Spanish-Muslim Diplomacy in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Issues and Challenges
11 December 2025. From 18:45 | Conference | Spanish | IEMed
Between the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Habsburgs monarchy maintained complex relations with the Muslim powers of the Mediterranean. His Catholic image pushed it toward crusading stances or, at least, toward official propaganda based on the struggle against Islam as the main axis. Along these lines, the Spanish Monarchy did not maintain stable relations with the Ottoman Empire until the end of the 18th century. However, this was not an exception in Early Modern Europe: contacts and negotiations existed and were fruitful, but they occurred more discreetly, without the networks of embassies or consulates that developed other powers. This session presents the modalities of these contacts, with little-known embassies combined with numerous missions of indirect diplomacy; the typology of the actors involved, far from the archetype of the aristocratic ambassador; and the different phases of these relations, as well as the ways in which they were represented (or disguised). Finally, it will be analyzed the case of Tunisia in the mid-16th century and how the governors of the Spanish presidium of La Goleta developed complex alliances with the local dynasties and tribes.
A lecture by Rubén González Cuerva, permanent scientific at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). He is a historian specialized in the History of Early Modern Europe, particularly in the political and diplomatic systems of the Habsburg Monarchy. His research focuses on the construction of borders, diplomacy, and imperial dynamics in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, from 15th to 18th centuries. He currently directs the project DIPLOINMED (awarded by the National Research Agency) that analyzes interconfessionalism and global diplomacy in the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Spanish Monarchy and Muslim governments. Among his publications are: (with M.A. Bunes) Túnez 1535: voces de una campaña europea (Madrid: CSIC, 2017); (with Francesco Caprioli, eds.) Reconocer al infiel: la representación en la diplomacia hispano-musulmana (siglos XVI y XVII) (Madrid: Sílex, 2021); and (with Francesco Caprioli) “Siren’s Song: the News of Tabarka and Their Impact on Spanish Mediterranean Policy in the Mid-Sixteenth Century”, Mediterranean Historical Review 39/1 (2024): 25-42.
Within the framework of the Aula Mediterrània lecture series. Co-organised with Master’s Degree in History and Identities in the Western Mediterranean, 15th-19th Centuries, UB/UA/UV/UJI.
Language: Spanish
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