Faith in Exile — How the Huguenots Accidentally Invented Capitalism
When Louis XIV tried to purify France’s faith, he exported its talent instead.
By BananaKing for PastGoneNuts — history for people who know cause and effect are rarely on speaking terms.
In October 1685, Louis XIV — the Sun King, master of pageantry and micromanagement — revoked the Edict of Nantes.
What he intended as spiritual house-cleaning turned out to be the greatest mass resignation letter in French history.
Hundreds of thousands of Protestants — the Huguenots — quietly packed their looms, books, and savings and left the kingdom that had just decided salvation required their absence.
It was, unintentionally, a masterclass in economic self-sabotage.
From Devotion to Diversification
The Huguenots weren’t just devout; they were productive.
They ran banks in Lyon, printed books in Paris, wove silk in Tours, built glass in Normandy.
When the crown forced them out, that know-how migrated — to London, Amsterdam, Geneva, Berlin.
France lost believers; Europe gained entrepreneurs.
Calvinism had already taught them discipline, thrift, and record-keeping.
Exile simply added mobility.
Within a generation, the refugees’ descendants were financing canals, refining textiles, and quietly inventing the modern middle class.
Louis XIV’s Spiritual Accounting Error
The Sun King imagined he was consolidating divine unity.
What he actually consolidated was everyone else’s GDP.
England’s new Bank of England had Huguenot hands behind its ledgers.
Prussia imported entire families to jump-start industry.
Even South Africa’s early wine trade traces back to refugees who replaced persecution with fermentation.
France, meanwhile, spent decades trying to rebuild the very sectors it had exiled.
It never quite caught up.
Faith may move mountains, but talent moves capital.
The Portable Economy
The story feels modern because it is.
Every time a government drives out a class of thinkers — whether by decree, ideology, or paperwork — another country’s startup scene gets an upgrade.
The Huguenots were the prototype for global talent migration.
They didn’t just survive exile; they monetized it.
What We Can Learn (Besides “Don’t Fire Everyone”)
• Talent is a terrible thing to exile.
• Belief and business aren’t opposites; they’re multipliers.
• Progress travels light — usually with a toolkit and a passport.
Louis XIV wanted one faith, one king, one law.
He got a smaller economy and a larger diaspora.
The rest of Europe got the Enlightenment’s supply chain.