Douglas (Irish: Dúglas) is a suburb of Cork City that is situated 4 km south of Cork City in Ireland. As its borders are ill-defined and it straddles the boundary between Cork City and County Cork, it is difficult to ascertain the exact population. The town was founded when Huguenot refugees introduced the textile industry in the 18th century. Prior to Calvin's publication in 1536 of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, a reform movement already existed in France. Despite persecution, the movement grew. Under King Henry II reprisals became more severe. Nevertheless, in 1559, the first French national synod was held, and a Presbyterian church modeled on Calvin's reform in Geneva was founded. The adherence of a large number of the nobility to the movement gave it political meaning and added fuel to persecution. For a time, the Edict of Nantes allowed them to practice their religion in certain cities.
King Louis XIV revoked the "irrevocable" Edict of Nantes in 1685 and declared Protestantism illegal with the Edict of Fontainebleau. After this, huge numbers of Huguenots (with estimates ranging from 200,000 to 500,000) fled to surrounding Protestant countries: England, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark and Prussia. On December 31, 1687 a band of Huguenots set sail from France to the colony at the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. Many of the farms in the Western Cape province in South Africa still bear French names and there are many families, today mostly Afrikaans speaking, whose surnames bear witness to their French Huguenot ancestry. Examples of these are du Toit, de Villiers, Theron, du Plessis and Labuschagne amongst others, which are all common surnames in present day South Africa.
Barred from settling in New France, many Huguenots moved instead to the 13 colonies of Great Britain in North America, the first in 1624 (in 1924 a commemorative half dollar, known as the Huguenot-Walloon Half Dollar, was coined in the United States to celebrate the 300th anniversary of this settlement). Huguenot immigrants founded New Paltz, New York, where is now located the oldest street in America with the original stone houses, New Rochelle, New York (named after the town of La Rochelle in France), and a neighborhood in New York City's borough of Staten Island was named "Huguenot" after them. Some of the settlers chose the Virginia Colony, and formed communities in present-day Chesterfield County and Powhatan County just west of Richmond, Virginia, where their descendents continue to reside. The Huguenot Memorial Bridge across the James River was named in their honor. Many Huguenots also settled in the area around the current site of Charleston, South Carolina. In 1685, Rev. Elie Prioleau from the town of Pons in France settled in what was then called Charlestown. He became pastor of the first Huguenot church in North America in that city. That church is the oldest continuously active Huguenot congregation in the United States today. An estimated 50,000 Huguenots fled to Britain. A leading Huguenot theologian and writer who led the exiled community in London, Andre Lortie (or Andrew Lortie), became known for articulating Huguenot criticism of the Holy See and transubstantiation.
The name Douglas derives from the Irish words Dubh Ghlas, meaning Dark Stream, which still flows through the village. The stream flows into Cork Harbour.