Family and Community in the Iberian Empires, 1480-1800

Family and Community in the Iberian Empires, 1480-1800

This workshop will focus on how individuals and members of local communities interpreted the changing world around them in the context of the global expansion of the Spanish and Portuguese empires into the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean basins. New definitions of family and community emerged to address the challenges of maintaining kinship ties over vast distances, religious movements and associations, and communal struggles for rights. Family and community are defined broadly to encompass a range of identifications and affective ties that could be both informal and connected to social and religious institutions that provided members with support.

Essays might address topics including but not limited to Jewish and Muslim minorities on the Iberian Peninsula, trade diasporas, transatlantic family networks, indigenous petitioners, black religious confraternities, and maroon societies. Primary sources for these topics and others are available in English language translation, and the first workshop will introduce you to available sources and databases as well as provide background for researching these topics.