...This chapter explores the prominent position held by leading New Christian merchants, particularly in Portugal. Leveraging diasporas of Jews and New Christians to various regions facilitated the establishment of an extraordinary intercontinental network by the mid-sixteenth century. It investigates...

... orders that the expansion of overseas commerce set in motion. Cleirac's life unfolded in a city where Jews were indistinguishable from local and foreign Christian merchants involved in long-distance trade, many of whom no longer belonged to a guild. It would not have surprised anyone in seventeenth...

... parity with Christian merchants. Meanwhile, Hamburg's Senate first attracted a Jewish merchant colony by extending privileges but later, by imposing heavy taxes, drove it away. In Amsterdam and London, which had ceased granting charters to foreign merchant colonies, Jews found themselves in the novel...

...This chapter provides a background on the rise and eventual decline of New Christian merchants in Iberia between 1391 and 1497, descendants of Jews forced to convert to Christianity. The New Christian merchants played a significant role in intercontinental trade over several centuries before...