Join us for a roundtable discussion of Prof. Francisco Bethencourt's (Charles Boxer Professor, King's) new book, Strangers Within The Rise and Fall of the New Christian Trading Elite (Princeton University Press). This event is hybrid and we have in person and online tickets available.

In Strangers Within: The Rise and Fall of the New Christian Trading Elite, Professor 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 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, legal and political thought, science, philosophy, and literature. 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.

Speakers: Professor Miri Rubin (Queen Mary, University of London), Professor Regina Grafe (University of Cambridge), and Professor Catia Antunes (Leiden University).

Chair: Professor Toby Green (King’s College London)

Hosted by King's Centre for Early Modern Studies.