Work Packages > WP6

ATLANTIC SEAPORTS: NODES OF CONTACT AND EXCHANGE IN THE EARLY-MODERN PERIOD

 

Activity type: Research

 

Leader: Juan Marchena (UPO)

 

Sub-leader: Naybe Gutierrez (UPO)

 

Partner organizations:

UPO (Spain), FCSH (Portugal), Uninorte (Colombia), APCM (Portugal), OMA (Portugal), TCD (Ireland). All partners will be involved in the gathering, interpretation and integration of written sources. Secondments will start in month 7.

 

Objectives:

WP6 is mostly based on the working methods from Maritime History. Main objective is to address the complexity of seaports, including environmental and landscape features, as geostrategic nodes in terms of European economic and political interests, fundamental to develop the global world of trade. Conflicts were also a considered regarding maritime combats between Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch ships in Brazil, mainly in Bahia. The main goal is to understand how this early modern Atlantic establishments contribute as hubs of contact and exchange. To be consider in this project are the connections between Iberian European ports such as Lisbon and Seville to African ports like Cabo Verde and Sao Tome and also the connections with American ports like Cartagena, La Habana, Salvador, Aracaju, Porto da Praia do Francês, Bahia, Bridgetown. The demographic aspects will be also crossed with all previous dimensions, determining origins, reasons and causes of new population arrivals, and demographic growth, assessing the contribution of slave work in the construction of the new port cities, confirming the consolidation of urban networks and their changes in a multi-ethnic and multicultural societies. Maritime trade was fundamental to the growth of the new port cities as enclaves for the departure of raw materials destined to the international market and the pattern of colonial exploitation of resources trading is to be addressed such as the trade between tupinambás (indigenous people) and French seamen. The trading as part of the globalization process is going to be analysed in the complex system of trading routes having the local products exchange in mind as an element of the contact and exchange, main focus of this WP.