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Owen Stanwood, Between Eden and Empire: Huguenot Refugees and the Promise of New Worlds, The American Historical Review, Volume 118, Issue 5, December 2013, Pages 1319–1344, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/118.5.1319
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In the fall of 1687, conditions appeared dire for Huguenot refugees who had recently fled Louis XIV's France. As their minister in Zurich, Paul Reboulet, reported to a colleague in Geneva, the normal paths of escape, through Switzerland into Germany, had become uncertain. Refugees could no longer go to Bayreuth, Reboulet wrote, as “there are not the means to receive them there,” while authorities in Ulm “no longer permit the Refugees to lodge there in passing.” There was a glimmer of hope, however, from somewhere much farther afield. The Dutch East India Company offered assistance to any Huguenots who would “go to establish themselves at the Cape of Good Hope,” aiming to build a community of “thousands of families.” “The country produces everything,” the minister noted, “and especially Wine.” Looking for a silver lining in what must have appeared an extreme option for French families in search of a stable community, Reboulet looked at the big picture. “For a long time,” he wrote, “I have believed that God's design was to disperse us to carry the Gospel to all the World.”1
