Despised minorities repeatedly emerge as credit providers in capitalist economies.

Evidence

It must be a cause of some surprise to find some Moriscos were professional moneylenders, but such was undoubtedly the case, as C´ıscar (1993, 60–95) has documented. Obliged as they were to participate in the emerging capitalism of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, some seem to have been able to play the system to their advantage. As in so many other parts of the world, members of a despised minority emerge in the role of providers of credit. From the little that is known as yet about the integration of Morisco refugees into the societies of Islamic lands after the Expulsion of 1609–12, it is clear that some such rich ex-Moriscos took their entrepreneurial skills with them overseas and brought the economics of the plantation system to Tunisia (and perhaps elsewhere). — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1165

Categorization

• XREF: Striking parallel to the Jewish moneylending role in medieval Europe and the Chagossian/impersonal-trust material — a recurring ‘despised minority as creditor’ pattern crossing eras and places.
• QUESTION: Why exactly do despised minorities end up as credit providers? Is it exclusion from other occupations, or the need for capital in diaspora networks? Worth chasing comparative literature.
• SEED: The expelled Moriscos transplanting the plantation economy to Tunisia is a surprising diffusion narrative — Muslims as transmitters of plantation systems overseas.