Description
Book SynopsisVia rigorous study of the legal arguments Spain developed to justify its acts of war and conquest, The Other Side of Empire illuminates Spain''s expansionary ventures in the Mediterranean in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Andrew Devereux proposes and explores an important yet hitherto unstudied connection between the different rationales that Spanish jurists and theologians developed in the Mediterranean and in the Americas.
Devereux describes the ways in which Spaniards conceived of these two theatres of imperial ambition as complementary parts of a whole. At precisely the moment that Spain was establishing its first colonies in the Caribbean, the Crown directed a series of Old World conquests that encompassed the Kingdom of Naples, Navarre, and a string of presidios along the coast of North Africa. Projected conquests in the eastern Mediterranean never took place, but the Crown seriously contemplated assaults on Egypt, Greece, Turkey, and Palestine.
Trade Review
An outstanding book that marks a major step forward in our understanding of the politics of the early sixteenth-century Mediterranean, and will be required reading for anyone looking at Spanish relations with north Africa, Naples and the Ottoman Empire.
* Al-Masāq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean *
Overall, the work represents an outstanding analysis of Ferdinand's policy of expansion in the Mediterranean and enriches the history of European law and rule in the early early modern period... Devereux's analyzes are essential and make an important contribution to seeing the European perspective on expansion in America, the debates about cultural contact and the emergence of the Spanish colonies in a new light.
* Francia-Recensio *
[E]ssential reading for scholars of early modern Europe, and should generate fruitful discussion among those interested in broader questions of Christian empires and their legal, moral, and intellectual foundations.
* Church History *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Part 1
1. The Mediterranean in the Spanish Imaginary During the Age of Exploration
2. The Christian Commonwealth Besieged
Part 2
3. The Turk Within
4. The African Horizon
5. The Eastern Chimera
6. One Shepherd, One Flock
Conclusion
