Call for Papers: Iberian Empires: Networks, Conflicts, and Circulations in the Global World of the Modern Age (15th–19th Centuries)

Iberian Empires: Networks, Conflicts, and Circulations in the Global World of the Modern Age (15th–19th centuries)

This thematic issue proposes a reflection on the Iberian Empires in the context of the Modern Age, highlighting their global dimensions, the dynamics of circulation, and the multiple conflicts that marked the expansion and consolidation of the Portuguese and Spanish imperial presences between the 15th and the first half of the 19th centuries. Far from being centralized and homogeneous structures, the Iberian empires were built through intercontinental networks, local alliances, armed confrontations, diplomatic mediations, and cultural adaptations.

As political projects with universal ambitions, the Iberian empires shaped and occupied territories on various continents, interacting with local realities and provoking profound recompositions in European and extra-European societies. The movement of people—missionaries, merchants, soldiers, state agents, captives—intersected with the diffusion of legal models, governance mechanisms, scientific knowledge, and religious practices, revealing the fluid, negotiated, connected, and often conflictual nature of imperial power, which can be said to have reached a globalized perspective.

We invite submissions of articles that explore how these networks of domination and cooperation were constructed and sustained, the conflicts and resistances that emerged in the various imperial contexts, as well as the forms of material and symbolic circulation that characterized the Iberian empires in the Modern Age. Approaches that articulate local and global scales, comparative analyses between the Portuguese and Spanish empires, and perspectives that problematize the colonial, religious, economic, administrative, and cultural logics of European expansion will be favored.

The aim is to gather contributions that deepen the historical understanding of the Iberian empires as realities in constant transformation, with a lasting impact on modern societies and the configuration of the global world.

Coordinators

Maria de Deus Beites Manso (UÉvora) | Orcid

Suely Creusa Cordeiro de Almeida (UFRPE) | Lattes

Submission Deadline

March 31, 2026

Submission Guidelines

https://www1.unicap.br/ojs/index.php/historia/about/submissions