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The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain

1609–1614 · Europe & Northern Eurasia

Displacement Abduction (Children)

Displaced

300,000

Better documented than most early modern expulsions because the operation was administered and shipping was paid for. Henri Lapeyre's reconstruction from embarkation lists and treasury records gives about 272,000; Antonio Dominguez Ortiz and Bernard Vincent and the Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World give approximately 300,000, of whom around 120,000 came from Valencia alone, where Moriscos were perhaps a third of the population. Higher contemporary claims of 500,000 or more are not supported by the administrative record; a small number evaded expulsion or returned.

Share of the population affected

92%

of the Morisco population of Spain immediately before the expulsion decrees, 1609

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What happened

Between September 1609 and 1614 the Spanish monarchy deported the Moriscos, the descendants of Muslims forcibly converted a century earlier, on the grounds that their conversion was insincere and that they were a security risk in a Mediterranean contested with the Ottomans and the Barbary regencies. Expulsion proceeded kingdom by kingdom, beginning with Valencia, where it triggered armed resistance in the Muela de Cortes and the Vall de Laguar. Most were shipped to North Africa, where many were robbed or killed on arrival; others reached Constantinople, Tunis, France and Italy. Estimates of the number deported cluster around 272,000 to 300,000, drawn from embarkation and payment records rather than chronicles, making this one of the better-counted forced migrations before the nineteenth century. Valencia's rural economy was severely damaged and its seigneurial landlords opposed the measure. Some children were retained in Spain, and a minority of Moriscos evaded expulsion or returned.

Parties

Philip III and the Duke of Lerma ordered the deportation of Spain's Morisco population, the baptised descendants of its Muslims, to North Africa and beyond

Disputed

Whether mortality in transit and on arrival ran to a substantial fraction of those expelled is disputed; contemporary claims that a quarter or more died are not corroborated by the administrative record, and the retention of Morisco children in Spain is variously described as a charitable exemption and as a seizure.

The denominator

Henri Lapeyre's reconstruction from the expulsion registers counted 272,140 people actually embarked or driven out, and allowing for evasion, deaths in transit and unrecorded departures most historians put the Morisco population of Spain in 1609 at about 300,000-330,000 — some 4 per cent of a Spanish population of roughly 8.5 million, but a quarter or more of the population of the kingdom of Valencia.

Numerator and denominator come from the same expulsion registers, so the ratio measures how complete the expulsion was rather than what share of a wider population it touched; against Spain's total population the Moriscos were about 4 per cent.

Where the baseline comes from

Expulsion of the Moriscos — Wikipediaopen-edited
Moriscos — Wikipediaopen-edited

On the death toll

No reliable total. Deaths came from fighting during the Valencian resistance, from shipwreck and overcrowding at sea, and from robbery and killing by Berber bands after landing in North Africa, all described in contemporary reports; the frequently repeated claim that a large proportion died has never been substantiated from records.

Documented forms of violence

DenationalizationAbduction of Children

The stripping of subject status from a baptised Christian population and the retention in Spain of Morisco children below a set age against their parents' departure are set out in the expulsion decrees themselves and analysed by Dominguez Ortiz and Vincent.