Join KCL’s Centre for Early Modern Studies on Friday 22nd May for a one-day workshop on interactions between the Iberian Atlantic and North Africa. This workshop has been organised by Dr. Ana Struillou (KCL) and Dr. Kaja Cook (Royal Holloway) and has been generously supported by Past & Present.
To attend, please register here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/centreforearlymodernstudies/2083479
Event Overview
Pre-modern Maghribi societies have so far been marginalised in Atlantic history and predominant global history narratives, being perceived as static and backward. Building on important scholarship on the African diaspora and Muslim presence in the Americas that has greatly contributed to enriching the picture of the early modern Atlantic and the Spanish Empire in particular, this workshop will explore how North Africans actively participated in, and helped constitute, the Iberian Atlantic world, be it as corsairs raiding the Iberian Islands of Madeira and the Canaries or as enslaved and free communities shaping the culture of the early modern Spanish Americas.
At the same time, this workshop reverses the perspective of this scholarship by considering how African societies, particularly North African ones, were far from indifferent to Spanish colonial expansion into the Atlantic and how they were shaped as a result of the new ideas, commodities, and people crossing the Atlantic.
Several papers will be specifically dedicated to uncovering material circulations between North Africa and the Americas. In recent years, a number of scholars have emphasized the intellectual engagement of the Muslim world with Spanish overseas possessions by studying Ottoman maps and ethnographical writings on the Americas. However, research has mostly concentrated on learned communities active in Constantinople. This workshop will enrich understandings of the relations between the Muslim world and European overseas possessions by investigating the tangible circulation of American goods in the Maghrib, rather than solely intellectual knowledge. This shift will uncover engagement with the Americas within the Muslim world, at a much deeper social level and beyond imperial capitals.
Full details and a provisional program can be found here: https://kingsearlymodern.co.uk/events/mexico-in-algiers-rabat-in-bahia-rethinking-interactions-between-the-iberian-atlantic-and-the-maghrib-1400-1800