Educating against Revolution: French Émigré Schools and the Challenge of the Next Generation

Abstract

The education of children as future elites after the Restoration was a persistent concern for French émigrés after the Revolution of 1789. Focusing on discourse on émigré education and émigré schools in Britain and the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, this article examines how, in the 1790s, the émigrés' rejection of the Republic and their quest for monarchical restoration resonated in pedagogical activities. Under difficult living conditions and unclear prospects of political exile, education became a consolidating strategy of combating the Revolution with pedagogical means. The social composition, educational programmes, and public representations of émigré schools reveal their pivotal role in émigré community life, involving priests, women, writers, politicians, local supporters – and children. Comparison between Britain and the Holy Roman Empire allows for differentiating strategies of integration into the host societies and of immunization against revolutionary influences. Education contributed to strengthening the émigrés' identity and mobilizing their hosts for the ideological, military, and humanitarian struggle against the Revolution. The students' later careers call for reconsidering experiences of exile education among the elites of Napoleonic and Restoration France.