[1] Forced conversions of Jews were carried out with support of rulers during Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages in Gaul, the Iberian peninsula and in the Byzantine empire.
[2] Between 1648 and 1649, a large-scale uprising of Cossacks and Ukrainian peasants led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky swept through the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the area of today's Ukraine.
[citation needed] Although forced conversions were less common in the 20th century, missionary activity remained strong, and many Jews chose to convert in order to integrate into secular society.
[7][8] Germany had three main periods of conversion, the first beginning with the Mendelssohnian era (see the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment) and a second wave occurred during the first half of the 19th century.
A list of 32 Jewish families and 18 unmarried Jews who had recently converted was given by David Friedlander to Prussian State Chancellor Hardenberg in 1811.
[9] In the eight old Prussian provinces between the years of 1816–43, during the reign of Frederick William III., 3,984 Jews were baptized, among them the many of richest and most cultured[10] (2,200 from 1822 to 1840, according to the Jewish Encyclopedia).
Across the German states, with the exception of Austria and France, many Jews obtained high stations and large revenues in return for their renouncing Judaism.