Refugee Geopolitics

Aside from their skills with silk and wine, Huguenots promoted themselves as strategic allies after war came to Europe and America in 1689. As experts on French strategy, the refugees believed their assistance would be invaluable in helping Britain and the Netherlands defeat the Sun King. This belief in the Huguenots’ strategic importance sent more of them to imperial border regions. The chapter focuses on three in particular: the Caribbean basin, the borderlands between New England and New France, and the Mascarene Islands in the Indian Ocean. In each case refugees faced discrimination from those who suspected them of being in league with the French enemy, even as they did their best to help the Protestant cause. The chapter ends with the last and most ambitious plan for a Huguenot colony, in Carolana on the Gulf Coast, an ultimately failed design that led to the formation of Manakintown in Virginia.