This chapter explores the ways that late medieval Spaniards thought about the Mediterranean and the lands surrounding its shores. The chapter mentions the geographers' belief that the three constituent parts of the earth, namely Asia, Africa, and Europe, met in the Mediterranean and that the lordship of the world could only be attained through control of the inner sea. It also points out that the early expansion of primitive Christianity suggest that the Mediterranean possessed a latent religious unity. Aware of the history of the early Church in North Africa and western Asia, jurists devised arguments to the effect that Christian conquests in those regions were in fact acts of recuperation or defense. It then describes the nuances of fifteenth-century Spaniards' perspectives on Mediterranean space by demonstrating that the proximate western Mediterranean was familiar and known, while the more distant eastern Mediterranean was more exotic and often depicted as the site of fabulous wonders.
This chapter explains that in the study of empire in the Old World, the Spanish political thought on just war, conquest, and the treatment of newly subject people developed a crucible in which Mediterranean dynastic rivalries were paramount. It assesses the circumstances of conquests in geographies ranging from the wooded Pyrenees to the bustling port of Naples to the arid hinterlands of Tripoli, where the legal and moral arguments undergirding the rise of the early modern empires were forged. It also analyzes different circumstances of the Atlantic world that shows the inevitable continuities linking Mediterranean imperium to its Atlantic successor and demonstrates the incommensurability of Mediterranean dynamics with those of the Gentile-inhabited Atlantic. The chapter sheds light on aspects of Spanish history that have been neglected for centuries. It is not intended only to signify merely a “recovery” of Spain's Mediterranean interests and aspirations during the early sixteenth century, but as stimulant for research and dialogue on the legal and moral arguments surrounding just war, conquest, and empire in a variety of settings.
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