الغرب الإقصائي .. الأقليات في العصور الوسطى وتكوين أوروبا الحديثة

A timely study of the essential connections between Western European states and their non-Christian minorities in the era of state formation. Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are on the rise in Europe in the twenty-first century, but these perceptions of the malicious and conspiratorial Jew or Muslim go far beyond being a mere medieval stereotype. Over the past millennium, deep currents of exclusion have shaped not only modern relations between majorities and minorities, but also the distinctively Western relationship between state and society. This book poses an important question: Why, in a period when Islamic southern Europe and its Catholic and Orthodox east remained home to religiously diverse communities, did the western fringes of Latin Christianity rid themselves of Jews and Muslims through exploitation, mass murder, deportation, and enslavement? Ariel Salzman identifies the overlapping structural and social roots of this uniquely Western approach, beginning with the rapid consolidation of secular political systems and commercial markets in the era of the Crusades; Passing through the ideology and practice of ritual and political violence against minorities; Leading to distinct forms of economic protectionism resulting from the use of minorities and their resources as bargaining chips. “The Exclusionary West” shows that the exclusion of minorities in the Middle Ages was intimately linked to the foundations of Western European nation-states, affecting the basic rights of civil citizenship and shaping Western notions of identity and belonging. These legacies still retain their insidious and effective power today.