Bøker av Francisco Bethencourt

"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"--

A groundbreaking history of racismRacisms is the first comprehensive history of racism, from the Crusades to the twentieth century. Demonstrating that there is not one continuous tradition of racism, Francisco Bethencourt shows that racism preceded any theories of race and must be viewed within the prism and context of social hierarchies and local conditions. In this richly illustrated book, Bethencourt argues that in its various aspects, all racism has been triggered by political projects monopolizing specific economic and social resources.Racisms focuses on the Western world, but opens comparative views on ethnic discrimination and segregation in Asia and Africa. Bethencourt looks at different forms of racism, and explores instances of enslavement, forced migration, and ethnic cleansing, while analyzing how practices of discrimination and segregation were defended.This is a major interdisciplinary work that moves away from ideas of linear or innate racism and recasts our understanding of interethnic relations.