WP5

THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE FIRST EURO-ATLANTIC HUBS AND CITIES

Activity type: Research

Leader: Juan Guillermo Martin Rincon (Uninorte)

Sub-leader: José Bettencourt (FCSH)

Partner organizations:

IPC (Cape Verde), FCSH (Portugal), UPO (Spain), Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), APCM (Portugal), EVEHA (France). All partners will be dedicated to Underwater Archaeological surveys; Written sources, iconography and cartographical reviews. WP2 will start in Month 6. The first six months will be of general organization and preparation of the several WP tasks, as well as of bibliographical review. Secondments will start in month 7.

Objectives:

WP5 will mostly rely on underwater archaeology missions and surveys, complemented with cartographic and written sources analysis. The colonial economy, set towards a mercantilist policy of control of exports and imports, demanded the construction and development of new port cities that reached a remarkable development still in the 16th century. Fortification to assure defence before the countless enemy attacks to which they were submitted to, administrative structures, new layouts, streets and squares, warehouses, merchant and specialized naval workers neighbourhoods, shipyards all made part of these new cities as representative models of this colonial cities, case studies for the equatorial crossing: from Lisbon and Seville to the insular cities of Ribeira Velha and Sao Tome; and across the Atlantic to the cities of São Cristóvão (Sergipe), Marechal Deodoro (Alagoas) and Cartagena de las Indias (Colombia). The models to be studied and compared, applied to the Iberian commercial system, can also be compared to the cities of Cadiz, Angra, Las Palmas, Mazagao, Havana, Santo Domingo, Cartagena, Kingston, Nombre de Dios, Veracruz, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, and Buenos Aires. On the other hand, the case studies for the Northern Crossing ranging from the early modern Europe (Iberia, Iceland and the British Isles) to Labrador and Newfoundland show different settlement options. Less urban development in a first stage of the expansion movements but important because of the natural recourses start to attract colonizer and explorers. Here, we expect to keep the focus on non-nucleated but highly diverse foci and migratory networks that developed in the early modern period in places such as Iceland and Newfoundland. The first settlements where insipid and provisional and little organized in terms of fixed and administrative structures. But this did not prevent the resources exploitation, especially the marine ones, like cod fishing and whaling, boosting local commercial agents and merchants for the creation of local warehouses and small settlements in North American territories. We will also address aspects such as the geomorphology and environments of the harbours spaces, attending on the different emergent chronologies of each port and also the most important period of each one in the role of the Atlantic trade. The typology of the different structures connected with architectural and urban features will be address to a better understand of the imperial models of colonization and the concepts of harbours as builders of urban environment and drivers of change in coastal landscapes of a New World.