Global early modern

Featured Interviews

From the Archivist’s Nook: An interview with Christy Lobo
Interviews | June 26, 2023

From the Archivist’s Nook: An interview with Christy Lobo

Christy Lobo is the archivist at the Archives of the Jesuit Madurai Province in Shembaganur, Tamil Nadu. Technically skilled with an M.Sc. in Computer Science and a passion for the history of Jesuits in India, Mr. Lobo is keen on using the latest technologies in maintaining the Shembaganur archives and enhancing its online presence. In this brief interview, Jesuit studies scholar and Toynbee Prize Foundation Editor-at-Large Joseph Satish V talks to Christy Lobo about his work as an archivist and his enthusiasm for all things Jesuit.

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A More Expansive Atlantic History of the Americas: An Interview with Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra
Interviews | August 12, 2021

A More Expansive Atlantic History of the Americas: An Interview with Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra

Jorge Cañizares Esguerra details his current project, Radical Spanish Empire. His aim is to historicize, to radicalize, to Americanize (expansively understood), and to show that colonial Massachusetts is unintelligible without Puebla or Tlaxcala in colonial Mexico, that colonial Virginia makes no sense without its Andean and Peruvian counterparts, and that Calvinists should be understood alongside Franciscans.

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Justice in the New World: An Interview with Brian Owensby and Richard Ross
Interviews | October 6, 2020

Justice in the New World: An Interview with Brian Owensby and Richard Ross

In what ways did both settlers and natives understand or partly understand or misunderstand the other side’s legal commitments while learning about them? Framed against the ongoing problematic of intelligibility, legal historians Professors Brian Owensby and Richard Ross's edited volume Justice in a New World analyses two sets of comparisons: one between settlers and natives, and the other between a British and Iberian America.

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Negotiating Maritime Power in Early Modern East Asia: An Interview with Adam Clulow
Interviews | July 5, 2018

Negotiating Maritime Power in Early Modern East Asia: An Interview with Adam Clulow

Clulow's work on the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and its role in the turbulent political environment of East Asia challenges standard views of power relations in the diplomatic encounter between early modern Europe and East Asia. Looking at conflict and negotiation between a European overseas enterprise and a powerful military government in Japan, Clulow questions analytical categories such as state and company, piracy and privateering, diplomacy and violence. The VOC, he shows, was a master shapeshifter, altering its appearance whenever it needed to. When it came to Tokugawa Japan, the Company was in fact relatively small and weak. Clulow's work challenges widespread notions about early modern relationships between Europe and East Asia, and the evolution of modern state institutions.

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Featured Articles

REVIEW: Lourenço da Silva Mendonça and the Black Atlantic Abolitionist Movement in the Seventeenth Century
Article | May 31, 2023

REVIEW: Lourenço da Silva Mendonça and the Black Atlantic Abolitionist Movement in the Seventeenth Century

In this monograph Dr José Lingna Nafafé of the University of Bristol uses the figure of Lourenço da Silva Mendonça, a member of the Ndongo royal family, as a means of disrupting the history of slavery abolition. Exiled from his homeland in Angola in December 1671, Mendonça was sent to Brazil and then Portugal, before finally heading to the Italian Peninsula in 1684, via Spain, to present his case against the trans-Atlantic trade of enslaved people. And this court case, in which Mendonça called for the abolition of slavery, is the central focus of the text, what Lingna Nafafé sees as the culmination of the seventeenth century ‘Black Atlantic Abolition Movement.’ A book review by Editor-at-Large Michael Aidan Pope.

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Archival Reflections—Transatlantic Material Culture Research in Spain and the Americas
Article | May 11, 2020

Archival Reflections—Transatlantic Material Culture Research in Spain and the Americas

Reflections from the archives: The colonization of the Americas created a level of diversity not seen before by European powers. Not only did Iberians intermix with native populations, but also with African slaves. As the viceroyalties became increasingly ethnically complex, authorities created a socio-racial hierarchy in an attempt to establish a sense of order. Given my professional background, I noticed the critical role that clothing—and the regulation of such items—played in the struggle to assert status in the public sphere. 

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Featured Blog Posts

BLOG—Phantom Africa: The Topos of Silent Trade
The Blog | November 24, 2020

BLOG—Phantom Africa: The Topos of Silent Trade

One of the most resilient topoi of writing on Black Africa is that of the so-called silent trade. It first appears in Herodotus and from there it is dutifully repeated in geographies, histories, descriptions and travel accounts that portray African people (in Latin, Arabic, and different European vernaculars) well into the 19th century. So much so that already by the 15th century Venetian captain Alvise Cadamosto concluded in the account of his travel to the rivers of Guinea: “Since it is related by so many we can accept it as true.”

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Navigating PARES, or, how to research the history of the global Spanish Empire during a global pandemic
The Blog | July 11, 2020

Navigating PARES, or, how to research the history of the global Spanish Empire during a global pandemic

The digital revolution has seen millions of pages of Spanish manuscripts digitized and shared through the free PARES (portal de archivos españoles) platform in recent years, the Spanish government’s archive web portal. These include sources for the study of topics including Iberian voyages of discovery and conquest, the Atlantic slave trade and the diverse experiences of slavery in the Iberian world, and indigenous revolts against colonial rule such as the Tupac Amaru rebellion. Scott Cave led a one-hour ‘hands on’ seminar guiding participants on how to find and read digitized documents relating to this rich history through PARES.

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Doing Global History: Research Field Guide to the Archivo General de la Nación (Mexico)
The Blog | February 26, 2020

Doing Global History: Research Field Guide to the Archivo General de la Nación (Mexico)

When you approach the Archivo General de la Nación (AGN) in Mexico City, Mexico, you notice large dark fences, big walls, and intriguing architecture. You typically enter through a massive gate, secured by an armed police officer, near the complex's parking lot. The guards and AGN's structural qualities convey a sense of protection and control. One could easily think that this design is to keep documents safely inside. While that is presently true, the original design was to keep people inside.

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