Between War And Profit. Commerce Between The Two Shores of The Mediterranean After Lepanto

14 November 2019. From 18:30 | Workshop | Spanish | IEMed, Barcelona

Although trade relations between the two shores of the Mediterranean were impossible due to the open war relationship between the Spanish Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire, during the last decades of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries trade activities explained many of the characteristics of this sea. The greatest difficulty in conducting the study of this activity is the complexity of the sources to be used, as many of the trade relations were based on articles that were prohibited (gunpowder, weapons, and strategic materials). However, trade between the two sides of the Mediterranean continued to be carried out on a regular basis, although goods and traders were captured on several occasions.

Miguel Ángel de Bunes is a research professor at the Institute of History of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). Since 2013 he has been a corresponding academic for the Real Academia Española de la Historia and since 2010 for the Túrk Tarih Kurum (Turkish Academy of History). His research focuses on the analysis of the political, military, armaments, technical and ideological models of societies in contact in the Mediterranean during the Modern Age. He has published research papers, articles and books, such as Tunisia 1535. Voices of a European Campaign (CSIC-Polifemo, 2017) and The Ottoman Empire 1451-1807 (Synthesis, 2015).