Societies in Contact between Europe and Islam (16th-17th Centuries)
12 November 2026. From 18:30 | Conference | Spanish | IEMed
The concept of the border has enjoyed singular success in Mediterranean historiography over recent decades. However, its use in many cases perpetuates schemes inherited from the colonial past by circumscribing the contact zones between Europe and Islam to the coastal areas of the Mediterranean. Replacing it with that of ‘societies in contact’ makes it possible to approach mobilities from broader geographical frameworks, highlighting the extent and complexity of interactions during the Early Modern period.
The diplomatic relations that the Spanish Habsburgs maintained for nearly a century with the Kingdom of Kuku (in present-day Kabylia) within the context of their enmity with the Ottomans of Algiers constitute a remarkably rich case study. The numerous embassies and diplomatic episodes connecting the Tell mountains to the Iberian Peninsula—among them, one that took place in Barcelona—fit within a broad geography and reveal not so much the exceptionality of a historical moment as the existence of a mutual knowledge, forged over centuries, between European and Islamic societies.
A lecture by Natividad Planas, associate professor in Early Modern History in the Department of History at the Université Clermont Auvergne since 2000.
She has been a CNRS researcher at the investigation unit Temps, espaces, langages, Europe méridionale, Méditerranée (TELEMMe) at Aix-Marseille Université (2019-2021), a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (2024-2025), and a member of the Renaissance Society of America (2025-2026).
Her research focuses on relations between Europe and the Islamic world in the early modern period, with particular attention to the Balearic Islands and the Maghreb. She is the author of Koukou, le royaume enfoui. Enquête sur les relations entre Europe et Islam (XVIe-XVIIe siècle) (Fayard, 2023), a work that reconstructs the diplomatic relations between the Spanish Habsburgs and the kingdom of Koukou, in the interior of the Ottoman Maghreb. She takes part in several international projects on societies in the Mediterranean and she has been a member of the editorial board of the Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine since 2016.
A session of the Aula Mediterrània lecture series 2026-2027 co-organised with the Master’s Degree in History and Identities in the Western Mediterranean, 15th-19th Centuries, UB/UA/UV/UJI.
Moderated by Mariela Fargas, Associate Professor of Early Modern History, UB.
Speakers
Mariela Fargas
Associate Professor of Early Modern History, UBOrganised by
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