What does the word émigré mean and where does it come from?
Émigré means a person who has emigrated, often with a connotation of political or social exile. The word is the past participle of the French verb émigrer, meaning to emigrate.
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Émigré means a person who has emigrated, often with a connotation of political or social exile. The word is the past participle of the French verb émigrer, meaning to emigrate.
French Huguenots fled France following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which stripped Protestants of the legal protections they had previously held.
Loyalists who emigrated during and after the American Revolution went chiefly to other parts of the British Empire, including Upper Canada, Nova Scotia, Great Britain, Jamaica, and the British West Indies. The new American government awarded the lands they left behind to Patriot soldiers as land grants.
The Wielka Emigracja was the wave of Polish émigrés who sought refuge in Western Europe throughout the nineteenth century after a series of failed uprisings against the partitioning powers of Austria, Prussia, and Russia. Most settled in France; the group included artists, soldiers, politicians, and escaped prisoners-of-war.
After the October Revolution, more than 20,000 émigrés went to Finland and Yugoslavia. Paris became the favourite destination for Russian émigrés overall, while many others traveled east to China, particularly to Harbin and Shanghai.
The 2011 Australian census recorded 145,683 South African-born émigrés living in Australia, of whom 30,291 resided in Perth or the greater Perth area.