Early Modern Globalization: Iberian Empires/Colonies/Nations

Co-investigators and their institutions:

Ivonne Del Valle, Spanish and Portuguese, UC Berkeley
Anna More, Spanish and Portuguese, UCLA

This interdisciplinary group, consisting initially of specialists from the
fields of history, art history, and literature, examines the place of the
Iberian imperial experience in the emergence of global modernity and its
consequences. The group will focus on the following areas, among others,
in a dialogue with theories developed in other centuries and other
languages: How the presuppositions of classical antiquity and Medieval
Christianity provide the first racial, political and evangelical paradigms
for global empires in the 16th century; the theoretical and practical
changes these paradigms underwent when they incorporated the experiences of
the colonizers and evangelists in Asian and American colonies; the
particular challenges posed to the establishment of a universal empire by
responses of the African, Asian, and Amerindian peoples who were first
subjected to models of universalization and the ongoing influence of local
forms upon global processes spurred by Iberian colonization; the
differences between the administration of transatlantic colonies and
 European colonies (Flanders, Portugal, Italy) and between the politics and
practices carried out within European nations and in transatlantic and
transpacific contexts; and the adaptations to political, aesthetic,
 scientific and social ideas generated in American and Asian colonies and
their repercussions for both the history of these regions and the history
 of transatlantic and transpacific exchange.