French Emigrants In Revolutionised Europe

The French emigration was an exilic movement triggered by the 1789 French Revolution with long-lasting social, cultural, and political impacts that continued well into the nineteenth century. At times paradoxical, the political and legal implications of being an émigré are detangled in this edited collection, thus bringing to light unexpected processes of tensions and compromises between the exiles and their host societies. The refugee/host contact points also fostered a series of cultural transfers. This book argues that the French emigration ought to be seen within the broader context of an ‘Age of Exile’, a notion that better encompasses the dynamics of migration that forced many to re-imagine their relation to a nation and define their displaced identities. Revisiting the historiography of the last twenty years from an interdisciplinary perspective, this volume challenges pre-existing beliefs on the journeys and re-settlements – in Europe and beyond – of the French émigré community.

The French Émigrés in Europe and the Struggle against Revolution, 1789-1814 underlines, for the first time, the achievements rather than the failures, of the Émigrés. Different specialist essays describe their impact from London to Hungary, from Lisbon to Prussia, and confirm their critical importance in the politics, ideology and culture of their time. The French Émigrés were more than refugees, they were active, and often remarkably successful, agents on the European struggle against the French Revolution.

This book examines diverse encounters between the British community and the thousands of French individuals who sought haven in the British Isles as they left revolutionary and Imperial France. This painstaking research into the emigrant archival and memorial presence in Britain uncovers a wealth of underused and alternative sources on this controversial population displacement. These include open letters and classified advertisements published in British newspapers, insurance contracts, as well as lists of addresses and passports drawn up by local authorities. These sources question the construction by British loyalists and French émigré elites of a stereotyped emigrant figure and their use of the trauma of forced displacement to advance ideological agendas. In fact, public and private discourses on governmental systems, foreigners, political and religious dissent, and the economic survival of French emigrants, demonstrate the heterogeneity of the responses to emigration in Britain. Ultimately, this book narrates a story in which the emigrant community and its host have been often unnoticeably yet fundamentally transformed by their encounter, in both practical and ideological domains.

Kirsty Carpenter puts a human face on the victims of revolutionary legislation. London had the largest community of émigrés. It had the most evolved social structure and was the most politically-active community. It was in London that two cultures came face-to-face with their prejudices and were forced to confront them.