Final Programme

International Conference Beyond King Manuel I: The Portuguese Empire in a Changing World, c. 1450-1550

Venue: Anf. III da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra
6th July
14 p.m. Opening Session
Giancarlo Casale, European University Institute, Florence – Manuel I and the New History of Post-Mongol Empire: A Comparative Perspective 

Coffee-break

16.15 p.m. First Session
The social fabric of empire: Communication and alterity among the cultures of the Mediterranean

Chair: Giuseppe Marcocci, University of Oxford

José Alberto Tavim, Center of History – University of Lisbon – Tribulations of Israel and Empire, in the reign of King Manuel I

Afonso Celso Malecha Teixeira, University of Poitiers – Towards a critique of the idea of “Moors of peace”: negotiation and collaboration in the Portuguese conquest of the Maghreb (1486-1541)

Joseph Jackson-Eade, University of Bologna – Tricksters and Fixers: Interpreters and trans-linguistic communication in the Portuguese world, 1500-1530

17.45 p.m. Debate

7th July
9.30 a.m Second Session
The social fabric of empire: Patterns of violence and hierarchy across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans

Chair: Gabriel Rocha, Brown University, Providence, USA

Maria Regina Celestino de Almeida, Federal Fluminense University, Rio de Janeiro – Indigenous peoples in the early days of conquest: interethnic, socio-cultural and political relations between barters and wars

David Wheat, Michigan State University – Spanish Archipelagos in the Iberian Atlantic Slave Trade, c.1510-1560

Marta Peters Oliveira, Porto University and Sidh Losa Mendiratta, Centre for Social Studies – Sofala and Chaul: Two (and other) Manueline Fortifications in the Western Indian Ocean as Cultural Landscapes of Encounters and Negotiation

Coffee-break

11.30 a.m. Debate

14 p.m. Third Session
Objects and bodies in motion
Chair: Ângela Barreto Xavier, ICS – University of Lisbon

Alessandra Russo, Columbia University, USA – Path-crossing between artifacts and people: Rethinking circulations as encounters in the Iberian Worlds

Nuno Senos, Nova University Lisbon – The sack of Malacca: violence as a mode of contact and exchange

Urte Krass, Bern University – Entangled Bones: The Circulation of Bodily Material in the Manueline World

Kate Lowe, Queen Mary University of London – Cashing in on “novelties” from the Portuguese trading empire: Exhibiting a sixteenth-century caged pygmy

Coffee-break

16.30 p.m. Debate

8th July
9h30 Fourth Session
Political experiments of empire
Chair: Jorge Flores, Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e da Tecnologia, Universidade de Lisboa

Zoltán Biedermann, University College London, UCL – Between “expansion” and “attraction”: transcontinental diplomacy in the construction of Manueline suzerainty

James Fujitani, Azusa Pacific University, USA – Structural Inequality in Manueline Diplomacy: The Case of 1517 Embassy to the Ming Empire

Jaime Gouveia, Center for the History of Society and Culture of the University of Coimbra – The Confederation between Portugal and the Kingdoms of Kongo and Angola: terms and implications of an imperialist project initiated during the reign of Manuel I

Coffee-break

11 a.m. Debate

12 a.m. Closing Conference
Chair: José Pedro Paiva, Center for the History of Society and Culture of the University of Coimbra

Tamar Herzog, Harvard University – The histories of empire: where do we go from here and what should we see on the way?

Debate