From Venice to Amsterdam, Cadiz to Istanbul, the global trade networks of the early modern world converged in the harbours and marketplaces of port cities, where economic vitality was measured by the steady influx of foreign products, merchants, sailors and slaves. Although visiting and resident foreigners contributed to the dynamism of the early modern cities, their heterogeneous linguistic, political and religious allegiances challenged the religious and administrative machineries of Catholic, Protestant and Muslim regimes alike. Frequently, the interdependence of European and Levantine commercial networks required cooperation between peoples officially considered political enemies, religious infidels or social pariahs. Whereas the Spanish monarchs became increasingly resolute in imposing Catholic homogeneity in their territories through the forcible conversion and expulsion of Jews (1492) and Moriscos (1609), rulers elsewhere began using the logic of economic pragmatism to revalue the viability of governing a religiously pluralistic state. While xenophobia and religious persecution persisted throughout this period, under certain conditions the lure of financial profit proved even stronger.

Historians of early modern Europe oft en trace the foundations of religious toleration to the socio-economic and political developments of Protestant countries, as exemplified by the freedom of conscience permitted in Calvinist Amsterdam during the seventeenth-century Golden Age of the Dutch Republic. On the other hand, Mediterranean scholars emphasize the inclusivity of the pluralistic Ottoman Empire, where non-Muslim Jewish and Christian subjects were tolerated and politically integrated according to the Ottoman interpretation of the Qur'anic principle of dhimmi, which embraced non-Muslim peoples ‘of the book’.