New Christian Materiality, 1450–1750
MATERIA is a five-year ERC-funded project, exploring the role played by Iberian New Christians—the descendants of forced converts from Judaism—in developing intercontinental trade. Operating across Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, they developed expertise not only in circulating goods, but in understanding, evaluating, and working with material culture. This project, based at King’s College London and led by Professor Francisco Bethencourt, examines how that knowledge shaped patterns of consumption and the meanings attached to objects in the early modern world.
Image: Jan Huygen van Linschoten “Rua Direita na Cidade de Goa” via Wikimedia Commons (CC0) 1596
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New Christian Materiality, 1450–1750 places material culture at the centre of analysis, asking how knowledge of objects—how they were produced, valued, exchanged, and displayed—influenced wider patterns of consumption. It connects commodities with the social actors who moved them, and explores how trade shaped both markets and everyday life. By bringing together economic, social, and art history with geography, gender studies, and environmental perspectives, the project offers a new way of understanding early modern global trade. It places social and individual agency at its core, focusing on how New Christians navigated conditions of exclusion, mobility, and opportunity.
We organise a weekly reading group to discuss and debate these concepts, often with guest speakers. If you would like to join us please email the team at materia@kcl.co.uk.
Keep an eye on this page for upcoming events and activities.