The Legacy of Exile and the Rise of Humanitarianism

The Reformation is said to have sparked the first ‘refugee crisis’ in European history. This essay seeks to map and compare memories of flight and displacement among different confessional groups. More specifically, it shows how histories of forced migration gave rise to a cult of exile which became a popular tool of religious expression in post-Reformation Europe. The cultivation of the exile experience was furthered in particular by transnational solidarity networks that had emerged during the sixteenth century. By organising charity campaigns, shaping media coverage and lobbying for refugee protection, these competing confessional pressure groups encouraged the development of a humanitarian culture on which the eighteenth-century Enlightenment would build.