French Emigration to Great Britain in Response to the French Revolution

This book examines diverse encounters between the British community and the thousands ofFrench individuals who sought haven in the British Isles as they left revolutionary and ImperialFrance. This painstaking research into the emigrant archival and memorial presence in Britainuncovers a wealth of underused and alternative sources on this controversial populationdisplacement. These include open letters and classified advertisements published in Britishnewspapers, insurance contracts, as well as lists of addresses and passports drawn up by localauthorities. These sources question the construction by British loyalists and French émigré elitesof a stereotyped emigrant figure and their use of the trauma of forced displacement to advanceideological agendas. In fact, public and private discourses on governmental systems, foreigners, political and religious dissent, and the economic survival of French emigrants, demonstrate theheterogeneity of the responses to emigration in Britain. Ultimately, this book narrates a storyin which the emigrant community and its host have been often unnoticeably yet fundamentallytransformed by their encounter, in both practical and ideological domains.