Proselytizing empires: the many conversions of the Iberian Atlantic, 1479-1668

Pope, Michael Aidan (2022) Proselytizing empires: the many conversions of the Iberian Atlantic, 1479-1668. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

Abstract

This thesis aims to create the foundations of a cultural history of conversion to Catholicism in the Iberian Atlantic through the writing of a connected history of the many conversions which took place during the early modern period. Whilst some comparative works have been done in the past, never before has the writing of a history all the peoples converted across the Iberian Atlantic –Canary Island Pagans, Iberian Jews, Iberian Muslims, Amerindian Pagans, and North and West African Muslims and Pagans –been attempted. Such an intervention is necessary in order to better understand why the newly converted –New Christians –were not only treated differently to the already Catholic –Old Christians –but also why the various New Christian groups were treated differently from one another by their converters and each other. In tandem with this historical work, the ideological drives behind Iberian proselytising efforts and how they changed over the course of the early modern period will be explored, revealing that baptism and converting to Catholicism was never a fixed phenomenon, but rather one amenable to the necessities of the era, as well as the role performed by each New Christian group. Indeed, as the Iberian kingdoms expanded into the Atlantic, the Christian logic of conquest which had held sway during the medieval battles against Islam within the Iberian Peninsula, was forced to adapt to the new realities of a larger world inhabited by people previously outside of the Catholic cosmography. Additionally, this research will map out how the role of enslavement was irrevocably altered by this process, as was its relationship to the Iberian proselytising efforts. In short, this thesis will explore how the very pursuit of a universal Catholic empire was affected by the people it wished to convert.

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