Strangers and foreigners: hospitality and hostility in Britain, France, and Germany, 1680-1850

Université Bordeaux Montaigne, Bordeaux, France, 3-5 April 2024

The languages of the conference are French and English.

CFP in French below

The ongoing wars and migrations have foregrounded the issue of the hosting of migrants and the duty of hospitality. This international Early career symposium aims to explore the relationship to foreigners in Germanophone areas, France and Britain (including colonial spaces) from the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), which provoked international migrations of Protestant refugees, to the revolutions of 1848, which were characterized both by internationalist fervour and by political exiles. Western European ancien régime societies elaborated legal rules and practical arrangements to receive or reject foreigners who were endowed with various statutes. The French Revolution, and later the repressive policies following the Congress of Vienna (1815), sent thousands of political refugees into exile across Europe. While there was no legal recognition of exile, those refugees found themselves the object of migratory policies varying from country to country, with Britain granting total liberty of settlement in 1826. The importance of the religious and political questions in the reception of strangers should not make us lose sight of the significant role of economic migrations, which may also be dealt with in this conference.