WI: More Huguenot refugees settled in Switzerland

From the Musée Virtual du Protestantisme Français:
Switzerland was a shelter and a passageway. Rather than places to stay for good, Helvetic cantons, mostly Zurich and Bern, as well as the Geneva Republic were transit places....

Two waves of refugees
The first wave came mainly to Geneva in the period 1540 to 1590.
During the second wave, i.e. before and after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the flow of refugees mainly came from the Dauphiné, Cévennes and Languedoc regions ; the main axis was a corridor from the Geneva Lake to the Rhine River.
The number of people leaving France through Switzerland was enormous, about 140,000 between 1680 and 1770.
The cantons had to be cautious and diplomatic with king Louis XIV, who considered
the refugees as rebels. But he also wanted to preserve the "perpetual peace" signed by François I and renewed in 1663, which enabled him to recruit the soldiers he needed to fight against the coalition created by the Augsburg League.

Settling or passing
22,000 people supposedly settled for good, mostly for language reasons, in French-speaking cantons, even though French speaking churches were in Zurich, Schaffouse, Bern and Basel. Waldenses cities harboured strong Huguenot settlements for a long time. In 1698, there were 6,204 inhabitants comprising 1,598 refugees. As in all other Refuge countries, the high material quality of life in France at the end of the 17th century enabled exiled craftsmen to be in a good position, and to renew the economic growth in shelter countries.
As for passage, it meant negotiating with German princes and free cities, and also with the Scandinavian sovereigns and the United Provinces, to send the flow of refugees who wished to meet the demands of the German princes and specifically the Elector of Brandenburg.

What if a significant number of Huguenots decided to stay in Switzerland, especially in the Romandie region (the French-speaking part)? How it will affect the course of the regional history, and the Swiss history in general? Will it affect its relationship with France?

Share your thoughts on this scenario

Thanks! :)
 
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One side of my great-grandmother's family traces through the 2nd wave of Huguenots going to Switzerland, so this is interesting.

How many other groups of Protestant refugees were there? I know of one large group mentioned in the "Britain ISOT to 1730" TL in the ASB forum, I wonder if they considered a move to Switzerland OTL? if not, knowing that the Swiss would take them in might make them willing to leave before they were forced out.

It's interesting to see an expanded Switzerland; how much largercould it get given the capacity of the land and agriculture back then? If it gets too crowded, people like that ancestor might end up leaving 50 years earlier instead of the 1840s and 1850s (when another Protestant relation's family also came from the Alsace region.)

The question is why would they choose to wait there? My hunch is that a possible POD might be a choice of waiting there versus going to America before it was well settled. That would allow them to grdually decide to come to America once the new nation is founded.

If they stay in Switzerland till the 20th century, that would really be interesting for Switzerland.
 
Wouldnt they just eventually assilimate in Swiss society just like the Hugenots did in the United Provinces?
 
Wouldnt they just eventually assilimate in Swiss society just like the Hugenots did in the United Provinces?
As stated in the link above, those who preferred to stay in Switzerland are mostly assimilated, especially in the Romandie region.
 
What exactly do we mean by "assimilation" when we're talking about French people moving to a French-speaking region?
1) It may be the same language, but it is a different country.
2) They have to learn to count past sixty without taking off their shoes.:) {Standard French goes 60, 60ten, 4score, 4score ten; Belgian and Swiss French go 60, 70, 80, 90)
 
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From the sound of it, there appears to be some significant gains for Switzerland. The refugees are probably going to work very hard to prove they should stay. I do not think that the relationship between France and Switzerland changes enough that the French successfully take away parts of the Romandy region. I figure that anything the French Republic or the French Empire tries to assimilate probably comes back in 1815 anyway.

The Huguenot branch of my family spent a few generations in Ireland - might been a few things change had they instead stayed closer to home.
 
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