University of Granada

Profesor investigador, Departamento de Historia Medieval y Ciencias y Técnicas Historiográficas

Investigador Contratado del Prgrama Ramón y Cajal del Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras - Universidad de Granada

Thesis Title: Esclavitud y cautiverio en el Reino de Granada. Málaga (1487-1538)

About

The research activities carried out until now have studied mainly economic and social aspects in the late medieval Mediterranean societies, in the Iberian Peninsula (Crown of Castile, Kingdom of Grenade) as well as in the Italian Peninsula (centre-North, Tuscany). I began in 2000 with the awarding of a predoctoral grant by the Spanish Ministry of Education, attached to the Department of Archaeology and Medieval History at the University of Málaga for the project “The Slavery in the Kingdom of Grenade at the end of the Middle Ages”, under the scientific direction of Prof. Alfonso Franco Silva, Chair of Medieval History at the University of Cádiz and one of the maximum national exponents in the subject.

During this predoctoral stage I developped as main research line the study of the lost of freedom with an integrate perspective. In fact, the project carried out has dealt with two aspects of the phenomenon: on the one hand, the presence of individuals deprived of liberty, of different ethno-geographic origins (moors, blacks, indians, canaries, turcs, jews), the slaves, in the repopulating society of the Kingdom of Granada inmediately after the Castilian conquest. On the other hand, the phenomenon of Christian captives in North-African Muslim societies. The chronologic context of this research line has focused at the end of the Middle Ages, according to the disponibility of the sources, related to the pervivence of medieval elements and mechanisms in a moment of transition, from Middle Ages to Modern Times. The Doctoral Thesis fills a blank pointed out by the specific historiography of the subject since long ago, with a renowing methodology in the slavery studies. I have seeked to overcome stereotypes while stressing the specificity of the Malaguenian market, analysing its demographic characteristics and approaching other aspects as different and complex as the slaves’ life, the treaty’s dynamic, the phenomenon social’s incidence, its perception by the collective mentality or the paths to freedom.

As for captivity, it was one of the maximum expressions of the hostile relationships held by the Alboran Sea shores, Christian and Muslim. The study of its characteristics, the extent and the consecuences of the phenomenon in the repopulating society in the Kingdom of Grenade, as well as the continuity of the medieval redemption mechanisms, has permitted to deepen too in the study of the relationship between Christemdom and Islamic World, the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa, in the Western Mediterranean.

After getting my PhD at the University of Málaga, the Spanish Ministry of Education awarded me a postdoctorate grant through which I’ve been able to develop a twenty-four months stay attached to the University of Florence (Italy, 2005-2007) to carry out the project “Andalusia, the Kingdom of Granada and Florence in the XVth Century”, focused on the international commerce leaded by the Florentines and other Tuscan ‘nations’ in the South of the Iberian Peninsula. This research line inevitably has lead to the study of the mercantile articulation of the territories and its integration in the international commerce from three unavoidable perspectives in the Iberian context: firstly, one refering to local or regional history; secondly, the insertion of short range circulation in the great international exchanges –local and international interaction in the end; last, the mercantile élites influence in the urban contexts in which they operated. Besides, the study of merchants and commercial intermediaries has allowed as well carrying out prosopographic studies from which it was possible to determine the modus operandi used by the merchant comunities analysed.

After the postdoctoral stay ended I continued my academic activity as Honorary Collaborator at the University of Málaga (2003-2009), and at the University of Seville (present).

The Spanish Ministry of Innovation and Science has just awarded me a Ramón y Cajal research contract to develope the project "Italian Differential Presence in the South of the Iberian Peninsula in the Age of the Trastamara (XIVth-XVIth centuries". The present line of research proposes to devise a panel as exhaustive as possible of the differential presence of the Italian nations –Genoa, Venice and Florence essentially– in the South of the Iberian Peninsula in the Age of the Trastámara (XIVth-XVIth Centuries), an argument known in its general outlines and deepened for the most important centres, but much more less undertaken having regard to the need to study together Castille and Grenade and a comprehensive view including all the Italians, no just one nation in one centre. In fact, it is absolutely necessary to consider together the multiplicity of contexts: political (Castile and Granada), social and religious (the Christian Castilian and the Muslim Nasri), juridic (the existence or absence of commercial and political treaties in both territories), and economic (the Guadalquivir valley, the door of the Castilian international commerce; the nasri and mudejar Grenade, more dependent on foreign intervention for its insertion in the international trade and essential intermediate for North Africa). These are the contexts to confront the different Italian nations’ financial models and mercantile networks, deepening in a collective phenomenon in which the prosopographic study of single and familiar developments would be a further way to state the similarities and differences of the foreign merchant’s mercantile penetration strategies in two territories whose political, economical and social articulation cannot be understood one without the other. The different modalities of settling (including the familiar, reproduction and integration strategies) would be deepened, as well as the degree of mercantile and financial specialization, giving particular attention to important centres (Jerez de la Frontera, Cádiz, Antequera) for the economical and commercial articulation of the different territories, besides deepening in the better known (Seville and Málaga mainly) through not yet researched sources (i.e. Archivio Datini has yet to provide useful information). I don’t forget neither the relations with the political power, wether it be in its urban or statal scale. To develop such a project I would resort to the appropriate Spanish notarial archives, but also to others, regional (Chancillería de Granada) and national (Archivo General de Simancas); as for the Italians, I would start from my biennial postdoctoral experience in Florence to continue with the Venetian and Genoese sources.

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