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AGENDA FOR THE 18th SCIENTIFIC MEETING OF THE SPANISH EARLY MODERN HISTORY FOUNDATION
Ferrol, June 11-13, 2025
Updated 2024.05.06
SECTION A. WOMEN IN THE EARLY MODERN AGE IN THE HISPANIC WORLD
The aim of this section is to offer a fresh overview of the history of gender, combining already established knowledge with innovative approaches, different interpretations of documentary sources and socially inclusive perspectives. Accordingly, the following contributions address ongoing theoretical, methodological and terminological debates, as well as the most recent proposals, assessing the extent to which they can be adapted or applied to the Early Modern Age. Agency, empowerment and sorority are some of the categories and concepts behind the changes in the approaches taken in the most recent literature on the subject. Contributions on the Spanish monarchy’s American and Asian domains are welcome.
1. Women: empowered and subjugated
Women and pregnancies: from “empowerment” to disgrace. The multiple realities of pregnancy.
Margarita Torremocha Hernández (University of Valladolid)
This section first enquires into power in the broadest sense of the word, including not only the political kind but also all the different meanings of this concept and all the spheres in which women wielded or assumed and felt it – both the power that allowed them to exert control over other people, land or goods and that which was exercised over them (women in the face of political, judicial or administrative power, among other types). Therefore, it encompasses political (queens and vicereines, governors, noblewomen, abbesses, etc.), judicial (the exercise of manorial jurisdiction) and administrative power (the buying and selling of offices). It is important to include those women who held indirect power, as wives and daughters of those who possessed such offices, or as widows of powerful men.
The second topic is initiative, namely, the ability of women to act in these spheres and in the economy and the involvement of public and private finance in the administration, the creation of or participation in trading companies and credit and lending transactions, among other aspects. This includes the study of the institutions and spaces in which women were able to exercise power and take the initiative, as well as that of legislation, regulations and opinions as regards women’s capabilities in those areas.
2. Women in families and beyond
Family and marriage: spaces of harmony and conflict. Domesticity, conjugality and motherhood
Gloria Ángeles Franco Rubio (Complutense University of Madrid)
Classical family history studies are a fundamental way of approaching families and household groups from new perspectives. Although documentary sources – above all population censuses and land registers – have allowed to identify and classify a wide range of family structures, both urban and rural, it is an aspect that still requires further research (with respect to levels of wealth, occupations, etc.).
From the point of view of women and feminism, it is necessary to open different lines of research: (1) The (often decisive) intervention of women in the management of the family as a demographic, economic and social unit, taking into account their actual ability to do so and legal limitations in this respect, depending on their marital status (single, married, with an estranged husband, widowed, with or without children); (2) Female domesticity and home life; (3) The position of women within the family: daughters, wives and mothers under marital and parental authority; (4) Coexistence in the family environment: marital, parent-child and sibling relationships, plus those with other members of the household, between harmony and conflict and its judicial and extrajudicial resolution; (5) Motherhood and the role of mothers in the education of their children in the first years of their lives; (6) The lives of women and their expectations in rural and urban societies; (7) Women and caregiving tasks; (8) The marginalisation of women due to transgressions, violence exerted by and against them in all facets of life, poverty and abandonment, or physical or psychological impairments.
3. Learning, teaching, reading and writing: culture from a gender perspective
Writing for Women: Moral Norms and Editorial Strategies
Mónica Bolufer Peruga (Valencia University)
Current historiography tends to favour women belonging to the elite or certain sections of society with easier access to written culture. Accordingly, the aim of this panel is to approach women as a whole, regardless of their level of literacy, by focusing on studies of levels of access to reading and writing, social and territorial differences and those between the countryside and cities, language diversity and its effects, and so forth.
Topics include the following: the school system and its funding; religious and secular schools and their foundation and funding; intrafamily education; learning tools (guidance books, handbooks for girls, primers, etc.); secular female teachers of all kinds (governesses, nurses, etc.); religious teachers and their qualifications, instruction and ideas; laws, rules and public and private funding for the education of women and their actual enforcement in the Early Modern Age; women in book-related occupations (printers, booksellers, resellers, binders, etc.), the press and the production and circulation of chapbook literature; the use of institutional libraries (belonging to convents, schools, etc.) and the family- or spouse-owned kind by women, plus women as book owners; reading and readers in their daily environment, plus their social differences; female authors, including their identity and social standing, acceptance and rejection, ideological control and limitations, thematic genres, publication possibilities and dissemination; participation in forms of cultural mediation (translations, travel literature, correspondence, etc.); women in associations, salons, coteries and academies; and patronage and its role in the founding of schools, as well as in the arts, humanities and sciences.
4. The religious dimension
On coercion, calling and consent. Women in the cloister and the religious profession in the Early Modern Age
Ángela Atienza López (University of La Rioja)
The intention of this panel is to address the wide range of issues relating to the religious world of women. It includes contributions on women belonging to different religious orders and the broader and more diverse universe of lay sisters, as well as an enquiry into the multiple facets and expressions of the relationship between lay women and religion and the consideration of religious practice from a gender perspective.
There are many subjects that can be broached in this regard, such as the study of the religious production and writing of women, their cultural and theological contributions and the study of reading and female readers of religious works, plus imagery and iconography and artistic and musical creation. There is also the question of the broad universe of female sanctity and its different expressions, both canonical and less orthodox, women and their devotions and their brushes with the Inquisition and the religious authorities, plus the topics of heresy, sin and transgression, and magic and witchcraft, among others. To this should be added the varied nature of the relationships of religious women, whether they had taken vows or not, especially with each other and with individuals from all walks of life. Other topics include the following: the foundation, organisation, management and administration of monasteries, convents and beguinages; monastic life and all that this entailed, such as its daily routine, material culture, economy, regulations and their (non-) compliance, in addition to extraordinary and anomalous aspects, coexistence, solidarity and conflicts.
Other interesting topics include the religious and secular visibility and influence of women and their connections with secular life. Similarly, there is the matter of the control that the ecclesiastical and civil authorities exerted over the religious world of women, and the tensions, resistance and negotiations to which this gave rise. Additional aspects that can be addressed include the following: religious associationism and the intervention and participation of women (in guilds, sororities, third orders, etc.); charity and solidarity towards women, more specifically, private and institutional charities and pious associations and their role, among others.
In all cases, the kind of contributions welcomed should be long-term analyses focusing on changes and/or continuities, plus micro-historical and interdisciplinary approaches, comparative studies and theoretical reflections on the topics of debate or new perspectives that can help to gain a deeper knowledge and understanding of the object of study. This panel is open to all religions with a presence in the domains of the Spanish monarchy.
SECTION B. FOREIGNERS AND SPAIN IN THE EARLY MODERN AGE
Although the geographical scope is the Spanish Empire, the approach to the object of study is not limited to the presence and activities of foreigners (spatially mobile individuals or communities) in these territories. Nowadays, the approach can and should be more ambitious in view of the plentiful historiographical literature available since the mid-20th century. Over the past few decades, new lines of research have been opened which pose new questions resulting from both the reading of some publications and the use of new sources and transdisciplinarity.
1. The exercise of diplomacy
The art of negotiation. Ambassadors, residents and other diplomatic agents (16th-17th centuries)
Porfirio Sanz Camañes (Castilla-La Mancha University)
Those representing their rulers at the Spanish court and the representatives of the Spanish monarchy at the different European courts comprised a unique group of foreigners. Throughout the Early Modern Age, diplomatic activity gradually gathered steam and the work of ambassadors became permanent. In this section, the aim is to examine those who played this role, in addition to other related aspects such as the following: their tasks and the instructions that they were given; the conflicts with which they had to cope; the influence networks that they weaved; their enemies; how they managed crises; their role in decision-making at the Spanish court; and the changes that peace treaties and trade agreements and wars brought about for their fellow countrymen and the documentation that this activity generated, from the instructions carried by ambassadors to the approval of their credentials or travel permits.
Traditional diplomatic history has focused more on ambassadors, as representatives of their monarchs, than on other envoys, such as delegates, agents, residents or nuncios, who played a key role in diplomatic relations before the Modern Age. The greater need of states to maintain trade relations was evidenced by the strengthening of consulates, with their consuls and vice-consuls, established in main coastal towns for defending the commercial interests of their countrymen. Lastly, embassies were considered as centres for disseminating ideas and conspiracies, characterised by privileges and immunities, in which ceremony and precedence played an important role. These spaces of power gave rise to conflicts with civil, military and ecclesiastical authorities at all levels, from local administration to the court itself.
2. Foreigners in Spain and the Spanish America
Foreigners and the crisis of the Old Regime: the end of the corporate model of nations in Spain and Spanish America
Óscar Recio Morales (Complutense University of Madrid)
The Spanish crown and its overseas territories had a very powerful pulling effect beyond their borders. The business opportunities offered by American trade are doubtless the aspect to which historiography has paid most attention with respect to foreigners (their demographic importance, economic weight and overall significance), but many others arrived along with these businessmen. Chief among them were the soldiers who were integrated into the Spanish armies in units whose members shared the same origin, professionals who established themselves in America as painters, musicians, teachers, printers, engineers and so forth, who made the journey on their own initiative or at the request of the Spanish crown. Some worked anonymously, whereas others at court formed pressure groups protected by foreign queen consorts who were of the same nationality.
Foreign powers meddled in the affairs of the Spanish monarchy through individuals who pursued their own interests and/or those of others. Such individuals included those who acted unlawfully, whether in the service of a foreign power or simply driven by personal interest but always for monetary gain, such as privateers, spies and smugglers. Some wrote accounts of their stays or visits in the form of correspondence or travel literature: Spain as seen through the eyes of foreigners, those aspects deserving criticism or praise, stereotypes and the country’s development. Besides individuals, foreign knowhow and its role should not be overlooked, especially because it was essential in areas of enormous strategic importance, such as the shipbuilding industry.
3. Subjects of the Spanish monarchy the world over
Subjects residing abroad in the time of Hispanophilia: agents of the king of Spain or opportunistic political actors?
José Javier Ruiz Ibáñez (University of Murcia)
In this section, the intention is to give voice to those subjects of the Spanish crown who pursued part of their professional careers or lives abroad, irrespective of the duration. These included unskilled labourers, such as farmworkers, as well as those serving other monarchs and holding important positions, to the point of gaining a place in the history of their adoptive country. Between these two extremes there were youths who studied at European schools and military academies, and those who journeyed through Europe and the rest of the world as travellers, explorers or scientists who, on their return home, occasionally passed on their newly acquired knowledge to the public at large by publishing their travel accounts, teaching in lecture halls or performing administrative duties.
Spanish princesses were a unique collective who left the court for unknown destinations on a one-way trip to get married. It is interesting to enquire into the problems with which these special foreigners, who were forced to adapt, had to cope, as well as analysing how they remained in contact with their families and Spanish ambassadors and their role in the politics of their host courts. Evidently, those who left their homeland involuntarily owing to their political or religious beliefs, being either expelled or going into voluntary exile, should also be included.
4. Foreign influence: attraction, penetration, prohibition
The religion of foreigners in their integration into the Spanish Empire during the 18th century: Spain and America
David González Cruz (University of Huelva)
As foreign influence could take many forms, there are quite a few topics that should be covered, first and foremost, culture as an instrument of diplomacy, the general perception of foreigners, philias and phobias, the presence of foreign artists and their effect on artistic currents, the opinions and attitudes of Spanish society, the thinking of the arbitristas and reformers, and prevention against “all things foreign”. Consideration should also be given to foreign cultural creation and its presence through literary translations, theatrical and musical performances, libraries, art collections, fashion and consumer and luxury goods, while also taking into account the level of civil and ecclesiastical control over these aspects and the persecution or condemnation of foreign cultural expressions.
To these aspects should be added the importation and presence of foreign books in libraries and the endeavours of foreign booksellers and printers, plus the role of foreign artisans in the training of local populations. Lastly, there is the relevance of foreign clergy in Spain: the schools and institutions of nations, Jesuits, Franciscans and so forth, the movement of regular and secular clergy between Spain, the Holy See and Italy and foreigners and religion as a factor of integration.