The Iberian Atlantic Empires

World History Connected, 2010

Review essay: Debra Blumenthal, Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth-Century Valencia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009). Laurent Dubois and Julius S. Scott, eds. Origins of the Black Atlantic: Rewriting Histories (New York: Routledge, 2009). J.H. Elliott, Spain, Europe and the Wider World 1500-1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). Matthew Restall, The Black Middle: Africans, Mayas, and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009). Stuart B. Schwartz, All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).

Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1993

Journal of Global Slavery, 2017

This article explores the linkages between the slave trades to Spanish and Portuguese America during the Iberian Union (1580–1640). Drawing upon legal suits, it argues that Brazilian port cities were both destinations and hubs for the re-exportation of West Central African captives to Spanish colonies. Vessels frequently “stopped over” in Brazilian ports following the Atlantic crossing due to navigational exigencies and to avoid paying the higher duties on captives levied in Spanish American ports. This article demonstrates that the integration of the slave trades to Spanish and Portuguese America facilitated the spread of slavery well beyond sugar-producing regions.

2003

A study of the intense diplomatic relations maintained between the Portuguese and Leonese, afterwards Castilian-Leonese, monarchies throughout the Middle Ages. They were dotted with a series of agreements relating to the internal problems of each kingdom, the mutual relations and the general political situation in the Iberian Peninsula. These relations, except for specific moments of brief warfare, which were sometimes very serious, were friendly and familiar. This didn't exclude the occurrence of frictions resulting from contrary interests. On both sides of the frontier very similar problems were faced: dynastic confrontations or rebellions of the nobility in which both monarchies usually collaborated closely. Castilian expansion and the resulting imbalance of power in its favour, was the cause of the gravest tensions.

Sprin Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, 2024

This article explores the dynamics of domination and subordination during the mid-15th century, marked by the Arab and Ottoman Empire's dominance in the Middle East, posing obstacles to European relations with China and India. In response, Western European nations, particularly Portugal and Spain, emerged as leaders in exploration, seeking alternative routes to bypass the challenges of the Middle East. Liberated from Muslim influence, these nations focused their efforts on discovering new sea routes to India and beyond. The narrative centers on Portuguese sailor Henry's role in planning expeditions to the Canary Islands, aiming to identify novel commercial routes for Portugal's development in Africa. Subsequently, the Spanish, influenced by Portugal's efforts, discovered new lands by employing Christopher Columbus. Columbus initially proposed his plan, "The Way to India," to the King of Portugal, but it was rejected. Turning to Spain in 1484, he secured the Queen's consent with the help of his shipbuilder brother, ultimately discovering America. Employing a descriptive-analytical research method, this article utilizes library research to delve into the historical background and explore the intricacies of European exploration during this transformative period.

In: Crome, A. (eds) Prophecy and Eschatology in the Transatlantic World, 1550−1800. Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1500-1800. Londres: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

When in 1500 the Portuguese commander Pedro Álvares Cabral, headed for India, landed at an uncharted coast in the South-western Atlantic, he and his crew claimed the land for the Portuguese king, Manuel I, and named it after the Holy Cross consecrating all with a mass. Bid by Cabral, the ship’s scribe Pero Vaz de Caminha wrote a letter to the king announcing and describing their find and all their actions. The letter narrated the temperate weather, the abundance of trees and water, and also the possible existence of gold and silver. The soil was so rich that anything one tried to plant would most certainly flourish, he said. Caminha depicted the reddish-brown-skinned natives as innocent in their nudity, and wrote of their women showing their beautiful bodies as if they were unaware of the original sin. The resemblance to Edenic motifs and locus amoenus topoi is evident, as is the overlapping between Christian faith and the royal maritime enterprise. Decades later, the Land of Holy Cross, to the dismay of some men of letters and of the cloth, had its name changed to Brazil, partially after the brazilwood tree (‘Pau-Brasil’) which produced red dye and was the first significant Portuguese American commodity. Authors like João de Barros, in 1554, saw in the naming a refusal to pursue an evident divine election and denounced it as the victory of mercantile and sinful actions over Christian mission. As such, the alteration to the new name denied the important role that the Portuguese kingdom and its new possession ought to take in God's plan. A few years before the arrival of the Portuguese ship on the shores of future Brazil, Christopher Columbus found a land that he initially thought to be the Far East. The first and final destination of his endeavour supported by the Catholic kings of Spain, Columbus was trying to find a route to the East, as an alternative to that cut off by the fall of Constantinople, captured by the Ottomans. But when he realised that he was in an unheard of country of unknown peoples, he started to draw a prophetical plan based on pseudo-Joachimite writings in which the navigation and conquest of a New World would play a decisive part.

Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, 2015