The Huguenot Global Diaspora

Abstract

Owen Stanwood’s examination of the Huguenot refuge follows the historiographical trend of placing events, once viewed mainly as European, in a global context. Many studies have examined the impact of the Huguenots in specific national contexts in Europe: Switzerland, the Netherlands, the German states, and England. Others have focused on the Huguenot diaspora in specific regions of overseas empires, including the American colonies and South Africa.1 Edited volumes have addressed the issue of integration by including nationor colony-specific articles but offer little direct comparison.2 Another approach that does move beyond national borders has been analyses of Huguenot networks, such as financial, mercantile, or familial networks.3 Stanwood integrates these approaches into an account that emphasizes the connections among the Huguenots “on the edges of empire” as well as within Europe. Stanwood sets his research in the context of an age of overseas expansion and mercantilism, one in which religious tensions informed international rivalries. His argument compliments recent revisionist examinations of the Refuge by challenging the image created by the Huguenots themselves, one that portrays them as emigrating primarily for religious reasons.4 He argues that empire builders, particularly the Dutch and English, were, indeed, horrified by the persecution of fellow Protestants and saw the Huguenots as victims. But he also demonstrates that they viewed the French refugees as industrious workers who could people and develop their overseas empires, particularly by producing wine and silk. The Huguenots promoted themselves as God’s chosen as shown by their resistance to intolerance, but were far from responding only to religious imperatives, because they needed powerful patrons to survive. Driven by pragmatism, they also styled themselves as people with special skills in order to attract patrons. Stanwood argues against the idea, promoted in later memory, that the Huguenots were simply martyrs for religious liberty. Instead, he suggests they had had multiple motives as they parlayed their international mercantile and family ties across the globe to survive in an age of empire.