Connecting Worlds and People

Early modern diasporas

Dagmar Freist, Susanne Lachenicht, Dagmar Freist, Susanne Lachenicht

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317162001
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: History
• Categoría: European Renaissance History

In recent decades historians have emphasized just how dynamic and varied early modern Europe was. Previously held notions of monolithic and static societies have now been replaced with a model in which new ideas, different cultures and communities jostle for attention and influence. Building upon the concept of interaction, the essays in this volume develop and explore the idea with specific reference to the ways in which diasporas could act as translocal societies, connecting worlds and peoples that may not otherwise have been linked. The volume looks at the ways in which diasporas or diasporic groups, such as the Herrnhuters, the Huguenots, the Quakers, Jews, the Mennonites, the Moriscos and others, could function as intermediaries to connect otherwise separated communities and societies. All contributors analyse the respective groups' internal and external networks, social relations and the settings of social interactions, looking at the entangled networks of diaspora communities and their effects upon the societies and regions they linked through those networks. The collection takes a fresh look at early modern diasporas, combining religious, cultural, social and economic history to better understand how early modern communication patterns and markets evolved, how consumption patterns changed and what this meant for social, economic and cultural change, how this impacted on what we understand as early developments towards globalization, and how early developments towards globalization, in turn, were constitutive of these.

1 The nation of Naturales del Reino de Granada

Transforming identities in the Morisco Castilian diaspora, 1502–1614¹

Manuel F. Fernández Chaves and Rafael M. Pérez García

Moriscos in the Kingdom of Granada (1502–68)

When in 1492 the Catholic Monarchs conquered the Kingdom of Granada, this territory became incorporated into the dominions of the Crown of Castile. A number of capitulation pacts settled conditions of surrender between the Granadian Mudéjares—as they were to be called thenceforth—and the crown. They guaranteed the Mudéjares the right to maintain their religion, language, their traditional ways of life, and local self-government—to some extent (Ladero 1969; Sánchez 1984). From the Late Middle Ages the Catholic Crown’s subjects’ rights depended on membership of the Christian community, as the Partidas issued by Alfonso X in the thirteenth century make clear. The presence of Jews and Muslims (Mudéjares) had been assimilated into the Iberian Peninsula’s political framework without major conflicts, through the creation of specific socio-political statuses based on a personal relationship with the king. This is the typical response of medieval and early modern societies based on the notion of privilege. However, the rapid changes undergone by the political and religious climate during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs dramatically transformed the conditions for the Jews and Mudéjares, in Castile, and, from 1492, in Granada. The expulsion of the Jews in 1492 was only a first step towards an increasingly restrictive religious policy in the Kingdom of Granada, driving the Mudéjares to rise in a series of revolts (1499–1502) ending in their defeat and the promulgation of the 1502 decree forcing them to convert to Christianity, or to be expelled (Pérez 2009). This was the so-called “conversión general”, following which the vast majority of the resident Muslims opted for conversion as a way of remaining in their homeland. Thenceforth they were to be referred to as “new Christians of the Kingdom of Granada” or “Moriscos”. Although this official conversion must have been a traumatic experience, the following years saw the construction of a new status quo, mostly promoted by King Ferdinand the Catholic and based on the principles of political pragmatism. In this regard, from 1504 a specific fiscal policy was applied to the Moriscos in Granada, with increasingly heavy taxes in exchange for the official tacit toleration of their language, their customs, their clothes and, inexplicitly, of cultural practices with a marked Muslim profile (including births, weddings, deaths, celebrations, music, dance, animal slaughter, and so forth). The arrival of King Charles I to the throne briefly overturned the previous settlements between the crown and the Moriscos from Granada. A group of theologians and politicians summoned by the Emperor to the Royal Chapel of Granada in 1526 denounced the persistence of an Islamic society in the kingdom and issued new restrictions against the Arabic language and script, Muslim clothing, and other cultural practices. The situation was, however, soon to revert to its previous condition; the fiscal pact was to be renewed, a new tax established to cover the costs of the Renaissance palace in the Alhambra. The formula of exchanging tributes for cultural survival prevailed until the 1560s, although the growing tax pressure made it increasingly difficult for the Moriscos: a third “servicio” or “farda” was imposed in 1544. By the 1560s the Moriscos from the Kingdom of Granada were contributing approximately 45,000 ducados per year to the royal treasury. The taxation suffered by the Moriscos in Granada was much higher than that endured by the inhabitants of any other of the Spanish kingdoms, increasingly causing social unrest and conflicts among privileged Moriscos who were exempt from paying taxes or cooperated with the tax collectors, and those who had no choice other than to pay full taxes (Castillo 1992; Vincent 1985a; Galán 2005; Pérez and Fernández 2015a, 2015b).² Conversion to Catholicisim could not exempt Moriscos from the discriminatory fiscal treatment suffered until the 1568 rebellion. The Moriscos in the Kingdom of Granada were at the time considered a “nation”, an expression used to refer to an ethnic/religious group within a specific territory (the Kingdom of Granada), with its own language (Arabic), and an Islamic shared heritage: “los naturales del Reino de Granada” (Vincent 1985b, 213–14).³

Despite all of this, the Moriscos in the Kingdom of Granada had a remarkable ability to adapt and survive, mainly through internal social cohesion. On the one hand, the latter was channelled through the extended family—of clear Arab-Islamic undertones—known as “linaje” or “parentela”, organized around so-called “Morisco surnames”.⁴ Sustained endogamic practices reinforced family groups strongly attached to a particular town or region and often tightly clustered in the same streets or neighbourhoods. The authority of the group leader remained in force among his kin, acting as political lever and guaranteeing rapid mobilization, as shown by the rebellion and the subsequent war (1568–1570). On the other hand, local communities were built around these kinship groups, they were equally attached to the landscape, the land and its cultivation (Vincent 1987, 1985b). Politically and economically prominent Morisco families were at the head of these local communities. Sometimes their prestige was also religious, as they often were descended from famous faqı¯hs which effectively operated as the legitimate political representative of the locale (Galán 2008). These Morisco elites had very different backgrounds—some went back to the Nasrid period. Others had gained their prestige following the conquest and the “conversión general”; they played a key role in cementing internal cohesion of the community and nation and represented it in political and fiscal negotiations with the Castilian authorities. It may be said that they were community leaders and collaborationists all at once, because they were instrumental in helping the crown in the relatively peaceful governance of its Morisco subjects (Castillo 2000; Vincent 2006a; Pérez and Fernández 2015b).

As a result, the Kingdom of Granada became a particularly profitable territory, with the Moriscos’ taxes covering the costs for coastal defence. This was possible despite the Kingdom’s difficult orography and economic structure, fundamentally oriented towards subsistence practices with but a few exceptions: Malaga’s dried fruits, sugar, produced at the coast of Granada, and silk, the main economic activity in the Nasrid kingdom, especially after the Genoese merchants had taken over its commercialization from the harbours of Malaga, Vélez, Almuñécar and Almería (Heers 1961, 477–8). The silk industry, which not only produced large quantities but was also renowned for its quality, was one of the key elements for taxation within the Nasrid kingdom, later adopted almost without change by the Catholic Monarchs (Ulloa 1977, 359–73; Carande 2004, 84–90). Silk, the international projection of which was still controlled by the Genoese during the sixteenth century, was, along with the sugar trade, the foundation of the wealth of a number of Morisco families. The Hermes, Chapiz, Berrio, Raya, Ferí and the Çebtini, among others, amassed important assets through participating in a complex economic system with the Genoese and “New Christians”, including converted Jews from Toledo who had come to Granada precisely to participate in the silk trade (Andújar and Díaz 2000). In fact, the period between 1502 and 1568 saw the progressive economic integration of the Kingdom of Granada into the Crown of Castile, and the main Morisco tradesmen and capitalists, such as the Berrio and the Çebtini, extended their economic networks across Andalusia and a good deal of Castile, drawing links with the main economic centres Seville, Toledo and Medina del Campo (Pérez and Fernández 2011–13, 2015b). Although the most important among these Moriscos could act independently, many of them—including the Berrio—operated as a part of the vast Genoese trade networks, within which they exchanged silk, other goods and financial services. Sometimes, the Moriscos can be found acting as intermediaries and middlemen in financial transactions between Genoese traders residing in different Castilian cities.⁵

Similarly, the disappearance of the military frontier facilitated the migration of Castilian Mudéjares towards Granada (López de Coca 2003), and in general eased contacts with other Morisco communities in Valencia and Aragón; Valencian Moriscos, despite the regulations aimed at limiting their mobility, penetrated Castile, Aragón and Catalonia; at the same time they maintained contacts with northern Africa (Halperín 2008, 65–6, 76–9, 85). Historiography has tended to overemphasize the importance of regional divisions between Morisco communities (Domínguez and Vincent 1985; Fernández and Pérez 2012), but the intensity and reach of diverse kinds of relationships—commercial, Crypto-Islamic and even conspiratorial—between Moriscos of different kingdoms and even with other Mediterranean Muslims, must not be underestimated (Vincent 2009; Bernabé 2012).

During the period between the “conversión general” in 1502 and the beginning of the rebellion in the Alpujarras, in 1568, Morisco society in the Kingdom of Granada underwent an inevitable process of transformation caused by the arrival of “Old Christians”, mostly from other regions within the Crown of Castile. This brought about change in the demographic balance including the almost full replacement of Moriscos in some of the main cities, such as Malaga, and their relegation to a minority position in those where they remained in significant numbers: Almeria, Baza, Guadix. They disappeared almost entirely from coastal regions (Galán and Peinado 1997), following official relocation policies based on military criteria. The creation of a defensive system along the coasts of the Kingdom of Granada and the deployment of an army created ex profeso was aimed at preventing contacts between Moriscos and Muslims in northern Africa (Gámir 1988). It was also meant to fence off the constant incursions launched by Barbary corsairs and the Turks (Jiménez 2004). The crown’s repopulation policies were successful: by 1561 the Moriscos amounted to merely 57 per cent of the total population of the Kingdom of Granada (164,000 Moriscos compared with 127,000 new settlers), although the territorial distribution of both groups was clearly segregated (Vincent 1980, 183–6). Indeed, these two communities carried on with their lives in parallel and were fully aware of their neatly separated and even contradictory identities (Vincent 2006b). When conflict eventually flared, Moriscos and “Old Christians” in the Kingdom of Granada were still two different human groups, with contrasting identities, a consequence not only of their unequal legal and fiscal status, but also of an ideologically loaded distinction. Inequality and tensions were finally to explode dramatically in 1566 (Pérez and Fernández 2012) following the promulgation of a number of decrees by which the crown prohibited the use of the Arabic language and of Morisco surnames, clothing and customs (España Legislación 1567). The application of these restrictive measures was a one-sided breach of the “fiscal pact” and would, in the opinion of the Moriscos and their leadership, cause the social and cultural annihilation of their community.⁶

War, deportations and exile in Castile (1569–84)

The rebellion of the Moriscos started in the region of the Alpujarras on Christmas Eve 1568. This was the beginning of a war that lasted for two long years, causing thousands of deaths. It practically destroyed the Kingdom of Granada. The consequences for the Moriscos of Granada were dramatic. The zones that joined the rebellion suffered especially grievous military operations, almost all the survivors were enslaved. This was particularly the case in the region of the Alpujarras, the Marquisate of Cenete and most zones in Almeria. In the populous city of Granada, where around 25,000 Moriscos still lived, the Vega de Granada, Guadix, Baza and the Axarquía, in Malaga, the Moriscos suffered deportation to the Guadalquivir Valley and Castile even before the end of the war, with the intention of isolating the rebels and of depriving them of the possible support of those who had not apparently risen in arms. In other regions, such as the Serranía de Ronda, the scene of cruel battles towards the end of the conflict, whole communities were also deported en bloc. Finally, the ultimate defeat of the rebels in November 1570 gave way to the general deportation of the remaining Moriscos. Overall, around 80,000 Moriscos were forced to go north (Domínguez and Vincent 1985, 35–56), around 25,000 were enslaved—their final destinations were mostly in the Guadalquivir Valley (Aranda 1984, 128–34; Fernández and Pérez 2009, 89–119), and between 10,000 and 15,000 were allowed to remain in Granada. The latter group included around 30 known families of “collaborationists”, highly skilled artisans, “conocedores” (experts) and specialists in irrigation agriculture who were considered essential for the restoration of the economic infrastructures, escapees, illegal residents and, mainly, thousands of slaves and children fostered by and in the service of “Old Christians” (Vincent 1985c, 267–86; Pérez 2009; Soria 2012).

The programme of deportation implemented ...