History Of The Huguenots

From the author of Louis XIV, an unprecedented history of the entire Huguenot experience in France, from hopeful beginnings to tragic diaspora. Following the Reformation, a growing number of radical Protestants came together to live and worship in Catholic France. These Huguenots survived persecution and armed conflict to win—however briefly—freedom of worship, civil rights, and unique status as a protected minority. But in 1685, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes abolished all Huguenot rights, and more than 200,000 of the radical Calvinists were forced to flee across Europe, some even farther. In this capstone work, Geoffrey Treasure tells the full story of the Huguenots’ rise, survival, and fall in France over the course of a century and a half. He explores what it was like to be a Huguenot living in a “state within a state,” weaving stories of ordinary citizens together with those of statesmen, feudal magnates, leaders of the Catholic revival, Henry of Navarre, Catherine de’ Medici, Louis XIV, and many others. Treasure describes the Huguenots’ disciplined community, their faith and courage, their rich achievements, and their unique place within Protestantism and European history. The Huguenot exodus represented a crucial turning point in European history, Treasure contends, and he addresses the significance of the Huguenot story—the story of a minority group with the power to resist and endure in one of early modern Europe’s strongest nations. “A formidable work, covering complex, fascinating, horrifying and often paradoxical events over a period of more than 200 years…Treasure’s work is a monument to the courage and heroism of the Huguenots.”—Piers Paul Read, The Tablet

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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.

The persecution of the Huguenots in France, followed by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, unleashed one of the largest migration waves of early modern Europe. Focusing on the fate of French Protestants who fled to the Dutch Republic, Experiencing Exile examines how Huguenot refugees dealt with the complex realities of living as strangers abroad, and how they seized upon religion and stories of their own past to comfort them in exile.