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"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"--
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Francisco Bethencourt
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"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
