Strangers Within The Rise and Fall of the New Christian Trading Elite
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
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."[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."<b>---Noel Malcolm, <i>Times Literary Supplement</i></b>
"What distinguishes <i>Strangers Within</i> from other accounts is its scale. Bethencourt pursues his subjects across the globe, drawing on original archival material from Belgium, Britain, Italy and Peru, as well as Spain and Portugal. Even more impressively, he tracks the conversos over four centuries, from the late Middle Ages to the Enlightenment."<b>---Alexander Bevilacqua, <i>London Review of Books</i></b>
"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."<b>---Cátia Antunes, <i>Ler Historia</i></b>
"An expansive look at one of the most influential and enigmatic communities of the early modern world. . . . <i>Strangers Within</i> is a major contribution to early modern history that will no doubt remain a landmark study of its subject for years to come."<b>---Jonathan Ray, <i>The Catholic Historical Review</i></b>
"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."<b>---Isaiah Silvers, <i>The Historian</i></b>
"Abosrbing. . . . Intensely detailed and researched."<b>---Hallie Cantor, <i>Association of Jewish Libraries</i></b>
"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."<b>---Linda A. Newson, <i>Journal of World History</i></b>
"A tremendously thorough study. . . . Highly recommended."
Choice
"An extraordinary achievement."<b>---Gretchen Starr-LeBeau, <i>Journal of Church and State</i></b>
"For its lucidity, sophistication, tremendous reach, and judiciousness, <i>Strangers Within </i>will remain an important milestone in the historiography of the early modern and modern Iberian Peninsula, as of Iberia’s far-flung diasporas."<b>---David L. Graizbord, <i>Journal of Social History</i></b>
"<i>Strangers Within </i>is an eclectic and ambitious book that enriches the reader with a great deal of novel information and many challenging interpretations, while leaving the impression that it is inherently difficult to address a single narrative of such an overlapping and overflowing phenomenon. This sense of insurmountability, which is also the result of the author’s intellectual honesty, enables us to see Bethencourt’s book as an open work in progress. In my opinion, this <i>tour de force </i>is a blessing for readers, scholars, and the future of the subject."<b>---Claude B. Stuczynski, <i>Journal of Jesuit Studies</i></b>
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.
“This is an important and erudite book. The author has done a magnificent job in integrating archival materials with the existing historiography in certain areas of the field and in the printed documentation on a topic of great interest to a number of areas in religious, intellectual, economic and social history.”—Stuart Schwartz, Yale University
“Among its many achievements, this book avoids essentializing the almost three-century history of the New Christian merchant elite. Issues of identity, religious allegiance, economic and social opportunities, political and institutional regulations and cultural innovation provide the context for many different case studies. Bethencourt’s analysis of the disappearance of the New Christians as an ethnic elite at the end of the eighteenth century illuminates in new ways why and how this group came into existence as well as how it came to play such a pivotal role in international trade across continents and centuries.”—Mercedes García-Arenal, author of Polemical Encounters: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond
“Bethencourt tackles a complex and divisive topic head-on. Specialists will have to contend with his learned and wide-ranging exposition. All readers will find here insights into an urgent scholarly debate: the early and diverse historical manifestations of race thinking.”—Francesca Trivellato, author of The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society
“There may not be a more important topic in Iberian history than the so-called New Christians. This bold new synthesis will reenergize scholarly and public debates on the very essence of what it means to be Spanish or Portuguese.”—Stefania Pastore, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa