Reconquista Expulsions
Iberian forced conversion and ethnic cleansing
The late Reconquista and its aftermath expelled or forcibly converted Jews and Muslims across Iberia. Spain and Portugal built confessional monocultures through Inquisition terror and demographic engineering later exported to their empires.
Damage
Forced conversion, expulsion, and Inquisition destroyed Iberian Muslim and Jewish communities.
Lives lost
Expulsion mortality and Inquisition killings across decades (order-of-magnitude)
Value lost
Confiscated property and expelled commercial classes
Record Points
- The 1492 Alhambra Decree expelled Jews who refused conversion; Portugal followed with forced baptism and expulsion.
- Muslims of Granada faced conversion pressure, rebellion, and eventual expulsion of Moriscos (1609-14).
- The Inquisition policed blood purity ideologies that racialized religion.
- Confiscated property financed crown and church power.
- Iberian imperial Catholicism carried the same exclusionary template overseas.
Perpetrator(s)
Victims
Muslims of IberiaJews of Iberia