Manuel Herrero Sánchez

Universidad Pablo de Olavide | UPO

The present proposal aims to apply the results of our previous project on the vitality of political models based on fragmented sovereignty, the importance of multinuclear urban systems, and respect for constitutional, legal and cultural diversity, in the Early Modern Age to the example posed by the Spanish Monarchy. The predominance of these models in the most densely populated European regions explains the survival of a political culture with strong republican features even within consolidated dynastic systems, such as the Spanish Monarchy, which included some of the most dynamic urban networks and within which cities were the main space of negotiation, as demonstrated by the chiefly urban nature of the Spanish expansion in America. The project is framed within recent advances in the analysis of imperial systems as one of the most adequate contexts with which to examine interactions between the global and the local. We think that it is necessary to undertake a comprehensive approach to the analysis of the different dominions under the jurisdiction of the Catholic monarch, the understanding of which can only be achieved through the examination of the agents and connectors that allowed for the integration of such heterogeneous and distant regions. Ours is a bottom-up approach, which aims to challenge perspectives that analyse the relationship between centre and periphery chiefly through the examination of the bilateral decisions adopted by the monarch and his poli-synodial structure in negotiation with the local elites through the mediating role played by the kings alter ego. The existence of multiple centres which interacted with one another beyond Madrids control reflects the active political role of local agents and of the significant autonomy enjoyed by different corporations, cities and institutions that constituted the political body. The combination of a wide range of methodological approaches will allow us to articulate our analysis around 6 closely-related targets: the theoretical foundations of the Spanish Empire and polycentric governance models; the entangled analysis of different urban structures (mechanisms of belonging, integration and exclusion, and spaces of representation); the city as a privileged environment for negotiation, conflict resolution, renewal of consensus, management of natural catastrophes and development of public works; the local construction of relationships with neighbouring states and their impact on the configuration of borders and frontiers; imperial connectors, especially those of a mercantile, religious, artisans and technological nature; and, finally, the projection of political power on urban spaces through the circulation of knowledge and information, in relation to the interaction of multiple local cultures towards the formation of highly-cosmopolitan global models. The project has recruited a wide array of internationally prestigious researchers. Project members also have experience in joint projects, having worked with multiple research networks which have had excellent results in analysing the Spanish Monarchy from innovative theoretical perspectives, results which have been published by prestigious publishing houses and high-impact journals. MEMBERS AND INSTITUTIONS Manuel HERRERO SÁNCHEZ (IP, Universidad Pablo de Olavide de Sevilla UPO) Gibrán BAUTISTA Y LUGO (Universidad Autónoma de México) Yasmina BEN YESSEF GARFÍA (Escuela Española de Historia y Arqueología de Roma) Salvador BERNABÉU (Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos del CSIC) Arndt BRENDECKE (Universidad de Munich) Pedro CARDIM (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, CHAM de Lisboa) Juan Manuel CASTILLO RUBIO (UPO) Domenico CECERE (Universidad Federico II de Nápoles) Antonio FEROS (Universidad de Pensilvania) José María GARCÍA REDONDO (Universidad Autónoma de México/EEEHA) Pablo HERNÁNDEZ SAU (IUE, Florencia) Tamar HERZOG (Universidad de Harvard) Iris KANTOR (Universidad de Sao Paulo) Klemens KAPS (Universidad de Linz) Igor KNECEVIC (Universidad de Pensilvania) Giovanni LEVI (Universidad Ca’Foscari de Venecia) Manuel LUCENA GIRALDO (Instituto Historia del CSIC) Aliocha MALDAVSKI (Universidad de Nanterre) Benoît MARÉCHAUX (IUE de Florencia) David MARTÍN MARCOS (UNED de Madrid) Rocío MORENO CABANILLAS (UPO)Jonatán OROZCO CRUZ (UPO) Francisco ORREGO (Universidad Andrés Bello de Viña del Mar en Chile) María Eugenia PETIT-BREUILH (Universidad de Sevilla) Alberto RODRÍGUEZ MARTÍNEZ (UPO) Mafalda SOARES DA CUNHA (Universidad de Évora-CIDEHUS) Thomas WELLER (IEG, Mainz, Instituto Leibniz de Historia europea de Maguncia)

The present project analyzes the vitality of polycentric forms of government in Europe and its overseas territories from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. These complex political structures distant from Bodin's principles of full sovereignty enable us to understand that the national, centralized and homogenous French model was far from the only, and not even the predominant, means for the articulation of modern states. In this way, and in accord with both of our previous research projects pertaining to the National Plan, we propose to continue to deepen our analysis of the strong ties of articulation and dependence between specific dynastic systems (the Hispanic Monarchy, the Holy Roman Empire) and some of the principal Republican systems (Genoa, the United Provinces, Venice and the Helvetic Confederation) with which they shared a constitutional structure marked by the protagonism of an urban, poly-nuclear model as well as a respect for constitutional, legislative and cultural diversity. Confronting the classical distinction between British parlamentarism and French absolutism, we consider that, notwithsanding notable differences, both states opted for a process of administrative centralization and exclusive control of economic resources through the application of rigorous mercantilist measures. While the community of the kingdom was identified progressivly with the monarch and the centralizaed state in France and in England, the mecanisms for naturalization and citizenship in polycentric models continued to be sustained by the consensus of local communities rather than the mere decision of the sovereign, thereby assuring the autonomy of the different cooperations, cities, families and entities that comprised the whole. This heterogenous and flexible space facilitated the participation and inclusion of different transnational mercantile diasporas capable of operating without difficulty in the framework of diverse judicial and monetary systems and acting as connectors among dispearsed territories, in addition to offering a gamut of resources fundamental for them to function better. This situation, far from constituting a barrier to economic development, may explain the mercantile and financial vitality experienced in territories marked by fragmented sovereignty at the foundations of the general process of European overseas expansion. The goal, in short, is to offer a different narrative about the process of the construction of European states, which, rather than classifying models as dynastic or republican, absolutist or parlamentary, conterposes models of sole and centralized rule to those of multiple and shared sovereignty. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the state and sovereignty, far from converging in a process of agregation that led inevitably to the triumph of the homogenous national state, shaped many other forms of articulation based on the vitality of an imposing urban network that explains the persistence of the local and the predominance of polycentric models in the most urbanized areas of the continent. This Europe of cities can constitute a common inheritance much more pertinent than that of the nation-state for understanding the present-day process of European integration. It proves that broader structures can be built locally and with respect for differences. https://www.upo.es/investiga/polycentricstates/