Epilogue

The epilogue uses the story of Jean-Henry de Bérenger, a Prussian officer, to show how the coming of Revolution ended the global Refuge. Bérenger attempted to collect his inheritance from an uncle in South Carolina, using the Atlantic patronage networks the Huguenots knew so well. But the American Revolution broke these networks, and Bérenger never got his money. Both the American and French Revolutions threatened the Huguenots’ political status and forced them to remake themselves in a number of national molds. The epilogue ends by glancing into the nineteenth century and reflecting on how the Huguenots’ times of tribulation after the Revocation represented a paradoxical Golden Age

A New Age of Projects

The final chapter examines a new push to create Huguenot colonies in the era of the Seven Years’ War. The drama began back in France, where Protestants and others started a campaign for religious toleration. One plank in this campaign was for Huguenots to threaten to leave, and they began to negotiate with the British to do just that, envisioning colonies in places like Nova Scotia, Florida, and Minorca. The realization of the plan came through the efforts of Jean-Louis Gibert, a Protestant minister who became the founder of New Bordeaux in South Carolina. This colonial vision represented a renewal of themes from the first years of the Refuge. It was driven by desires to make silk and wine as well as the push for religious toleration in France. Thus the Huguenots adapted their old program to an age of Enlightenment.

Disappearing to Survive

In the wake of war Huguenot communities in the Indies seemed to disappear. Faced with pressures to conform, the refugees and their descendants tended to adopt the language and manners of their English or Dutch neighbors. This chapter examines this assimilation and concludes that it was above all a strategy for survival in an imperial world, one that foretold the transformation but not the end of the Huguenot Refuge. The chapter looks at several case studies of Huguenot communities in the Cape Colony, New York, Virginia, and South Carolina, all of which were marked by disputes between Huguenots and also with their imperial masters, who often sought to undermine Huguenot independence. The results were uneven, however. Huguenots remained attached to their larger cause, even as they became less overt about their separate identity.

Finding Eden

The Huguenots’ turn to new worlds came directly out of their colonial program. French Protestants had long experience with global travel and exploration, and once persecution hit some of them naturally believed they could find refuge overseas. This process began even in the 1660s, when authors like Charles de Rochefort and Henri Duquesne promoted the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, respectively, as promised lands for Huguenots, drawing from utopian ideals. Once the Revocation closed off the French New World, Huguenots gravitated toward the English and Dutch empires, drawn from the 1680s onward by a robust promotional literature lauding societies as diverse as Tobago, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. By the 1680s increasing numbers of Huguenots were beginning to set out to these new colonies, lured by dreams of Eden but thrown into a world of empires.

The Beginning of the End of the World

This chapter focuses on Europe itself, in order to chronicle the creation of the Huguenot diaspora. Starting with the example of the theologian Pierre Jurieu, it shows how the coming of persecution led Huguenots to define themselves as a godly remnant of the once great French Protestant church. Thousands of refugees scattered around Europe, where they sought aid from Protestant rulers even as they promoted themselves as people with a particular role in cosmic history. Jurieu was the leading promoter of this specialness, which he took from a close reading of Revelation, but which had political implications. Jurieu and other Huguenot leaders especially sought to create “colonies,” self-contained Huguenot communities around Europe that could preserve the refugees’ faith for an eventual return to France. Over the course of the 1680s and 1690s these colonies appeared around Europe, from Germany to Ireland, and set the stage for the Huguenots’ global expansion.

Dreams of Silk and Wine

The next chapter moves on to the political economic significance of the overseas Refuge. While dreams of Eden motivated the migration, Huguenots had to promote themselves as useful subjects, and they did so increasingly by lauding their skills in making Mediterranean commodities like silk and wine. In this the Huguenots plugged into longstanding dreams of English and Dutch imperialists, who had long wanted to develop these commodities to correct their balances of trade. The chapter focuses particularly on three colonies—Virginia, South Carolina, and the Cape of Good Hope—that became the prime locations for Huguenot migrants. These dreams of silk and wine rarely came true, but they proved a lasting engine to overseas settlement.

Making the Empire Protestant

Even as individual colonies faded, Huguenots remained prominent in a world of empires. This chapter examines how individuals used institutions, especially in the British empire, to preserve their own positions and promote a particular kind of Protestant imperialism. There were three most common ways to do this. The first was in the Church of England, where a number of refugee ministers became missionaries in the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, making the Church a force for international Protestantism. The second was in the military, where officers like Paul Mascarene and John Ligonier rose to power. Finally, Huguenot merchants became some of the most important go-betweens in the Atlantic world. In each case, these Huguenots drew from their connections and experience with French people to push the empire in a certain direction, eventually toward promoting a new set of Huguenot colonies.

Introduction

The introduction begins with the story of Élie Neau, to show how Huguenots promoted themselves as religious heroes but were also political actors who used their myriad connections in a world of states and empires to forge a place for themselves over a century of tribulation. Surveying the material of the book, the introduction defines Huguenots as “chosen people” in two senses. They viewed themselves as God’s elect, destined to do great things in the world, but they also promoted themselves as economic chosen people, whose talents could help develop the far reaches of the world in the service of other people’s empires.

Refugee Geopolitics

Aside from their skills with silk and wine, Huguenots promoted themselves as strategic allies after war came to Europe and America in 1689. As experts on French strategy, the refugees believed their assistance would be invaluable in helping Britain and the Netherlands defeat the Sun King. This belief in the Huguenots’ strategic importance sent more of them to imperial border regions. The chapter focuses on three in particular: the Caribbean basin, the borderlands between New England and New France, and the Mascarene Islands in the Indian Ocean. In each case refugees faced discrimination from those who suspected them of being in league with the French enemy, even as they did their best to help the Protestant cause. The chapter ends with the last and most ambitious plan for a Huguenot colony, in Carolana on the Gulf Coast, an ultimately failed design that led to the formation of Manakintown in Virginia.