The Social and Economic Significance of the Huguenot Exodus

Often, the persecution of Huguenots, Walloonians, Flemish people, and other Protestants are cited in the long history of European persecution, sometimes in support of the political agenda of being welcoming to migrants.

However, it is important to emphasise that they faced very different challenges and conditions than those faced by non-Western economic migrants and refugees today. In particular, the case of the Huguenots is highly telling of how variable starting points can be.

When around 150,000–200,000 Huguenots (1% of the French population) left France following the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685 and discriminatory practices like the dragonnades, they faced a particular set of unique circumstances unlike those of migrants arriving in Europe today.

First of all, many Protestant countries and principalities were highly welcoming to them, as they felt pity and sympathy for the plight of fellow believers, but also attraction to them as a source of economic prosperity.

Particularly Brandenburg, later Prussia, was hospitable to them, as evidenced by passing the Edict of Potsdam just a few months after the Revocation and by spreading the message of welcome through French pamphlets and newspapers. When Huguenots began arriving in Amsterdam, the Prussian king even sent ships for their transport, although they practically had to start from scratch on the farms that were given to them.

The Huguenots were well-known at the time to be highly skilled artisans and craftsmen, particularly in trades like the textile industry, weaving, high-quality clockmaking, optometrics, and so on.

Their capabilities evidently helped in the wider diffusion of technological knowledge and human capital, both of which are important determinants of long-term growth.

Indeed, since highly skilled English artisans in previous centuries had emigrated to France in search of higher pay in the tens of thousands, the Huguenots actually helped to return these technical insights and expertise back to England, which contributed to the development of the British textile industry and later the Industrial Revolution.

The Huguenots also kick-started the silk weaving industry in Britain again and notably helped to establish the cutlery industry in Sheffield. Many of them also joined the military forces and became prominent there.

Huguenot merchants brought with them millions of livres tournois abroad, as the French military engineer Vauban lamented, resulting in capital flight and the improved development of trade and industry in Protestant countries.

Interestingly, rich Huguenot traders and entrepreneurs were vital in the founding of the Bank of England, with its first governor, John Houblon, being of Huguenot descent. Today, it’s even estimated that one in four Londoners are partly descended from Huguenots, as they heavily settled there in and in the southeast mercantile heartland of England.

What’s more, in the Netherlands they formed part of the intelligentsia and were prominent in the academic and publishing establishments, such as the thinker Pierre Bayle, a pioneering philosopher of religious toleration.

In Switzerland, as they fled to Geneva, they found themselves in a heavily socially regimented Calvinist city where the wearing of jewellery had been illegal since the days of Jean Calvin.

This had put the city’s world-class goldsmiths out of business, but when the Huguenots arrived, that came to change.

Some of the Huguenots brought with them their technical expertise and knowledge in making clocks there, where they teamed up with the goldsmiths, who knew how to create beautiful design and craft. This was the germ of the renowned Swiss clockmaking industry, eventually almost entirely eclipsing the French industry.

In Brandenburg, meanwhile, the Huguenots were settled in areas and villages earlier ravaged during the Thirty Years’ War, as large parts of Germany had still not recovered from the extensive socio-economic damage, and thus helped to revitalise agriculture and particularly the Prussian textile sector.

Huguenots also became prominent in Prussian society as known by anecdotal evidence:

One of Friedrich the Great’s maids was a Huguenot who taught him German and French, the last of which became his preferred language, as the king viewed the German language as barbaric.

Voltaire, a long-time friend and correspondent of the Prussian king, noted that he never heard German spoken at court.

Friedrich the Great Even even went so far as to publish an official pamphlet deriding German as a literary language in the 1780s, asserting that German culture was 250 years behind the French one. Even when he found German books he wanted to read, he always had them translated into French.

That was another reason why the Huguenots were welcomed by Protestant countries, as they literally spoke the European lingua franca (the Frankish or French tongue) and belonged to the continent’s premier cultural hegemon. That fact made it easier and more enticing to help them.

They also had a powerful support network. When some of them fled to Switzerland, the Swiss cantons financed the travel of their representatives to the German territories to find suitable places for settlement. The Huguenots had their own nobles and priests negotiating on their behalf!

However, although the Huguenots helped kickstart Protestant industry, the French economy didn’t suffer as much as contemporaries would have you believe.

According to some studies, the trade connectedness of cities and regions wasn’t as detrimentally impacted as once thought, as it continued to develop as usual. The market integration of regions also went by unimpeded.

It also helped that most Huguenots remained in France, as only 150,000–200,000 of the around 900,000 Protestants in France had migrated. Suffice to say, the French economy was relatively fine and remained the leading one in Europe for decades.

Indeed, in the short-term, the exodus even improved the material living situation in some places. In the regions from which most Protestants migrated, the average rate of food riots and subsistence crises decreased, lessening social conflict.

Although some cities like Sedan and Metz lost a substantial portion of their population, other ones like Lyon were more or less unaffected. The average literacy rate fell, however.