New from Harvard University Press:
Frontiers of Possession: Spain and Portugal in Europe and the Americas (Jan. 2015), by
Tamar Herzog (Harvard University). A description from the Press:
Frontiers of Possession asks
how territorial borders were established in Europe and the Americas
during the early modern period and challenges the standard view that
national boundaries are largely determined by military conflicts and
treaties. Focusing on Spanish and Portuguese claims in the New and Old
Worlds,
Tamar Herzog reconstructs the different ways land rights
were negotiated and enforced, sometimes violently, among people who
remembered old possessions or envisioned new ones: farmers and nobles,
clergymen and missionaries, settlers and indigenous peoples.
Questioning the habitual narrative that sees the Americas as a
logical extension of the Old World, Herzog portrays Spain and Portugal
on both sides of the Atlantic as one unified imperial space. She begins
in the Americas, where Iberian conquerors had to decide who could settle
the land, who could harvest fruit and cut timber, and who had river
rights for travel and trade. The presence of indigenous peoples as
enemies to vanquish or allies to befriend, along with the vastness of
the land, complicated the picture, as did the promise of unlimited
wealth. In Europe, meanwhile, the formation and re-formation of
boundaries could last centuries, as ancient entitlements clashed with
evolving economic conditions and changing political views and juridical
doctrines regarding how land could be acquired and maintained.
Herzog demonstrates that the same fundamental questions had to be
addressed in Europe and in the Americas. Territorial control was always
subject to negotiation, as neighbors and outsiders, in their quotidian
interactions, carved out and defended new frontiers of possession.
More information is available
here.
