Xenofobia y cosmopolitismo en competición

«Popular xenophobia was undoubtedly present in the period, and while the state realized the benefits that could accrue from the skills and expertise of alien workers and merchants, it indirectly fueled anxiety about strangers by supporting a mercantilist ideology that stressed the importance of accumulating wealth within the nation and not allowing bullion to «bleed out» to foreign countries, especially through alien merchants. However, if there was a xenophobic impulse in English culture during the period, it was countered, especially in London, by a competing cosmopolitanism  more tolerant of difference and more inclined to look  beyond the boundaries of the nation-state with something other than contempt and fear.»

Jean E. Howard, Theater of a City: The Places of London Comedy, 1598-1642, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007, p. 9.