Entre prudence et solidarité. L’accueil en Suisse des réfugiés de la Révocation

The recent influx of countless Near Eastern refugees on the European continent forms an excellent occasion to reconsider the asylum policy maintained towards the Huguenots in Refuge countries following the Revocation in 1685. As several historical studies on the Swiss welcome of these refugees have demonstrated, it was marked as much by a generosity towards one’s “brothers in the faith” as it was by efforts to stem the flow of migrants and direct them to other Refuge-territories. From a historical perspective the asylum policy of the Swiss authorities was therefore at once the fruit of an “ethic of responsibility” and of an “ethic of conviction” (cf. Max Weber).