Finding Eden

Abstract

The Huguenots’ turn to new worlds came directly out of their colonial program. French Protestants had long experience with global travel and exploration, and once persecution hit some of them naturally believed they could find refuge overseas. This process began even in the 1660s, when authors like Charles de Rochefort and Henri Duquesne promoted the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, respectively, as promised lands for Huguenots, drawing from utopian ideals. Once the Revocation closed off the French New World, Huguenots gravitated toward the English and Dutch empires, drawn from the 1680s onward by a robust promotional literature lauding societies as diverse as Tobago, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. By the 1680s increasing numbers of Huguenots were beginning to set out to these new colonies, lured by dreams of Eden but thrown into a world of empires.