DOI: 10.1111/rest.70083 ISSN: 0269-1213
The Converso Diaspora and Iberian Empires
Claude B. StuczynskiABSTRACT
Whereas there is no consensus among contemporary scholars in defining the Converso diaspora and its criteria of belonging, most of them highlighted its geographical, economic, cultural and political dependence on early modern Iberian empires. Such hermeneutic dissonance explains why early modern representations of the Converso diaspora (whether hostile or sympathetic to the Conversos, Ibero‐centric or Jewish‐centred) were epistemologically reductive, by depicting the Converso diaspora in three main ways: as a quintessential enemy of Iberian empires, as its most successful agents or as endorsing an idea of a non‐sovereign counter‐empire.