IMC 2020: Sessions

Paper -a:
In this paper, I will use network analysis to study late medieval Mediterranean trade and movement (11th-14th centuries). Using the program Gephi, two networks, one from archaeological material and the second from travel writing by ibn Battuta, ibn Jubayr, and Benjamin of Tudela, and itinerary maps drawn by Matthew Paris, will be analysed and compared using various social network analysis measures. I will consider the ways in which movement may have occurred and borders been crossed around the Mediterranean at this time in comparison to current understandings of trade and movement.

Paper -b:
Despite its formulaic nature, petitioning provided a platform of discourse for medieval English towns to define their political identities and voice communal concerns during their communication with the central government. This paper focuses on the case of the Cinque Ports, a group of port towns of strategic importance in Kent and Sussex. I shall start with analysing how the only urban confederation in medieval England styled itself as a leader of all English ports through petitionary language around 1338, and then explore the rationale behind this representation. The expression of collectivity also demonstrates the awareness of the maritime communities of their political leverage in high politics, and allowed them to go beyond the boundary of local and national concerns in 14th-century England.

Paper -c:
Portugal and Castile, for their privileged geographical situation, have always had an important relationship with the sea that was accentuated by the period of discovery and the conquest of new territories. This expansion had significant consequences in political and economic relations between the two nations in which the Pope was called to settle the existing conflicts on several occasions. In this small essay it is possible to limit the exact scope of this power of mediation and if, in addition to the spiritual power, the high pontiff holds a true temporal power and with what authority he acted and what was the legal historical framework of papal bulls and its importance as an instrument of conformation of international relations. Did existed a true temporal power of the Pope? And what its relevance in the division of the world, taking into consideration the pursuit of the end of evangelization of the New Territories.

From the 15th century, with the beginning of the Portuguese expansion, in particular, through the conquest of domains along the African coast, the fledgling Portuguese bourgeoisie seeks new markets and new business opportunities in order to increase its profits through the creation of new trade routes on which it has a predominant influence. Also the Spanish Crown began its expansion, betting on the project of reaching India of Christopher Columbus who, in 1492, discovered the new world. As the political relations between Portugal and the now Kingdom of Castile and Aragon were not always peaceful and in order to avoid a warlike conflict, taking into account the maintenance of peace and non-interference in the occupied territories, Pope Alexander VI's intervention was requested to mediate this conflict.

On May 4, 1493 the bull Inter Coetera was promulgated, in which the regions of exploitation of each of the Iberian nations were delimited, in which the division of the world would be carried out through the delineation of an imaginary line 100 leagues from the island of Cape Verde (in the original draft) and all the lands to the west would be the possession of Spain and to the east would be Portuguese territories.However, John II, for reasons not yet fully clarified, demanded a few months later the revision of the Treaty and a new intervention, by the High Pontiff was requested. On 7 July 1494, the Treaty of Tordesillas, which alters the defined limits so that all the lands discovered, up to the limit of 370 leagues west of Cape Verde, would be the Portuguese domain being the other of the Spanish crown.

In this small essay is to be determined the exact contents of the negotiating course for the elaboration of the Bulla Inter Coetera and later of the Treaty of Tordesillas. It is also to be asserted what impact they had in international relations at the time. We also want to expose the position of the main legal doctrine on this matter and the reaction of the other maritime powers to this division of the world and, in particular to the policy of Mare Clausum policy in opposition to the policy of Mare Liberum. It is also important to identify the legal reactions of the other maritime powers such as England, France, and Holland that only in the 16th century began their maritime expansion.