Empire and Exceptionalism: The Requerimiento at Five-Hundred

A  conference at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

Friday, March 6 & Saturday, March 7, 2015
10:00 a.m.

The conference addresses the justifications for conquest and empire in the early modern Spanish world by examining them against the broader panorama of European colonial ventures in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and beyond. Using the Spanish Requerimiento as a point of departure, “Empire and Exceptionalism” explores a comparative approach to the foundation of empires in the Old World and the New. To justify and rationalize their expansion, medieval and early modern powers often drew on shared legal and historical traditions. Their claims, while obviously oppositional, were in constant dialogue with one another. For instance, recent work has suggested that the Requerimiento was based on traditions of medieval Islamic jurisprudence that addressed the treatment of conquered peoples. How would such traditions have intersected with canon law, humanist traditions, and other justifications for empire? How disparate, ultimately, were the different imperial projects, and how significant were the distinctions? “Empire and Exceptionalism” thus engages some of the most pressing historical questions concerning the origins of European colonialism by examining Mediterranean and Atlantic processes in conjunction with one another and by addressing the degree to which the practices engaged in by the early modern Spanish Empire were exceptional.

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