Religious Refugees and Global Trade Migration

How religion and overseas trade changed migration

Between 1500 and 1900, England’s relationships with the wider world opened different routes for migration. Religious conflict brought people seeking safety, while overseas trade brought workers whose labour connected Britain with Asia. These routes produced very different experiences: being welcomed as a useful worker or fellow believer did not guarantee lasting security.

The Protestant Reformation divided western Christianity. England became an important Protestant country, making it a possible refuge for Protestants persecuted elsewhere. Meanwhile, the expansion of trade and empire brought Asian seamen and domestic servants to English ports and households.

The East India Company and arrivals from Asia

The East India Company was founded in 1600 to conduct overseas trade. Over the following centuries it expanded its influence in Asia and eventually exercised military and political control over much of India. Its activities created jobs for British traders and administrators abroad, but also brought people from the Indian subcontinent to England.

Company ships carried goods such as textiles, porcelain and spices. They needed crews, and recruited Asian merchant seamen in ports including Surat and Calcutta, now Kolkata. These sailors, commonly called lascars, made the voyages that sustained trade between Britain and Asia.

Employment could therefore provide a route to England, but it did not necessarily provide a secure life there. Lascars worked for low wages in often terrible conditions. Some were abandoned in British ports and had to support themselves far from home. Their experiences show the difference between the wealth generated by international trade and the insecurity experienced by some of its workers.

British people returning from India also brought domestic servants. These included Indian children employed in wealthy households. The first recorded Indian child in England was a Bengali boy baptised in London in 1616. Indian child servants could be treated as fashionable signs of their employers’ wealth and overseas connections, rather than simply valued for their work.

Ayahs: skilled care and insecure journeys

An ayah was an Indian nursemaid or nanny. British families in India employed ayahs to care for their children, and returning families sometimes brought them to Britain. Other families hired experienced travelling ayahs specifically for the voyage. Their work could include caring for children, helping the mother and managing baggage.

For an ayah, travelling might offer paid work, attachment to a family or an opportunity to see Britain. It was often intended to be temporary: she could work her passage to Britain and then seek employment with another family travelling back to India. One experienced ayah, Mrs Antony Pareira, made 54 journeys.

By the 1850s, an estimated 100–140 travelling ayahs visited Britain each year. Steamships and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 subsequently made journeys between Britain and India shorter and more routine. These connections continued to encourage migration even beyond the Company’s own activities.

However, some employers dismissed ayahs on arrival without wages or arrangements for their return. Many had no formal employment contract, and promises of a return passage were not always honoured. An 1855 report described 50–60 ayahs living together in a poor lodging house on Ratcliffe Highway in London. Some had to beg for help to get home.

Christian charities responded by establishing the Ayahs’ Home in 1891 in Aldgate, London. It provided accommodation and helped ayahs find work with families returning to India. This was practical assistance, but it also reveals how vulnerable women could become when employers no longer needed them. A few ayahs found continuing employment in Britain, although only a small number settled permanently.

Jewish readmission in 1656

Jews had been expelled from England in 1290. In 1656, during Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate, Jewish settlement was again permitted. This was a major change after more than 350 years of exclusion.

Cromwell’s motives were mixed. Sympathy for people facing persecution mattered, but so did commercial, political and religious considerations. Some Puritans believed that converting Jews to Christianity would help bring about the return of Jesus. Support for Jewish settlement therefore did not always mean acceptance of Judaism on equal terms.

There was opposition to readmission, so settlement initially developed quietly in London before spreading to other towns. Jewish communities were able to worship in their own synagogues and establish businesses. Solomon de Medina, who supplied services and goods to William III, became the first Jewish person to receive a knighthood in England, in 1700.

His success illustrates opportunities available to some Jewish migrants, not the experience of every member of the community. Prejudice continued alongside growing prosperity. Readmission was therefore an important advance in toleration, but it did not remove hostility or make all experiences alike.

Huguenots: persecution and refuge

The Huguenots were French Protestants. Refugees had reached England earlier, but persecution under the Catholic king Louis XIV brought a further major movement from the 1670s onwards. Restrictions included the destruction of Protestant churches and exclusion from professions. From 1681, the dragonnades intensified pressure: soldiers were lodged in Protestant households to force people to convert to Catholicism.

In 1685, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, removing the legal protection it had given French Protestants. Persecution pushed Huguenots out of France, while England’s Protestant religion offered the prospect of safety. Around 40,000–50,000 Huguenots came to England during Louis XIV’s reign.

They received substantial support: William III and Mary II raised £39,000 to help them. Churches and charitable collections also assisted refugees, including those who had lost their property in France. Such help enabled many to establish livelihoods and businesses.

Huguenot contributions and gradual assimilation

Many Huguenots brought skills which benefited the economy. Silk weavers became associated with Spitalfields in London, while Soho attracted watchmakers, goldsmiths, cabinetmakers and printers. Their influence extended beyond providing labour: migrants and their descendants helped develop industries and commercial activity. John Houblon, from a Huguenot family, became the first governor of the Bank of England.

Reception was nevertheless mixed. Some English workers accused Huguenots of undercutting wages and taking work. Riots against the influx of refugee weavers occurred in East London in 1675, 1681 and 1683. Shared Protestant beliefs and valuable skills encouraged acceptance, but competition could still provoke resentment.

Assimilation means adopting aspects of the receiving society’s language, customs and way of life. Huguenots’ trades helped them participate in English society, but this did not immediately erase their separate identity. French-speaking churches provided worship, relief and community networks. Some followed continental Protestant practices, while the Savoy church used the Church of England’s liturgy: religious adaptation varied within the community.

The Marriage Act of 1753, which required Huguenot marriages to take place in Anglican churches, encouraged closer links with English institutions. Over time, their descendants became increasingly integrated into English society. Yet assimilation was not complete or uniform. A French Protestant church opened in Soho Square in 1893, and its nearby school taught children in both English and French. Participation in English life could therefore coexist with the preservation of French language and religious traditions.

Palatines: war, hardship and the arrivals of 1709

The Palatines came from the German Rhine valley, especially the Palatinate and neighbouring regions. Their reasons for leaving combined religious persecution with war and economic hardship. French attacks damaged the region, and Protestants faced oppressive treatment under a Catholic ruler. Bad harvests and a severe winter made survival harder.

Reports of a better life in England and the American colonies, together with promises of welcome for Protestant refugees, encouraged migration. Around 13,000 arrived in England in 1709. Many were artisans or small farmers, but arrived ill and destitute rather than with the resources needed to establish themselves immediately.

The government provided camps around London, including at Blackheath. Public collections initially supported the refugees. Whig supporters viewed them as fellow Protestants escaping Catholic oppression and argued that their farming and craft skills could benefit the economy. The writer Daniel Defoe defended the ‘Poor Palatines’ in 1709.

Why the Palatines’ welcome weakened

As numbers increased, the cost of relief and fears about competition for jobs weakened support. Tory opponents claimed that migrants took work from the English poor and burdened the economy. They also argued that Protestants who did not belong to the Church of England threatened national security. These were political claims, not proof that the refugees caused such harm.

The discovery that about one third of the arrivals were Catholic further undermined a welcome based on the assumption that all were persecuted Protestants. Religious suspicion combined with poverty and dependence on relief to produce hostility, even towards Protestant Palatines.

Some returned home or moved on to North America. Around 3,000 were sent to Ireland, many against their wishes. Catholic Palatines were pressured to convert or return to their homeland. Their experiences show that shared Protestant religion alone could not guarantee acceptance.

Palatine settlement, impact and identity in Ireland

In Ireland, some landlords wanted more Protestant tenants and offered Palatines favourable leases. Settlements included Rathkeale in County Limerick, where over 130 families settled on the Southwell estate. Palatine farmers established rural communities, although much of the available land was marginal. When initial leases expired, higher rents forced some families to move again.

Their impact included farming settlements and enduring religious communities. Families shared resources, including arrangements for using horses. They worshipped within the Church of Ireland, and some later formed Methodist societies, including at Ballingrane and Courtmatrix.

Assimilation was slow. Palatines often married within their own community and remained culturally and religiously distinctive for generations. This shows that using local institutions, such as the Church of Ireland, did not necessarily mean abandoning a separate identity.

Onward migration remained important: by 1760, between half and two thirds had left Ireland, mostly for the American colonies. By the late nineteenth century, a distinct Palatine community in Ireland had largely disappeared, although family names such as Switzer and Tesky survived. This outcome reflected both gradual assimilation and emigration, rather than assimilation alone.

What explains the differences?

Religion mattered, but it was not the only influence on reception. Huguenots often benefited from shared Protestant beliefs, official assistance, commercial networks and marketable skills. Palatines show that Protestant migrants could still lose support when poverty and dependence on relief became politically contentious. Jewish migrants gained opportunities despite not sharing the authorities’ religion, although prejudice remained.

Trade migrants faced a different form of dependence. Lascars and ayahs performed work essential to overseas commerce and British family life, yet could be abandoned when their employment ended. Across these groups, wealth, skills, official support and dependence on employers helped shape whether migration led to security, hardship or another journey.

Trade and empire

• 1600: East India Company founded; expanding Asian trade brought seamen and servants to England.
• Lascars: Asian merchant seamen; low wages, harsh conditions and possible abandonment in British ports.
• Child servants: brought by returning Britons; Bengali boy baptised in London in 1616.
• Ayahs: accompanied families, often intending to return to India; some faced unpaid dismissal and homelessness.