ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents the emotional strategies that contributed to the formation and maintenance of stereotypes of difference throughout much of Europe between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. It investigates the complex relationships between communities in exile, the homelands from which they fled or were exiled, and other communities of fellow believers from whom they could seek physical or psychological assistance in their marginalized condition. The book considers the coping strategies religious refugees developed in order to deal with their marginalization and exclusion, whether physical or internal exile. It focuses on the strategies deployed to generate feelings of exclusion in others through models of social difference or alterity that question loyalty, shared values, trust, and control, and how such models and the feelings of exclusion they generate are maintained through a variety of media and representation.
