Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book analyses conversion as the acquisition of a set of historically contingent social practices, which facilitated a process of social, political or religious acculturation and which did not necessitate a comprehensive relinquishing of previous identities. The book also explores the complex, but often flexible, confessional and communal allegiances and loyalties of Mediterranean-based trans-imperial subjects. It explores the ontologically (de)stabilising affect that the practical integration of converts into an existing religious community could have on early modern communities as well as the more abstract threats that conversion could pose. The book shows that the self-fashioning undertaken by converts themselves, and views conversion as a process by which multiple selves are interpolated and interwoven together rather than the simple substitution of religious subjectivities.