Experiencing Exile : Huguenot Refugees in the Dutch Republic, 1680-1700

Abstract

This dissertation overturns longstanding assumptions about the experience of exile in early modern Europe. Historians usually consider religious refugees as hardliners, because they refused to conform to another faith and went into exile. Scholars have also emphasised the religious transformation of exiles, arguing that their stay abroad turned them into devout and radical people who infused their home society with a militant sense of piety. This dissertation, however, argues that the experience of exile had little to do with religious heroism. Focussing on Huguenot refugees in the Dutch Republic, exile emerges as a complex and profoundly unsettling experience. The decision to go into exile was not simply a quest for religious freedom, but was also motivated by socio-economic opportunities. Exiles were thus not altogether different from labour migrants who left their homes in search of a better life elsewhere, because both needed accurate information about destinations and employment abroad, have some money to cover their voyage, and make ends meet once they had arrived in a foreign city. A fresh look at the careers of Huguenot ministers, booksellers and textile entrepreneurs reveals that many refugees actually struggled to make ends meet. Early modern exiles, then, were more than courageous people who put faith before material well-being; they were also flesh-and-blood migrants living a difficult life abroad. Religion was an obvious source of comfort for refugees, but it hardly transformed them into religious radicals. A close reading of printed and handwritten exile sermons demonstrates that Huguenots struggled to make sense of their stay in exile. Why, for example, had God struck down their churches, and why had most Huguenots converted to Catholicism? By considering sermons as a dynamic medium, this dissertation argues that refugee ministers used their pulpit to preach a message of hope and purpose. The Revocation and abandoning one’s possessions for an uncertain future in exile were portrayed as part of God’s plan to sift the sinners from the devout, until He would lead them back into France. The 1697 Peace of Rijswijk, however, did not grant any concessions to French Protestants. As the refugees realised that the harrowing experience of exile was likely to be permanent rather than temporary, around 1,000 of them even converted to Catholicism and went back to France. Huguenot refugees also turned to their own past for comfort. Interestingly, the individual accounts of refugees contain a large degree of cross-confessional friendship, while the histories written by Huguenot ministers abound with Catholic villains. This dissertation argues that this quantum leap from individual to collective memory can be explained by “memory brokers”, refugee ministers who sought to create a more triumphant account of the Huguenot past. Their histories have been extremely successful, as scholars still find it difficult to abandon the idea that the Huguenots – or any other wave of religious refugees – were essentially courageous people. As a result, we have ended up with black-and-white histories that ignore the many shades of grey that the experience of exile entailed.