Entidade financiadora: Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)
Investigador responsável: Louis Sicking (VU University Amsterdam e Leiden University)
Instituição de acolhimento: Institute for History (Leiden University)
Instituições participantes: Instituto de Estudos Medievais (FCSH/NOVA), LIttoral, Environment and Societies (Université de La Rochelle), Universidad de Cantabria, Instituto de Estudios Medievales y Renacentistas (Universidad de la Laguna)
Investigadores do IEM participantes: Amélia Aguiar Andrade, Flávio Miranda e Gonçalo Melo da Silva
Duração do projeto: 2016-2019

Maritime Conflict Management (MCM) comprises conflict enforcement (naval warfare, privateering, piracy and blockades), conflict resolution (formal judicial and administrative procedures and informal or private means) and conflict avoidance (negotiations). Conflict management, particularly as manifested at sea, has long played an important role in the history of diplomacy and international law. At sea, as a consequence of maritime trade and fishing, mechanisms of conflict management developed to regulate not only the settlement of disputes, but also other facets of diplomacy and international law.

The goal of this program is to create an international platform for the study and discussion of the methodological problems linked to an analysis of the various manifestations of MCM in pre-modern Atlantic Europe. Attention will be given primarily to the ways in which MCM changes and adapts when existing traditions collide with new political and economic realities. Set against the background of changing political and commercial settings, the central questions of this program revolve around the necessity of commercial interdependence on the one hand and the shifts in the interests of towns, regions and states on the other. The study of these dynamics will clarify the continuities and changes in MCM along Europe’s Atlantic coast.

What significance did MCM have in shaping the standards of diplomacy and international law in pre-modern Atlantic Europe (1200-1600)? This international project aims to shed light on this question from two distinct yet related perspectives: that of the aggressor and the victim on the one hand, and that of the political entities to which they belonged on the other.

How did victims of maritime conflicts claim and obtain damages or demand compensation or reparation? How did different political authorities and polities negotiate disputes of maritime diplomacy which transcended jurisdictional boundaries (e.g. those involving reprisals and piracy), and what strategies, arrangements and agreements did they employ in attempting to achieve resolution of those conflicts? To what extent and under what circumstances were they successful in their aims? Addressing these questions will unveil connections and entanglements between private parties and public authorities, demonstrating the importance of both for the development of MCM. As a result, this project aims to offer new insights and enrich our understanding of the role of MCM within the wider contexto of maritime diplomacy. Research on conflict resolution is flourishing and has, to a certain extent, become mainstream. Its maritime dimension is nevertheless understudied as the focus is mainly on state formation and, therefore, land-oriented. Instead, the current project aims to depart from the maritime perspective on the one hand and from private individuals on the other. Why Atlantic Europe? Atlantic history is booming but strongly focused on the early modern and contemporary periods, which take the size of the ocean and its European and American coasts for granted, thus both underestimating the Atlantic and its islands, including from the late Middle Ages the Canary islands, Madeira and the Azores, as a European border zone. Moreover, to the extent that the maritime dimension of conflict management has attracted scholarly attention it has focused on Europe’s main inland seas, that is the Mediterranean and the Baltic, which are often viewed as more or less ‘closed systems’, with separate historiographies. The aim of the current project is to consider MCM in pre-modern Atlantic Europe in connection with both Mediterranean and Baltic conflict management. .