Protecting Refugees in Early Modern Europe and the Atlantic World?
Résumés
Cette contribution s’intéresse aux pratiques de protection des réfugiés dans le contexte des lourdes persécutions et de l’exode massif des huguenots dans les années 1680. Nous allons revisiter leurs pétitions, adressées aux princes protestants en Europe, ainsi que les édits princiers offrant une protection aux migrants nouvellement arrivés. Nous allons ensuite essayer de discerner certains modèles de protection des réfugiés et leurs origines dans d’autres pratiques juridiques de l’époque.
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Introduction
- 1 See the UNHCR website: <https://www.unhcr.org/1951-refugee-convention.html>, last accessed 24 Octob (...)
- 2 Marianne Amar, Susanne Lachenicht, Isabelle Lacoue‑Labarthe, Mathilde Monge and Annelise Rodrigo, “ (...)
1Today, the ever-increasing flight of people from their homes – caused by persecution, wars, civil wars, floods or droughts – comes with calls to protect these refugees. Massive migratory movements have also increased discussions about what protection actually means and who should offer it to whom and on what terms. The Geneva convention of 1951 and its protocol of 1967 are today the key legal documents that define the term “refugee”, refugee rights, and the obligation of states to protect them. People are refugees from their home (or other) countries if they face threats to their freedom or lives. This regulation is now customary international law.1 While the Geneva Convention is perfectly clear, states and host societies keep debating the difference between refugees and migrants, and therefore who deserves protection and who does not.2
- 3 Raingard Esser, Niederländische Exulanten im England des 16. und frühen 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin, D (...)
- 4 Francis J. Bremer, The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards, rev. ed., (...)
- 5 James van Horn Melton, “From Alpine Minder to Lowcountry Yeoman: Transatlantic Worlds of a Georgia (...)
- 6 Craig D. Atwood, Community of the Cross: Moravian Piety in Colonial Bethlehem, University Park, Pen (...)
- 7 Christopher Hodson, The Acadian Diaspora an Eighteenth‑Century History, Oxford/New York, Oxford Uni (...)
- 8 See the website of the project “The Invention of the Refugee in Early Modern Europe”: <http://www.i (...)
2Contemporary discussions have raised questions about the history of refugee protection. When did it develop, and with which legal, social and economic implications? While there had already been large-scale persecutions and expulsions in late antiquity and medieval times, the Reformation substantially increased the number of “heretics” or “papists”: in Catholic territories, Protestants became persecuted, while the new Protestant states and cities put Catholics under pressure. The Dutch revolt (1566‑1648), for instance, ushered in the emigration of Dutch Catholics and Protestants, from the Northern and Southern Netherlands respectively.3 With the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, ending the Thirty Years’ War, the emigration of Catholics and Protestants from German territories became more important, as from now on the respective territory’s authorities decided on their subjects’ denomination (ius reformandi). Those who were not willing to conform had the right to leave the territory (ius emigrandi). While some of the peace treaty’s stipulations had already been in place since the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, the ius emigrandi and the ius reformandi now extended to Calvinists who had been excluded in 1555. In other parts of Europe, heterodox people sought toleration in the developing overseas colonies: from the 1620s, English Puritans left England for English North America, followed by English Catholics in the 1630s, and Presbyterians and Quakers from the 1650s onward.4 In the 1730s the Austrian Habsburgs and the Prince Bishop of Salzburg deported or expelled their crypto-Protestants.5 Moravian brothers, the Herrnhuters, moved from Saxony to Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and British North America.6 Between 1755 and 1763, Britain deported some 11,000 French Catholics from Acadia (now Nova Scotia) to purify its empire from the “Catholic threat”.7 As some scholars have argued, the early modern period thus saw the “invention of the refugee”.8
- 9 Susanne Lachenicht, “Refugees and Refugee Protection in the Early Modern Period”, Journal of Refuge (...)
3Between the 1550s and the 1750s, French Calvinists, the so‑called Huguenots, figure most prominently among the groups of people persecuted for their beliefs and social practices. From the mid‑16th century up to the publication of the Edict of Nantes in 1598, and then again from the 1680s, Calvinists in France were heavily persecuted for their faith. Emigration had already peaked during the French Wars of Religion (1562‑1598), especially after the massacres of Saint Bartholomew’s Night in 1572, and, again, with Richelieu’s victory over the Huguenot army and the Peace of Alès in 1629. In 1685, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes put an official end to Protestantism in France. This Edict of Fontainebleau prohibited lay Huguenots from leaving the country. Nonetheless, between 150,000 and 200,000 of an estimated 750,000 French Protestants, left France after 1685. They settled in the Dutch Republic, the reformed Swiss cantons, England, Ireland and British North America, in Scandinavia, Russia, South Africa and, a very few, in today’s Indonesia. The Grand Refuge, as researchers now call the period between the 1680s and 1750s, also brought an estimated 50,000 people to the Protestant territories of the Holy Roman Empire, to Brandenburg‑Prussia, the Palatinate (up to 1688), the Landgraviate of Hesse‑Cassel, and the Lutheran territories of Brandenburg‑Bayreuth and Wurttemberg. As more recent research has shown, the Huguenots’ sufferings and the asylum offered by accommodating states and cities set standards for legal forms of protection.9
- 10 According to Peter Gatrell the concept of refugeedom today involves “administrative practices, lega (...)
- 11 See Naïma Ghermani, quoting from Zedler’s Universallexikon, in the blurb to this thematic issue.
- 12 See, e.g., Benjamin J. Kaplan, “Legal Rights”, art. cit., p. 87.
4However, did “refugeedom”10 and protection always go hand in hand? Was protection primarily about refugees? As Naïma Ghermani emphasizes in her introduction to this issue, protection was a legal concept in the early modern period. In the mid‑18th century, protection meant “to cover, shelter, protect, defend, preserve something; to defend and take under its protection one’s vassal or one’s inhabitants”.11 The prince was required to protect his or her subjects, who in return had to render homage and obedience. Princely protection could be extended to include newly arriving subjects, immigrants, as we would call them today. These immigrants could, but did not necessarily, have to be exiles or refugees.12 The accommodation of these new subjects could come with concessions and freedoms, with privileges that were meant to facilitate the arrival, accommodation and economic integration of these migrants. While some edicts distinguished between the persecuted and afflicted, on the one hand, and non-persecuted migrants on the other, all came with the language and the practice of legal protection – as we shall see.
5The following paragraphs are going to illustrate some of these practices in the context of the heavy persecutions and mass exodus of Huguenots in the 1680s. First, we will revisit some of the Huguenot petitions addressing Protestant princes in Europe and, second, edicts offering protection to newly arriving migrants and, at times, refugees. Finally, we are going to briefly look into early modern understandings of “international aid” and how this informed refugee protection. The Huguenot experience and the edicts (partly) responding to it will thus serve as a lens through which we can discern some aspects of early modern refugee protection. We shall see that some edicts combined princely protection with the protection of persecuted, afflicted Protestants, while others simply addressed Protestant migrants without using the language of compassion and Christian charity.
Pleading for Protection
6What did early modern refugees, and the French Reformed in particular, expect when asking princes and city fathers for their protection? What could they expect? Which forms of protection were common practice?
- 13 Among the petitions published in England see, e.g., Humble Petition of the Protestants of France to (...)
- 14 Mémoire pour encourager les Protestants à venir habiter en Irlande, 17th century, Bibliothèque nati (...)
- 15 Present State of the Protestants in France in three letters: Written by a gentleman at London to hi (...)
- 16 « Une Sainte Collonnie de Protestans de France sur la tempeste jetté tous les jours dans vos ports, (...)
- 17 Ibidem. For similar claims and identifications see Pierre Jurieu in Rotterdam, in Hubert Bost, « Pr (...)
7With increasing persecution in the 1680s, more and more Huguenots left France. Their elites, pastors, diplomats and military leaders, petitioned Europe’s Protestant princes in French, English, German, Dutch and Latin, to make them aware of the Huguenots’ sufferings back in France and of the need to offer asylum and accommodation. Some petitions were printed and disseminated in large numbers, others were manuscript petitions sent to city authorities, privy councils, bishops of the Anglican or Lutheran churches, or the princes and kings of Protestant Europe.13 In many of these writings, French Protestants argued that they suffered from oppression and persecution. Therefore, they were forced to flee their homes, their patria, and thus had to look for shelter and protection.14 The Huguenots’ English language petitions were full of notions such as “driven from the(ir) (native) country”, “persecution”, “cruelty” and “suffering”.15 They were asking for compassion, charity; they were calling upon the Christian duties of their accommodating societies. In the Harangue prononcée au Roi d’Angleterre, dating from 1682, a French Reformed minister of the London Huguenot church, La Savoye, presents his brethren as a “holy colony of French Protestants”, as “Israelites” who have “crossed the Red Sea” to be “accommodated in a new Canaan”.16 Hence, Charles II of England is the refugees’ saviour; his aid is comparable to that of the biblical saviour Moses. For the King, the text continues, it is a question of honour and conscience to help the poor afflicted refugees.17
- 18 Susanne Lachenicht, Hugenotten in Europa und Nordamerika: Migration und Integration in der Frühen N (...)
- 19 For Ireland see, e.g., Projet pour l’établissement des réfugiés en Irlande, 1692, Bibliothèque de l (...)
8Often, Huguenot petitions came with concrete claims. They expected to be accommodated and invested with specific privileges: transportation and provisions should be paid for, both by the princes through whose territories the refugees were travelling and those who were finally accommodating them. In addition, Huguenots wanted to be established as separate colonies, that is French Protestant settlements with a distinct corporate status. Huguenots expected to enjoy liberty of conscience as well and the free exercise of their religion. They hoped to have their own congregations and consistories, for which their benefactors would build churches, houses for pastors and church wardens, as well as hospitals and foundling houses. From the French refugees’ perspective, their colonies would ideally have their own, French, laws and jurisdiction for internal affairs.18 At the same time, however, Huguenots in England, Scotland, Ireland and the British colonies in North America, hoped to be naturalized and treated as natural‑born Englishmen. Economically, Huguenots expected to be exempt from tax paying for a number of years, they claimed free access to schools and universities, to guilds and other corporations, financial and material support for the foundation of manufactures and the building of houses. In addition, they were hoping for land assignments. Taken together, these were quite substantial claims that we find in the Huguenots’ petitions to the princes of Protestant Europe.19
- 20 Ibidem.
- 21 Ibid.
- 22 Charles Ancillon, Histoire De L’Etablissement Des François Refugiez Dans Les États De Son Altesse É (...)
- 23 Address from Protestants in France to Charles II, Bodleian Library, Oxford, fol. 2.
- 24 Charles Ancillon, Histoire de l’établissement…, t. 2, p. 212, 356 et 362. See also Susanne Lachenic (...)
9Most of these texts act at two levels: the first is about compassion and Christian charity, the second about the utility of Huguenot refugees. The required asylum and protection thus come with a blend of utilitarianism and Christian charity – expressed by buzzwords that we find in many Huguenot petitions: “retraites”20, “bonté”21, “soins”22 and “industrie”, “travail”, “loyauté”, “richesse” and “abondance”.23 The proclaimed logic was as follows: if Protestant princes granted the Huguenots asylum and protection, they would be rewarded with prosperity and happiness.24
Terms and Conditions of Protection
10How did Protestant princes respond to these petitions and claims? Many edicts offering French Reformed refugees asylum and accommodation adopted the language of suffering and claims of protection. Others did not – as we shall see.
- 25 Freyheits Concession und Begnadigung für die fremden Manufacturiers, welche der Durchleuchtigste Fü (...)
- 26 Freyheits Concession und Begnadigung…: „Soll denselben zu Cassel, Homberg, Gudensberg, Felßberg, Ho (...)
- 27 Freyheits Concession und Begnadigung…: „Dafern sie der deutschen Sprache nicht kündig seyn, soll ih (...)
- 28 Freyheits Concession und Begnadigung…, paragraphs vi‑xv.
11On 18 April 1685, a couple of months prior to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Carl, landgrave of Hesse‑Cassel, issued his Freyheits Concession und Begnadigung. He invited Reformed Protestants, artisans, manufacturers and merchants, to settle within his territories. While the edict does not mention the persecution of Huguenots in France, the Freyheits Concession und Begnadigung is today interpreted as specifically addressing French Protestants. Howsoever, Reformed Protestants coming to Hesse‑Cassel would enjoy the landgrave’s protection. This prince’s German subjects were urged not to mistreat these newcomers nor to drive them from the country. The newly arriving were required to render homage to the prince and to subject themselves to the country’s laws.25 Enjoying the right to freely choose their residence, the immigrants were expected to rebuild abandoned villages and houses.26 They were allowed to found their own churches and schools, guided by their consistories. However, they came to be administered by the village or town where they choose to settle and had to accept the supreme authority of the sovereign.27 Artisans, manufacturers and merchants would be exempt from paying tax and other duties for a period of ten years, to enable them to develop their businesses.28
- 29 Chur=Brandenburgisches EDICT, Betreffend Diejenige Rechte / Privilegia und andere Wolthaten/welche (...)
- 30 Chur=Brandenburgisches EDICT…, p. 3 : « soulager & soubvenir aux calamites, avec lesquelles la prov (...)
- 31 Chur=Brandenburgisches EDICT…, p. 16 : « Il est permis à cette Colonie demeurante dans ces deux vil (...)
- 32 Ibidem, p. 16.
- 33 Ibid., p. 9‑14.
- 34 Ibid., p. 18‑19.
12The Edict of Potsdam, issued on 29 October/8 November 1685, specifically addresses French Protestants. It recognizes the persecutions of Huguenots in France and acknowledges their sufferings. Out of compassion, the Edict of Potsdam continues, the Elector of Brandenburg, needs to offer French refugees a “safe and free retreat”.29 The privileges granted through the Edict of Potsdam are meant to “relieve” those who suffer from persecution.30 Together with the Brandenburg envois in the Dutch Republic and Frankfurt on the Main, the Elector offers means to help transport French refugees from the Dutch Republic or Frankfurt on the Main to Brandenburg: money, passports and transportation vehicles. Within the elector’s territories, refugees are allowed to choose the place where they want to settle. They thus enjoy an unrestricted choice of residence. In addition, French refugees are allowed to form a separate corporation within Brandenburg‑Prussia, a colony, invested with its own French laws, jurisdiction, administration, if only for the colony’s internal affairs.31 With regard to church government, the Huguenots are entitled to found and build their own churches which would be governed by their consistories. However, they have to accept the elector as the supreme governor of their churches.32 Uninhabited houses are allocated to Huguenots arriving in villages and towns and can be passed on to their descendants. To rebuild these houses (or build new houses), Huguenots receive building materials free of charge. For rented houses, the Electorate will pay rent for four years. In addition, farmers would receive land for cultivation.33 In many respects, the newly arriving were to be treated as naturalized subjects of the elector. All of this, as the elector emphasizes, were privileges the afflicted French Protestants would enjoy “under his protection”. The privileges are “des graces”. To guarantee all these privileges, the elector nominated special commissioners who were to see after the refugees’ needs and privileges.34
- 35 Proclamations du Landgrave de Hesse, pour favoriser l’établissement des réfugiés dans ses Etats en (...)
- 36 Concessions et privileges, December 1685, <https://www.hugenottenmuseum.de/hugenotten/edikte/05-b-e (...)
13In December 1685, the Landgraviate of Hesse‑Kassel issued another edict, the Concessions et Privileges. It was published in December 1685, only a few weeks after the Elector of Brandenburg had released the Edict of Potsdam. The German version of this edict explicitly addresses French Protestants “heavily and horribly persecuted” for their faith who “were forced” to leave their patria. Out of “Christian compassion”, the landgrave is ready to accommodate them. Carl orders the collection of alms, which he urges his subjects to contribute to generously out of “Christian love”.35 The refugees will enjoy the landgrave’s protection once they have sworn oaths of allegiance and obedience. They have the opportunity to acquire houses and land, enjoy free access to the guilds and are exempt from tax paying for a generous number of years.36
- 37 Declaration For the Encouraging of French Protestants to Transport themselves into this Kingdom, 16 (...)
14England, where Huguenots had settled and erected their churches from the 1550s, was less generous than some of the German states. Notwithstanding, some royal declarations adopted the language of compassion and protection as well. In the Declaration for the encouraging of French Protestants to transport themselves into that Kingdom, published in 1689, the King, William III of Orange, speaks of the “persecution lately threatening them [the French Protestants] for their religion”, of the “miseries and oppressions”, of “relief”, “refuge” and “protection”, of “support”, “aid” and “assistance”. Princely protection in this instance also extends to subjects of foreign countries, if they suffer from “the arbitrary exercise of power and dominion”, from the “subversion of their laws” – as the Declaration holds. Foreign princes therefore need to extend their protection to relieve subjects of other princes that suffer from the latter’s arbitrariness or persecution. The protection offered to these “refugees”, as the Declaration continues, not only includes the refugees, their families and estates within England but also the “support, aid and assistance in their several and respective Trades and Ways of Livelyhood, as that their living and being in this Realm may be comfortable and easie to them”.37
15King Charles II had already published his Declaration of Hampton Court in 1681. This document had granted French Protestants denization for seven years (that is a partial acquisition of the rights of natural‑born Englishmen), including free access to schools, universities, commerce and trade as well as all professions. England, however, did not offer the vast corporate privileges that Huguenots were to enjoy in Brandenburg‑Prussia. While French Protestants could form their own churches and consistories, they had to succumb to English laws, jurisdiction and administration in all other things than church things.
- 38 An Act for Encouraging Protestant-Strangers and others, to Inhabit and Plant in the Kingdom of Irel (...)
- 39 Extract of an Act of Parliament entitled Acte pour encourager les Protestants étrangers à s’établir (...)
16With the anti‑Protestant rebellion of 1641, Ireland, predominantly populated by Catholics but ruled by pro‑English Protestants, had lost its attractions for European Protestants persecuted for their faith. In 1662, however, Ireland’s Parliament issued an Act for Encouraging Protestant Strangers and Others To Establish themselves in Ireland. The act offered naturalization and especially invited, “all Merchants, Traders and Dealers in any Goods, Wares or Merchandizes, Artizans, Artificiers or others working or manufacturing any Goods or Commodities, or any Mariners or Seamen”.38 Newcomers had to swear an oath of allegiance and had to obey to the country’s laws. With the Jacobite succession in 1685, Ireland ceased to invite Protestants to settle on the island. However, following the Protestant (re‑)conquest in 1691, King William III of Orange issued another Act for Encouraging Protestant Strangers and Others to settle and plant in Ireland: French refugees, like other Protestants, were welcomed to settle in Ireland. All newcomers had to swear an oath of obedience and supremacy to the King and would then be considered free and natural subjects, rights that would include their descendants.39
- 40 For a more detailed assessment of Britain’s overseas colonies: Bertrand van Ruymbeke, From New Baby (...)
17In British North America, the accommodation of refugees depended on the respective colony’s proprietors. Refugee protection was more often than not included in plantation projects, which tried to attract Protestant settlers at large, including refugees. The “protection” granted to all these settlers included naturalization, in some instance the free exercise of the settlers’ religion and land assignments. Most proprietors were hoping for the growth and prosperity of their colonies, and therefore for settlers who would bring artisanal and agricultural skills with them.40
International Aid
- 41 Piedmontesische frantzösische Glaubengenossen Persecution und Exilierung samt ihrer Versorgung von (...)
- 42 « Toute l’Europe mais particulierement la Protestante, void avec eloge ce que vous faites en sa fav (...)
- 43 Letter of the English envoy d’Herwart to the council of the city of Zurich, 15 May 1693, Französisc (...)
- 44 See Susanne Lachenicht, Hugenotten…, op. cit., p. 195‑196.
- 45 See, e.g. Sugiko Nishikawa, “Die Fronten im Blick. Daniel Ernst Jablonski und die englische Unterst (...)
18While the early modern period had no international refugee law(s) nor conventions regulating protection and accommodation, there was a mutual understanding that princes and states had to offer protection to the afflicted, to people persecuted for their faith or other beliefs. This becomes obvious from the documents preserved in the Bern and Zurich archives: in the 1690s, Swiss cantons tried to negotiate the expulsion (“Abschibung”) of exiles (“Exulanten”), as a food crisis had hit some of the Swiss cantons. The refugees (“Refugirte”), for whom the reformed Swiss cantons had offered “asylum” were no longer in a position to feed and house these refugees; they were now hoping for other Protestant states to accommodate these afflicted people. While the Swiss churches were struggling with the needs of Christian charity, the limits of asylum were clearly set: if the population starved, refugees had to leave and be reaccommodated with the help of other states, in this case England was supposed to settle the French refugees in Ireland.41 The “refugee problem” had been identified as a European problem, or rather as a problem of the Protestant states in Europe.42 The more prosperous Protestant states were – or those with newly conquered territories, as the Swiss envois put it – the more they were in a position to help resettle French refugees. In the relief and aid of (in this case) French refugees, Protestant states depended on each other’s Christian charity and generosity. Other Protestant states and cities were called upon to help with offertory collections.43 This “international aid” was often disputed, though. From the later 1680s, many Protestant states were trying to withdraw from what others considered their mutual Christian responsibilities toward French Protestants.44 With the number of Protestant refugees increasing, however, new foundations such as the English Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) or the Irish Société pour l’assistance des protestants étrangers, founded in Dublin in 1752, helped to collect and redistribute offertories for Protestant refugees in Europe and the Americas throughout much of the 18th century. These societies strengthened a growing network of Christian aid in early modern Europe and its colonies that linked churches and their missionary arms, governments and diplomatic networks.45
- 46 Benjamin J. Kaplan, “Legal Rights”, art. cit., p. 87.
- 47 Naïma Ghermani, « Du droit des exilés au droit d’asile : la naissance du droit d’asile moderne », i (...)
19With these practices, European princes relied on both received practices and the ius gentium,for which Francisco de Vitoria (1483‑1546) and Hugo Grotius (1583‑1645) had defined some of the legal foundations.46 In 1625, Grotius had claimed that all people fleeing or having to flee their native country should be offered a safe shelter by other countries. In this case, refugees had to obey to the host country’s laws. These ideas would be further developed by German lawyers during the 1670s and 1680s, who thus reacted to the growing influx of persecuted Protestants.47
Conclusions
- 48 Susanne Lachenicht, “Refugees and Refugee Protection”, art. cit.
20In the 1680s, refugee protection was commonplace. While there were no binding international laws regulating refugee protection, European states seem to have agreed that afflicted people, men, women and children persecuted for their beliefs, had to be relieved. Through diplomatic networks, princely governments – in the Huguenots’ case in Protestant Europe – tried to negotiate and organize refugee relief and protection. However, the aid offered depended on the princes’ financial means and the expected utility of the refugees – as I have shown elsewhere.48
21The developing legal concepts of refugee protection – as the language and contents of petitions and edicts show – derived from a number of legal practices. First, from the protection that princes and city fathers offered their subjects, who in turn had to swear oaths of obedience (and sometimes of supremacy) and to obey to the laws of the country. This protection could be extended to include other princes’ subjects if they suffered from persecution or the subversion of the laws in their home countries. Second, refugee protection overlapped with specific forms of internal colonization, that is the invitation of foreigners or immigrants to settle and enrich a foreign country or its newly acquired territories. Legal concepts of refugee protection thus developed in an interplay of 1) the early modern princes’ interests in advancing their state’s prowess and might through demographic and economic growth, 2) the protection that princes granted their ordinary subjects and 3) the protection of afflicted people out of Christian charity. Refugee protection was related to forms of poor relief, as it had been practised for centuries through church, state and city institutions.
22In this interplay, the protection offered was substantial. It could include the costs and means for transporting refugees across Europe to their new homes. In some places, refugees enjoyed substantial corporate rights such as the implementation of their own, foreign law, jurisdiction and administration. In many places, religious exiles were granted freedom of conscience and worship. Princes offered free land, building materials, financial and material aid for farmers, artisans, merchants and manufacturers. Refugees were exempt from paying taxes, fees and customs for a number of years. There was an understanding that refugees (or non‑persecuted immigrants) could only prosper and as such enrich the country if financial and economic aid was granted for a number of years.
- 49 Susanne Lachenicht, Hugenotten…, op. cit., p. 108.
- 50 Timothy G. Fehler, Poor Relief and Protestantism. The Evolution of Social Welfare in Sixteenth-Cent (...)
- 51 See e.g. Susanne Lachenicht “Refugees and refugee protection”, art. cit, and Benjamin J. Kaplan, “L (...)
23In the 1680s and 1690s, these practices were not new, though. Sixteenth-century Europe had already faced some refugee crises and had developed legal patterns regulating the arrival and accommodation of people persecuted for their faith. England, for instance, had accommodated Walloons and Huguenots with Letters Patent: immigrants had to be Protestants, people useful for England’s economy and they had to accept and obey to English laws.49 Other states and cities had practised similar forms of the accommodation of refugees, as research on the city of Emden in the late 16th century shows.50 In the 1680s and 1690s, however, the sheer numbers of religious refugees, petitions and edicts enhanced a process of standardization on which future refugees could rely to claim received practices and forms of legal protection.51
- 52 Geert H. Janssen, “The Legacy of Exile and the Rise of Humanitarianism”, in Brian Cummings, Ceri La (...)
- 53 Early modern Christian charity is in many ways different from modern humanitarian thinking. Even th (...)
- 54 For this see, e.g., Susanne Lachenicht “Learning from Past Displacements? The history of migrations (...)
24Identifying these practices of the legal protection of refugees as “pre‑modern humanitarianism”, as some more recent publications have done,52 might therefore miss the mark. While “humanitarianism” as an analytical category can draw our attention to some aspects of early modern refugee protection, it can obscure other aspects and historical specificities. As I have shown above, the legal protection of refugees was not necessarily motivated by some form of pre-modern “humanitarian” thinking but by a combination of Christian charity53, utilitarian aspects and forms of legal protection more generally. Projecting “modern” concepts on past centuries always bears the risk of ignoring the historical periods’ and moments’ specificities. In addition, this often serves, willingly or not, rather teleological narratives that might see the more distant past as pre‑histories of “modernity” – a long‑lasting trend in historiographical writing that has rightly been challenged by postmodern and postcolonial studies alike.54 For our understanding of early modern refugee protection, it might therefore be more helpful to work from the emic perspective, that is from the sources of the time and what they tell us about protection and refugee protection more specifically.
Notes
1 See the UNHCR website: <https://www.unhcr.org/1951-refugee-convention.html>, last accessed 24 October 2022.
2 Marianne Amar, Susanne Lachenicht, Isabelle Lacoue‑Labarthe, Mathilde Monge and Annelise Rodrigo, “Introduction”, Diasporas. Migrations, circulations, histoire, 36 (Marianne Amar, Susanne Lachenicht, Isabelle Lacoue‑Labarthe, Mathilde Monge, Annelise Rodrigo (dir.), Negotiating asylum and accommodation. Migrants, refugees and host societies / Négocier l’accueil. Migrants, réfugiés et sociétés d’accueil), 2020, p. 7‑20, Doi : <https://doi.org/10.4000/diasporas.5270>.
3 Raingard Esser, Niederländische Exulanten im England des 16. und frühen 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin, Duncker & Humblot, 1996; Geert H. Janssen, The Dutch Revolt and Catholic Exile in Reformation Europe, Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014.
4 Francis J. Bremer, The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards, rev. ed., Hanover, University Press of New England, [1976] 1995; Christina Hallowell Garrett, The Marian Exiles, A Study in the Origins of Elizabethan Puritanism, New York, Cambridge University Press, “Cambridge library collection”, [1938] 2010; Thomas D. Hamm, The Quakers in America, New York, Columbia University Press, “Columbia contemporary American religion series”, 2003.
5 James van Horn Melton, “From Alpine Minder to Lowcountry Yeoman: Transatlantic Worlds of a Georgia Salzburger, 1693-1761”, Past & Present, 201, 2008, nº 1, p. 97‑140, Doi: <https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtn005>.
6 Craig D. Atwood, Community of the Cross: Moravian Piety in Colonial Bethlehem, University Park, Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 2004.
7 Christopher Hodson, The Acadian Diaspora an Eighteenth‑Century History, Oxford/New York, Oxford Univ. Press, 2012.
8 See the website of the project “The Invention of the Refugee in Early Modern Europe”: <http://www.inventionoftherefugee.com/people/>, last accessed 24 October 2022. See also Benjamin J. Kaplan, “The Legal Rights of Religious Refugees in the ‘Refugee‑Cities’ of Early Modern Germany”, Journal of Refugee Studies, 32, 2019, nº 1, p. 87, on line: 2018, Doi: <https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fey010>.
9 Susanne Lachenicht, “Refugees and Refugee Protection in the Early Modern Period”, Journal of Refugee Studies, 30, 2017, nº 2, p. 261‑281. See also the secondary sources cited there.
10 According to Peter Gatrell the concept of refugeedom today involves “administrative practices, legal norms, social relations and refugees’ experiences and how these have been represented in cultural terms as well as in the mass media. In other words, ‘refugeedom’ stresses the interdependent relationship between refugees, society and state.” See Peter Gatrell on <https://zeitgeschichte-online.de/themen/states-make-refugees-refugees-also-make-states-peter-gatrell-making-modern-refugee>, last accessed 24 October 2022.
11 See Naïma Ghermani, quoting from Zedler’s Universallexikon, in the blurb to this thematic issue.
12 See, e.g., Benjamin J. Kaplan, “Legal Rights”, art. cit., p. 87.
13 Among the petitions published in England see, e.g., Humble Petition of the Protestants of France to the French King, to recall his declaration for taking their children from them at the age of seven years, London, A. Forrester, 1681; Present State of the Protestants in France. In three letters, written by a gentleman at London to his friend in the country, London, John Holford, 1681; The horrible persecution of the French Protestants in the province of Poitou Truly set forth by a gentleman of great quality…, London, Randolph Taylor, 1681; A Letter from Rochel in France to Mr. Demeuare, one of the French ministers at the French church in the Savoy, shewing the intolerable persecutions that are there exercised against them. Edit de Nantes, London, R. Bentley, 1681; A Strange but true account of the barbarous usage of three young ladies in France for being Protestants with a relation also of their wonderful escape from thence into England, London, E. Brooks, 1681, and Edmund Everard, The great pressures and grievances of the Protestants in France, and their apology to the late ordinances made against them; both out of the Edict of Nantes, and several other fundamental laws of France; and these new illegalities, and their miseries are contrived by the Pap. Bishop’s arbitrary power, London, T. Cockeril, 1681. For Germany and Switzerland, see, e.g., Hertzliche Bekummernuß umb den Schaden Josephs : bezeuget in etlichen Bedencken über die grausame bishero unerhoerte Verfolgung der evanlisch‑Reformirten Kirchen in Franckreich…, 1686; La Tres‑Humble Requeste Des Refugiés & exulés de la Françe… = Der aus Franckreich/ Umb der Reformirten Religion und Bekäntniß ihres Glaubens willen Armen vertriebenen Protestirenden Demüthigste Bitt-Schrifft An die Großmögende Evangelische Schweitzerische Kantonen…, 1685.
14 Mémoire pour encourager les Protestants à venir habiter en Irlande, 17th century, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, Fonds français, Manuscript 21,622: n. 551. p. 101.
15 Present State of the Protestants in France in three letters: Written by a gentleman at London to his friend in the country…, London, John Holford, 1681.
16 « Une Sainte Collonnie de Protestans de France sur la tempeste jetté tous les jours dans vos ports, ce sont des Israëlites qui traversent la Mer pour se Retirer en Canaan », Harangue prononcée au Roi d’Angleterre par un Ministre de l’Eglise française de la Savoye, Bibliothèque de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, Paris, Cote 667: Papier Vielles et Fossard, nº 13, 19 October 1682.
17 Ibidem. For similar claims and identifications see Pierre Jurieu in Rotterdam, in Hubert Bost, « Pratique de l’asile et théories de l’exil à Rotterdam autour de la Révocation », in Gilles Bertrand, Catherine Brice et Mario Infelise (dir.), Exil, asile : du droit aux pratiques, xvie‑xixe siècle, Rome, École française de Rome, « Collection de l’École française de Rome, 594 », 2022, p. 125‑132, here p. 128‑129, Doi: <https://doi.org/10.4000/books.efr.29077>.
18 Susanne Lachenicht, Hugenotten in Europa und Nordamerika: Migration und Integration in der Frühen Neuzeit, Frankfurt am Main/New York, Campus Verlag, 2010, p. 56‑104.
19 For Ireland see, e.g., Projet pour l’établissement des réfugiés en Irlande, 1692, Bibliothèque de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, Paris, Papiers Court, nº 17 M, M 617, nº LXVIII.
20 Ibidem.
21 Ibid.
22 Charles Ancillon, Histoire De L’Etablissement Des François Refugiez Dans Les États De Son Altesse Électorale De Brandebourg, 2 t., Berlin, R. Roger, 1690, t. I, p. 24‑25, <http://resolver.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/SBB0000F05C00000000>.
23 Address from Protestants in France to Charles II, Bodleian Library, Oxford, fol. 2.
24 Charles Ancillon, Histoire de l’établissement…, t. 2, p. 212, 356 et 362. See also Susanne Lachenicht “Refugees and refugee protection”, art. cit.
25 Freyheits Concession und Begnadigung für die fremden Manufacturiers, welche der Durchleuchtigste Fürst Herr Carl, Landgraf zu Hessen, denen, welche sich in Dero Fürstenthume niederlassen, und solche Manufacturen, so bis dahero nicht betrieben worden, oder auch andere nützliche Hand‑Arbeit selbst machen wollen, gnädigst ertheilen wollen, 18 April 1685, Cassel, Kürßner, 1685. I used the version of the Bibliothèque de la Société de l’histoire du protestantisme français, Paris, Cote 780 1 et 2, 780, 1 pièce 31: „Werden alle diejenigen, welche in dem Fürstenthumb Hessen, deren zugehörigen Graff- und Herschafften, sich niederzulassen gemeinet und der Reformirten Religion beygethan sein, in dero sonderlichen Schutz genommen, dero gestalt, daß dieselbe sobald nach abgelegtem gewöhnlichem Homagio von niemand dero Unterthanen in solchen Fürstenthumben bedränget, verdrieben oder mit Unrecht gehindert werden sollen, doch daß sie Ihro Hochfürstl. Durchl[aucht] Gesetzen beschriebenen gemeinen Rechten und andern außgelassenen Ordnungen sich gemäß verhalten und darjegen nicht muthwillig freveln.“
26 Freyheits Concession und Begnadigung…: „Soll denselben zu Cassel, Homberg, Gudensberg, Felßberg, Hoff-Geißmar, Grebenstein, Melsungen oder wo ihnen sonst im Lande beliebet entweder gewisse Orthe und Plätze, welche sie aufs neue bebauen, oder daß sie auch albereit auffgebauete Häuser an sich kauffen mögen, verstattet werden“.
27 Freyheits Concession und Begnadigung…: „Dafern sie der deutschen Sprache nicht kündig seyn, soll ihnen entweder eine eigene Kirche auf ihren Kosten auffzubauen und darin in ihrer Sprache fromme Gottsfürchtige Prediger und Schulmeistere, doch mit Ihr Hochfürstl[ichen] Durchl[aucht] oder dero nachgesetzten Consistorii vorwissen und auff vorher Gegangenes Examen und Approbation, zu beruffen, frey gelassen werden, welche aber doch Ihro Hochfürstl[ichen] Durchl[ichen] daß Homagium zu leisten schuldig sein sollen“.
28 Freyheits Concession und Begnadigung…, paragraphs vi‑xv.
29 Chur=Brandenburgisches EDICT, Betreffend Diejenige Rechte / Privilegia und andere Wolthaten/welche Se. Churf. Durchl. zu Bran= denburg denen Evangelisch=Reformirten Frantzö= sischer Nation so sich in Ihren Landen nieder= lassen werden daselbst zu verstatten gnä= digst entschlossen seyn, Potsdam 1685, p. 3: « leur offrir une retraite seure & libre ». The Elector is « touche[s] par la juste compassion ». See the edict’s version at <https://www.hugenottenmuseum.de/hugenotten/edikte/04-a-edikt-potsdam-1685.pdf>, last accessed 24 October 2022.
30 Chur=Brandenburgisches EDICT…, p. 3 : « soulager & soubvenir aux calamites, avec lesquelles la providence divine a trouve bon de frapper une partie si considerable de son eglise ».
31 Chur=Brandenburgisches EDICT…, p. 16 : « Il est permis à cette Colonie demeurante dans ces deux villes voisines de former un corps à part & une communeauté [sic] qui soit & demeure sous son propre & particulier Magistrat, & aura pour jamais le Droit d’avoir des Juges & Magistrats de leur Religion ».
32 Ibidem, p. 16.
33 Ibid., p. 9‑14.
34 Ibid., p. 18‑19.
35 Proclamations du Landgrave de Hesse, pour favoriser l’établissement des réfugiés dans ses Etats en date du 18 Avril et du 1er décembre 1685, Bibliothèque de la Société de l’histoire du protestantisme français, Paris, Cote 780 1 et 2, pièce 31.
36 Concessions et privileges, December 1685, <https://www.hugenottenmuseum.de/hugenotten/edikte/05-b-edikt-kassel-1685.pdf>.
37 Declaration For the Encouraging of French Protestants to Transport themselves into this Kingdom, 1689, <https://ota.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repository/xmlui/bitstream/handle/20.500.12024/A66237/A66237.html?sequence=5&isAllowed=y>.
38 An Act for Encouraging Protestant-Strangers and others, to Inhabit and Plant in the Kingdom of Ireland, Dublin, John Crook, 1662, Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS. Carte 66 (f. 513).
39 Extract of an Act of Parliament entitled Acte pour encourager les Protestants étrangers à s’établir en Irlande, Bibliothèque de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, Paris, Cote 780 1 et 2, 2, nº 54. See also: The Statutes at large, passed in the Parliaments held in Ireland: from the third year of Edward the Second, A.D. 1310, to the Twenty sixth year of George the Third, A.D. 1786, inclusive, 13 vol., Dublin, [George Grieson, 1786‑1801], “1784”, vol. ii, “1692”, chapt. II.
40 For a more detailed assessment of Britain’s overseas colonies: Bertrand van Ruymbeke, From New Babylon to Eden: The Huguenots and their Migration to Colonial South Carolina, Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, “The Carolina low country and Atlantic world”,2006, p. 40‑41, and Susanne Lachenicht, Hugenotten…, op. cit., p. 150‑167. See also Owen Stanwood, The Global Refuge: Huguenots in an Age of Empire, New York, Oxford University Press, 2020, which nicely synthesizes the research on Huguenots in Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds.
41 Piedmontesische frantzösische Glaubengenossen Persecution und Exilierung samt ihrer Versorgung von den Evanglischen Orten und diesen armen Leuthen Recomendationis...von 1690‑1700 and Teutsches Missiven-Buch der Statt Bern, 7 August 1691‑7 September 1693, Staatsarchiv Bern, St.A.B. AV 153, nº 31.
42 « Toute l’Europe mais particulierement la Protestante, void avec eloge ce que vous faites en sa faveur, et entre dans la juste reconnoissance qu’il vous en doit. », Französische Angelegenheiten, amtliche Akten 1688‑1693, Staatsarchiv Zürich, June, Ei 25/13.
43 Letter of the English envoy d’Herwart to the council of the city of Zurich, 15 May 1693, Französische Angelegenheiten…, op. cit.,. See also Bibliothèque de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, Paris, Papiers Court, nº 17 M, M 617.
44 See Susanne Lachenicht, Hugenotten…, op. cit., p. 195‑196.
45 See, e.g. Sugiko Nishikawa, “Die Fronten im Blick. Daniel Ernst Jablonski und die englische Unterstützung kontinentaler Protestanten”, in Joachim Bahlcke and Werner Korthaase (eds), Daniel Ernst Jablonski: Religion, Wissenschaft und Politik um 1700, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 2008, p. 151‑168, and Susanne Lachenicht, Hugenotten…, op. cit., p. 84, 114. For the emerging field of “international aid” for refugees in early modern Europe see, e.g., Mathilde Monge’s project Solidarités communautaires, funded by the French Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR).
46 Benjamin J. Kaplan, “Legal Rights”, art. cit., p. 87.
47 Naïma Ghermani, « Du droit des exilés au droit d’asile : la naissance du droit d’asile moderne », in Gilles Bertrand, Catherine Brice et Mario Infelise (dir.), Exil, asile : du droit aux pratiques, xvie-xixe siècle, Rome, École française de Rome, « Collection de l’École française de Rome, 594 »2022, p. 53-66, here p. 53, 55-59, Doi: <https://doi.org/10.4000/books.efr.28910>.
48 Susanne Lachenicht, “Refugees and Refugee Protection”, art. cit.
49 Susanne Lachenicht, Hugenotten…, op. cit., p. 108.
50 Timothy G. Fehler, Poor Relief and Protestantism. The Evolution of Social Welfare in Sixteenth-Century Emden, Aldershot, Ashgate, 1999, p. 219‑243.
51 See e.g. Susanne Lachenicht “Refugees and refugee protection”, art. cit, and Benjamin J. Kaplan, “Legal Rights”, art. cit.
52 Geert H. Janssen, “The Legacy of Exile and the Rise of Humanitarianism”, in Brian Cummings, Ceri Law, Karis Riley and Alexandra Walsham (eds), Remembering the Reformation, London, Routledge, “Remembering the medieval and early modern worlds”, 2020, p. 226‑242.
53 Early modern Christian charity is in many ways different from modern humanitarian thinking. Even though some elements of modern humanitarianism might root in Christian charity, it seems vital to clearly distinguish historical forms of Christian charity and humanitarianism.
54 For this see, e.g., Susanne Lachenicht “Learning from Past Displacements? The history of migrations between historical specificity, presentism and fractured continuities”, Humanities, 7, 2018, nº 2, p. 6, Doi: <https://doi.org/10.3390/h7020036>.
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Susanne Lachenicht, « Protecting Refugees in Early Modern Europe and the Atlantic World? », Diasporas [En ligne], 41 | 2023, mis en ligne le 17 juillet 2023, consulté le 24 janvier 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/diasporas/12301 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/diasporas.12301
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