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By Root 984 0

a haven and land of opportunity for another enterprising religious minority. The Huguenots were French Protestants who, heavily influenced by John Calvin, fiercely opposed the hierarchy and rituals of the Catholic Church. The first Huguenot church was apparently established in a home in Paris around 1555. Thereafter, the movement spread quickly; at their peak, the Huguenots numbered between one and two million, as compared to roughly 16 million Catholics. They could be found on all rungs of society, including artisans and professionals as well as wealthy financiers and nobles. At one point, backed by the House of Bourbon, the Huguenots had their own fleet of warships and controlled dozens of fortified cities and towns throughout France.9

In the mid-seventeenth century, Louis XIV launched a cam- paign of brutal persecution of Protestants, culminating in the 1685 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which had granted a significant measure of religious liberty to them. Following the Revocation, Protestant pastors were hanged, churches destroyed, and property confiscated. Threatened with prison, execution, or the wheel of torture, many Huguenots converted to Catholicism, or pretended to do so. Others—perhaps 150,000 to 200,000—fled the country. Of these, approximately 50,000 sought refuge in the British Isles.

The Huguenot exodus was followed by a period of economic decline in France, but the causes of this decline are difficult to pinpoint. Some historians believe that the departure of the Huguenots was extremely important, adversely affecting France's steel, paper-making, shipping, and textile industries. Others point out that the majority of Huguenots remained in France, often practicing their religion in secret, and that factors such as bad harvests and Louis XIV's military overreaching contributed far more to France's economic problems.

There is no question, however, that England profited. Huguenot clock-makers helped turn London into one of the world's leading clock-making centers. The French town of Caudebec lost most of its master hatters to England, which, armed with new trade secrets for making fine, rain-resistant felt (the trick was mixing wool with rabbit fur), began producing its own “Caudebec” hats. Huguenots also brought with them skills in paper manufacturing, glassblowing, lace making, book printing, metalworking, and linen and silk production.10

The Huguenots flourished in England, assimilating and intermarrying into English society over time. Some of the wealthiest Huguenot family names are now so Anglicized that they are no longer recognized as foreign. This is true, for example, of the Bernard, Janssen, Chamier, Pettit, and Olivier banking families. (Mistakes by English clerks often played a role too. The “English” names Ferry and Fash were originally Ferret and Fouache, respectively.) But as with the Jews, the most important contribution Huguenots made to Britain was in finance.

Between 1740 and 1763, England's national debt almost tripled because of its wars with France, reaching roughly £121 million in 1763. A striking one-fifth of this sum came from the “Huguenot international,” including both Huguenots who had settled in Britain and others—in Holland, Switzerland, and Germany—with whom they were closely connected. For obvious reasons, these exiled Huguenots preferred to bank in (and on) England rather than France. With their financial and rentier backgrounds in France, well-to-do Huguenots were apparently more willing to invest in English public funds than similarly situated Englishmen themselves, who were more likely to keep their money in land—or even “in a strong box in a house.”

Despite the important role played by Anglo-Jews and Anglo-Huguenots, it would be absurd to suggest that they alone were responsible for Britain's ascendance to global dominance. Instead, as one historian puts it, their contributions were part of the “leaven” in Britain's rise.” Moreover, these contributions pale by comparison to the tremendous injection of economic and intellectual dynamism brought to England by another