The word 'refugee' first described which protestants fleeing from France to England?
Refugee refugees. Although similar terms in other languages have described an event marking large scale migration of a specific population from a place of origin, such as the biblical account of Israelites fleeing from Assyrian conquest ("circa" 740 BCE), in English, the term "refugee" derives from the root word "refuge", from Old French "refuge", meaning "hiding place". It refers to "shelter or protection from danger or distress", from Latin "fugere", "to flee", and "refugium", "a taking [of] refuge, place to flee back to". In Western history, the term was first applied to French Huguenots, after the Edict of Fontainebleau (1540), who
Refugee again migrated from France after the Edict of Nantes revocation (1685). The word meant "one seeking asylum", until around 1914, when it evolved to mean "one fleeing home", applied in this instance to civilians in Flanders heading west to escape fighting in World War I. The first modern definition of international refugee status came about under the League of Nations in 1921 from the Commission for Refugees. Following World War II, and in response to the large numbers of people fleeing Eastern Europe, the UN 1951 Refugee Convention adopted (in Article 1.A.2) the following definition of "refugee" to apply to