BOOK: Manuel BASTIAS SAAVEDRA (ed.), Beyond Property. Ownership Regimes in the Iberian World (1500-1850). The Normative Role of Kinship and Community (Leiden: Brill, 2025). ISBN: 9789004722712 [OPEN ACCESS]

(Image source: Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory)

About the book

Explore a new perspective on land relations with Ownership Regimes, which shifts focus from traditional legal views to socio-historical contexts. This book reveals how land holding was influenced by diverse practices, including doctrine, laws, customs, regional kinship, and community ties. By understanding these as components of a broader normative framework, scholars from different regions show how complex social, religious, and cultural norms shaped efficient and enduring land-use arrangements. It challenges historians and legal scholars to examine the interplay of these norms in the Iberian world, uncovering how they defined ownership, division, regulation, and conflict resolution in various regions.

Contributors are: Manuel Bastias Saavedra, Alessandro Buono, Thiago Mota, José Carlos De La Puente Luna, Íñigo Ena Sanjuán, Alcira Dueñas, Marta Martín Gabaldón, Carolina Jurado, Crislayne Alfagali, and Rosa Congost.

About the editor

Manuel Bastias Saavedra, Ph.D. (2012), is Associate Professor of Latin American History at Leibniz University Hannover. His research focuses on the legal and institutional history of the Spanish and Portuguese empires. He currently leads the IberLAND project, funded by the European Research Council.

Table of contents

1. Manuel Bastias Saavedra, Beyond Private and Common. Ownership Regimes in the Iberian World (1500–1800) 
2. Alessandro Buono, The Rights of Things and the Obligations of the Owner. Exploring the Deep Normative Grammars of the Early Modern Ownership Regime
3. Thiago Henrique Mota, Guests in Foreign Lands. Land Control and Ownership in Greater Senegambia in the Face of the Portuguese Presence (16th and 17th Centuries)
4. José Carlos de la Puente Luna, A Widow’s Tale. Shifting Land Regimes and the Interplay of Household and Community in Colonial Peru
5. Marta Martín Gabaldón, Ownership and Seigniorial Relationships. Land and Territory in Colonial Tlaxiaco (the Mixteca, Mexico)
6. Carolina Jurado, Domestic Rights in Indigenous Communal Lands and the Expression “Menester” during the Execution of the 1591 Royal Decrees in Charcas, Viceroyalty of Peru
7. Íñigo Ena Sanjuán, Concordias, Sentencias Arbitrales, and Vistas. Ownership and Possession of Grassland in the Valleys of Ansó and Hecho (17th–19th Centuries)
8. Alcira Dueñas, Amparos and Mapas. Communal Land Possession and Dispossession in the Late Colonial Andes
9. Crislayne Gloss Marão Alfagali, Sobas, Ilamba, and Residents. On the Diverse Meanings of Land in Angola’s Hinterland in the 18th century
10. Rosa Congost, Epilogue: The Necessary De-Westernisation of the Models of Land Ownership. Reflections on the Idea of Feudal Remnants in Core Western Countries

More information can be found here.

BOOK: Mauricio NIETO OLARTE, Exploration, Religion and Empire in the Sixteenth-century Ibero-Atlantic World. A New Perspective on the History of Modern Science (Amsterdam: University Press, 2021). ISBN: 9789463725316, pp. 330 € 141,00

 

(Source: AUP)

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Iberian conquest of the Atlantic at the beginning of the sixteenth century had a notable impact on the formation of the new world order in which Christian Europe claimed control over most a considerable part of the planet. This was possible thanks to the confluence of different and inseparable factors: the development of new technical capacities and favorable geographical conditions in which to navigate the great oceans; the Christian mandate to extend the faith; the need for new trade routes; and an imperial organization aspiring to global dominance. The author explores new methods for approaching old historiographical problems of the Renaissance—such as the discovery and conquest of America, the birth of modern science, and the problem of Eurocentrism—now in reference to actors and regions scarcely visible in the complex history of modern Europe: the ships, the wind, the navigators, their instruments, their gods, saints, and demons.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Mauricio Nieto Olarte is titular Professor at the Department of History and Geography as well as Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

List of illustrations Acknowledgments

Introduction

The New World and the problem of Eurocentrism

Science and empire

Summary of the chapters in this book

1. The Iberian Peninsula and the Atlantic

Portugal and Spain

Winds, currents, and sailing ships in the Atlantic

Gold, silver, slaves, souls, and a thousand kinds of trees

2. The imperial bureaucracy and the appropriation of the New World

Seville and the Casa de Contratacion

The universal monarchy

3. The piloto mayor: cosmography and the art of navigation

The post of piloto mayor: seamanship and cartography

The navigation manuals

Manuals for the Empire

Publications, dissemination, and secrecy

Humanism and the classics

Experience and authority

Man against the sea: shipwrecks and meteorology

Routes and chorographic descriptions: The New World within the new global order

4. Machines of the empire

The ships

Shipbuilding

War and artillery

Navigational instruments

The astrolabe

The cross-staff

The mariner’s compass

Time and clocks

The sounding/plumb line

The navigation charts

Astronomical tables

Instruments, measurements, precision, and standardization

The crew

The captain/admiral

The pilot

The shipmaster (maestre) and quartermaster (contramaestre)

The boatswain (guardian)

The ordinary seamen (marineros)

Midshipmen (grumetes) and cabin boys (pajes)

The carpenter, steward, cooper, and cook

The scribe, master-at-arms, and overseer

The cannoneer

The barber/surgeon

The priest

Life on board

The argot of the sailors

Overcrowding

Food and health

Men of the sea and men of God

5. The Master Map (Padrón Real) and the cartography of the New World

Nautical charts and how they were made

The making of a chart

The charts of tierra firme: the earliest maps of the New World

Three early maps of the New World

Juan de la Cosa (1500)

Waldseemuller (1507)

Diego Ribero (1520) 6. The creatures of God never seen before: natural history

Nature in the New World

The classics and the Bible

Monsters in paradise

To describe, classify, and name

Medicine, botany, and the knowledge of the natives

The Empire and natural history

7. The New World, global science, and Eurocentrism

Plus ultra

Experience and authority

The Empire and the challenge of standardization

Eurocentrism

Bibliography

About the Author

Index

More information with the publisher.

JOB OFFER: PhD or Postdoc ERC IberLAND ‘Beyond Property Law. Law and Land in the Iberian World (1510-1850) (DEADLINE: 20 February 2022)

 

(Source: MPI for Legal History and Legal Theory)

We learned of an open PhD or post-doc position at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory. More info here

One PhD or Postdoc researchers (m/f/div) for the ERC research group IberLAND

“BEYOND PROPERTY. LAW AND LAND IN THE IBERIAN WORLD (1510-1850)”

directed by Dr. Manuel Bastias Saavedra, with a case study compatible with the following focus:

Goa (and Old Conquests), 1510-1630

IberLAND explores the history of land tenure in a long-term and global perspective by focusing on the territories of the former Portuguese and Spanish empires in what has recently been labelled the Iberian world. The Iberian crowns of Portugal and Castile, beginning in the 15th century, connected diverse peoples and communities across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. In doing so, they for the first time transformed the questions of how to own and how to use land into an issue of global dimensions. While this age of discovery and colonialism has often been regarded as the first phase of the transplantation of European concepts of property from Europe to the non-European world, IberLAND seeks to disrupt this narrative by looking at the history of land tenure not as a process of diffusion from Europe to the world, but as a process of decentred legal innovation. To do this, the project will move beyond the idea of property and focus on land relations to understand the sets of social relations established between people and land. This conceptual approach provides a way of observing how law was produced at the local level through the combination of practice and doctrine. To connect legal doctrines to local practices, the project’s analysis will focus on different sets of institutions that structured land relations in different places in the Iberian world. This conceptual and analytical framework will be applied to six case studies focusing on New Spain, Goa, Cape Verde, Spain, Brazil and the Philippines, enabling us to overcome the diffusionist mindset that has pervaded the study of law and empire.

Job description
Your key responsibility is to develop research within the framework of the research group with focus on one of the three regions and temporal foci above. Researchers are also expected to discuss, publish, and disseminate their research findings in close co-operation with the other members of the research group. PhD researchers are expected to develop and complete a doctoral dissertation.

Your profile
You hold a university degree in history, law, anthropology, or other related field that has been completed with above-average success. Applicants should hold a master’s degree at the time the PhD contract is signed. Candidates may already be enrolled in a PhD program in any university worldwide. Applicants who already have a PhD may apply for the Postdoc position.

You are fully proficient in Portuguese and/or Spanish, and good knowledge of English is expected. Knowledge of additional languages relevant to the regional focus is not required but will be considered an asset.

Your curriculum vitae shows the potential to conduct research at an internationally high level. You work meticulously and are able to handle deadlines. You work independently and have a strong interest in interdisciplinary, archival, and comparative work. You have the ability to play an active collaborative role in the research group.

Our Offer
We offer an attractive and international work environment with unparalleled research infrastructure and a good working atmosphere. The candidate will have the opportunity to take part in an interdisciplinary international research group, benefit from continuous scientific exchange, a comprehensive library and the possibility of research stays in Germany and abroad.

The research position is full-time (39 hours per week) and is paid according to the German Civil Service Collective Agreement (TVöD Bund), level E13. PhD researchers are paid the equivalent of 65%.

The position is a fixed-term appointment for three years. In exceptional cases, a PhD position can be extended for up to one additional year.

The Max Planck Society is committed to increasing the number of individuals with disabilities in its workforce and therefore encourages applications from such individuals. Furthermore, the Max Planck Society seeks to increase the number of women in those areas where they are underrepresented and therefore women are explicitly encouraged to apply. 

We encourage applications from all backgrounds.


Application process

The application can be in English, Portuguese, Spanish or German and should contain the following documents (in one pdf document):

• Cover letter naming your research project and explaining to what extent your profile meets the selection criteria
• Detailed CV containing a list of any publications you might have
• Preliminary research project (up to five pages, not including bibliography) on a local or regional case study fitting within one of the four regions indicated above, specifically indicating archives and sources. (Applicants working on other regions of the Iberian World may be considered but should contact Dr. Bastias Saavedra before applying).
• Copies of your university certificates

Your application must be submitted online via the following link by the closing date of February 20, 2022: https://www.lhlt.mpg.de/job-offers. Outstanding candidates will be invited to an interview.

Contact
You are encouraged to contact Dr. Bastias Saavedra (bastias@lhlt.mpg.de) for any inquiries regarding the scientific aspects of the project. For questions as to the terms and conditions of employment, please contact Ms. Anna Heym (jobs@lhlt.mpg.de).

 

CALL FOR PAPERS: Change over time in the Iberian Worlds: stabilising regimes of normativity (deadline 20 December 2021) - Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory

(Source: mpilhlt)

The mpilhlt’s Glocalising Normativities project aims to construct a global history of normative production by studying the interaction of local processes of the cultural translation of normative knowledge within global networks in the early modern Iberian worlds.

For the project’s 2022 Annual Conference and the resulting publication, we are looking for contributions focusing on legal change and stability in any region of the Portuguese and Spanish empires in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas during the early modern period. We want to explore how legal history can offer a particular perspective for understanding legal change. Discussions of case studies, comparisons, long-term perspectives as well as methodological and analytical approaches – particularly in conversation with the long-standing tradition of discussions on legal change – are welcome. A detailed description of the conference’s topic and its conceptual framework can be found in the full text of the Call (link below).

The selected papers will first be discussed as drafts in a virtual meeting to be held in April 2022. The final papers will be discussed in person (should the pandemic situation allow) in Frankfurt am Main at the Glocalising Normativities Annual Conference on 19–21 October 2022, and subsequently submitted for publication in the Brill series Max Planck Studies in Global Legal History of the Iberian Worlds.

The deadline for submission of proposals is 20 December 2021.

The full text of the Call is available here.

Teaser image: Francisco de Holanda, De aetatibus mundi imagines (1545) CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0, Biblioteca Nacional de España