The area suffered economically from the mass exodus of Protestant merchants, tradesmen and others during the 17th century, especially after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685).

The appointed Legislative Council was mostly composed of conservative Protestant merchants.

In the 16th century many Flemish Protestant merchants and Spanish and Portuguese Jewish diamond cutters fled to Amsterdam because of religious persecution by the Spanish.

Susanne van Soldt was the daughter of Hans van Soldt (born circa 1555), a wealthy Protestant merchant from Antwerp.

His father, John Bodley, was a Protestant merchant who went to live abroad rather than stay in England under the Catholic regime of Mary.

Jan Huyghen van Linschoten (1563 - 8 February 1611) was a Dutch Protestant merchant, traveller and historian.

In 1685 the provost of merchants in Paris ordered all Protestant privileged merchants in that city to sell their privileges within a month.

Gunter d'Alquen was born in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, the son of a Protestant merchant and reserve officer.

It was led by Pierre Dugua de Mons, a noble and Protestant merchant who had been given a fur trading monopoly in New France by the king.

By the 1820s, Greek entrepreneurs gradually replaced the Protestant British, Dutch, French and other merchants who left the city.