The arresting title of this study references the multitude of vexing questions surrounding refugees and their often-expressed desire to return to their homeland. As migrants and displaced persons become an ever more pressing reality in our contemporary world, it is hardly surprising that scholars have turned to the study of past forced migration in search of guidance and understanding. Among the more well-known of these prior developments was the Huguenot diaspora that unfolded following Louis XIV’s proscription of Protestantism in 1685. In the aftermath hundreds of thousands of French Reformed Protestants – generally known as Huguenots – fled France. What were their motives, goals, and legacy? What are the issues confronting the modern scholar investigating the Huguenot flight abroad? How ought these matters to be framed? What are the sources to which the historian might turn? And what conclusions can be drawn?
Banks opens his study with an overview of the Huguenot diaspora with particular attention to commercial undertakings and developments in the broad Atlantic orbit. Unfortunately, these introductory remarks are not much pursued in the chapters that follow. Rather, the ensuing analysis focuses attention on the published views of four prominent Huguenot exiles and their place in the intellectual environment fostered by the Enlightenment. Building on considerable prior scholarship on diasporic and Huguenot history, the author explores the contributions of Pierre Jurieu, Pierre Bayle, Antoine Court, and Jean-Paul Rabaut Saint-Étienne. Each exemplifies a specific aspect of the Refuge as the movement came to be known. All four individuals had taken up residence close to the French border, notably in the Dutch and Swiss orbits. They had access to printing presses and could readily reach a French audience.
Banks characterizes Jurieu as a theologian whose publications evidenced a strong millenarian strain. Jurieu firmly anchored his Reformed refugee identity in Holy Scripture. He also associated himself with the international religious politics of the age and was a staunch supporter of William of Orange and England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688. The philosopher Bayle, for his part, emphasized the political dynamics of the Refuge. Though he clearly understood that the Huguenot diaspora possessed a strong confessional dimension, religion was for him largely a private matter. Banks views Jurieu and Bayle squarely within a recognizably Enlightenment tradition. If Jurieu and Bayle stressed reason, Court and Rabaut Saint-Étienne introduced an element of sentimentalism. Both were pastors who trained in Switzerland and eventually became deeply involved in the anguishing experience of the Désert. This was the eighteenth-century French Reformed movement of secret outdoors worship in the “wilderness,” a direct reference to the suffering of Biblical ancestors. Both Court and Rabaut Saint-Étienne promoted Enlightenment notions of religious toleration and citizenship, even if they differed in their emphasis.
In Rabaut Saint-Étienne’s case, memory, sentimentality, and emotion became the basis for religious toleration. The approach was entirely in keeping with late Enlightenment thought. Rabaut Saint-Étienne eventually rose to prominence as a delegate to the revolutionary National Assembly, but later fell victim to the Terror. In this reading, the developing sentimentalism helped to propel the French crown toward the issuance of the Edict of Tolerance in 1787, though full recognition of Huguenot rights only came with the Revolution. The Edict of Tolerance allowed Huguenots to worship privately, while in 1789, the revolutionary National Assembly granted the right to public worship. In addition, the Revolution promised the right of return to all Huguenots and their descendants and, in theory, allowed them to reclaim confiscated ancestral lands. Banks does not much dwell on these Revolutionary issues and eschews a traditional conclusion. He does not ask how influential these four exiles were beyond the intellectual circles of the Enlightenment. Nor does the reader gain a sense of how many displaced Huguenots returned to France, or whether most assimilated into the host countries. Instead, the author seeks to place the Huguenot experience as expressed by four prominent exiles within modern discourse on refugees and their displacement. As such, it seems a bit disjoined from the thrust of the principal discussion.
In terms of the sources, Banks has chosen to focus on printed materials. His decision certainly made the project more manageable. Still, one wonders what additional insights might have been gleaned from, for example, surviving manuscript sources. Even so, this is not always a close reading of the texts authored by these four exiles. Rather, as often as not, it is a compilation and comparison of the views on the subject advanced in recent or in some instances somewhat dated and predominantly English-language secondary sources.
The study can also be a frustrating read. This is in part because the chapters move somewhat erratically over such major themes as exile, refugee status, citizenship, and national identity. In addition, the author occasionally introduces topics without making clear their relationship to the overall refugee experience. Greater depth and precision of analysis would have made for a stronger contribution.
The book would also have benefited from a strong editorial hand. Aside from the occasional typo, there are a number of jarring errors. For example, the author states that Jurieu “studied at the Academy of Saumur in England” (p. 53). Saumur is in France, as was the Protestant Academy. More stunning is the confusion of the Hebrew enslavement in Egypt with the later Babylonian Captivity. Thus, the reader is told that “the Jews of Moses’s time were captured in Babylon” (p. 58). The slips are suggestive of a lack of attention and less than careful review of the text. None of this inspires confidence. It diminishes what would otherwise be a helpful study addressing critical issues, notably exile and return, as well as the role of Huguenot refugee intellectuals in advancing notions of freedom of conscience and national identity.
