Connecting Worlds and People

Early modern diasporas

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.