Strangers Within - by Francisco Bethencourt (Hardcover)

About the Book

"The New Christians, largely former Jews and Muslims who were forced to convert to Christianity in the 16th and 17th centuries, were both a persecuted group as well as an international elite, and their story, argues Francisco Bethencourt, offers a fascinating and indispensable veiw into the period and the making of a global economy. In what is intended to be an authoritative and innovative book, the author will recount how the New Christians were a major force in structuring the Atlantic economy and reconstruct their involvement in trading system which ran from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. Their hybrid religious allegiances, situated as they were primarilybetween Judaism and Christianity, provide a unique case of cosmopolitanism in various parts of the world. New Christian business practices, forms of organisation and codes of behaviour linked intercontinental networks to local agencies. Their ability to resist religious persecution implied alliances at the highest levels of the Catholic Church and the Iberian monarchies. This book will provide entirely new perspectives for our understanding of cosmopolitanism, religious allegiances, political alliances and business history. The New Christian trading elite has been studied in a fragmentary way, compartmentalised in time and space; but it has never been the subject of comprehensive research over the long term, from the forced conversion of the Jews in Portugal in 1497 to the abolition of the distinction between New Christians and Old Christians in Portugal in 1773, spanning connections between Europe, Africa, Asia and the New World"--

Book Synopsis

A comprehensive study of the New Christian elite of Jewish origin--prominent traders, merchants, bankers and men of letters--between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries

In Strangers Within, Francisco Bethencourt provides the first comprehensive history of New Christians, the descendants of Jews forced to convert to Catholicism in late medieval Spain and Portugal. Bethencourt estimates that there were around 260,000 New Christians by 1500--more than half of Iberia's urban population. The majority stayed in Iberia but a significant number moved throughout Europe, Africa, the Middle East, coastal Asia and the New World. They established Sephardic communities in North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, Italy, Amsterdam, Hamburg and London. Bethencourt focuses on the elite of bankers, financiers and merchants from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries and the crucial role of this group in global trade and financial services. He analyses their impact on religion (for example, Teresa de Ávila), legal and political thought (Las Casas), science (Amatus Lusitanus), philosophy (Spinoza) and literature (Enríquez Gomez).

Drawing on groundbreaking research in eighteen archives and library manuscript departments in six different countries, Bethencourt argues that the liminal position in which the New Christians found themselves explains their rise, economic prowess and cultural innovation. The New Christians created the first coherent legal case against the discrimination of a minority singled out for systematic judicial inquiry. Cumulative inquisitorial prosecution, coupled with structural changes in international trade, led to their decline and disappearance as a recognizable ethnicity by the mid-eighteenth century. Strangers Within tells an epic story of persecution, resistance and the making of Iberia through the oppression of one of the most powerful minorities in world history. Packed with genealogical information about families, their intercontinental networks, their power and their suffering, it is a landmark study.

Review Quotes

"The depth and breadth of research underpinning this book is impressive. He has written what will become the standard reference work on the history of the New Christians, and because of the breadth of the scholarship, it also makes a significant contribution to global history."---Linda A. Newson, Journal of World History

"Abosrbing. . . . Intensely detailed and researched."---Hallie Cantor, Association of Jewish Libraries

"Evocative. . . .Bethencourt's portrait of New Christians is ambitious and panoramic. It is a major addition to the historiography of the Inquisition and the Sephardim which successfully re-interprets the political economy of the early-modern Iberian kingdoms. Penetrating discussions of New Christians' involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the colonisation of India ensure that this book will be of interest to historians of race and empire beyond the Iberian worlds."---Isaiah Silvers, The Historian

"[A] richly researched work on a huge subject: the world of the "New Christians" (converted Iberian Jews), and their widely scattered financial and mercantile diaspora, from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth."---Noel Malcolm, Times Literary Supplement

"An expansive look at one of the most influential and enigmatic communities of the early modern world. . . . Strangers Within is a major contribution to early modern history that will no doubt remain a landmark study of its subject for years to come."---Jonathan Ray, The Catholic Historical Review

"It is a book to which people cannot remain indifferent. He voices strong views on his sources and current literature on Early Modern Jewish, Sephardic and New Christian communities worldwide, and challenges entrenched ideas, particularly in Iberian scholarship, about the New Christians and their place in society. Scholars will be talking about this book for the years to come, and heated debate will ensue, I am confident, for the general betterment of scholarship in this and related subjects."---Cátia Antunes, Ler Historia

About the Author

Francisco Bethencourt is the Charles Boxer Professor of History at King's College London. He is the author of Racisms: From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century (Princeton) and The Inquisition: A Global History, 1478-1834.