possibilities that opened up for them as they founded new communities on several continents and became key players in the construction of the British and Dutch overseas empires. This first comprehensive study of the Huguenot global diaspora will be of great interest to readers of early modern European and global history." -- David A. Bell, Princeton University

"Driven from their homeland by Louis XIV's ferocious persecution, French Protestants scattered across Europe and around the Atlantic World, seeking their fortunes in the service of the British and Dutch empires. Like no historian before him, Owen Stanwood captures the full sweep of this remarkable diaspora in a compelling, highly readable narrative." -- Allan Greer, author of Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits

"Owen Stanwood's fresh look at refugee Huguenots shows how they leveraged their assets -- eagerness to advance their religion in an age of strong confessional identities, access to authorities in a hierarchical society, willingness to relocate far afield in a time of European expansion -- to carve out places where they could survive and prosper. By establishing their role in developing other people's empires, Stanwood moves displaced Huguenots to the center of early-modern politics and -- by implication -- of future historical studies." -- Carolyn Chappell Lougee, Stanford University

"As refugee crises overwhelm twenty-first century nations, Owen Stanwood's The Global Refuge offers a wholly new global history of early modern Europe's first world-circling refugee crisis, the expulsion of 150,000 Protestants -- Huguenots -- from France in the 1680s. Scattering into Europe's Protestant nations, the New World, and even Africa, Huguenots found themselves welcomed and derided, valued but often resented. The Global Refuge is the first major international history of the Huguenot exile, and its vivid prose and deep, encyclopedic research compel attention amidst our own, often tragic, refugee crises." -- Jon Butler, Yale University.

Author Information

Owen Stanwood is an associate professor of history at Boston College. He is the author of The Empire Reformed: English America in the Age of the Glorious Revolution.