Ivana Elbl

Trent University, History, Faculty Member

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Justine Firnhaber-Baker

University of St Andrews

Paolo Aranha

Istituto Italiano di Studi Germanici

François Soyer

University of New England - Australia

Francesco Guidi Bruscoli

Università degli Studi di Firenze (University of Florence)

Florin Curta

University of Florida

Lukas Grzybowski

Universidade Estadual de Londrina

Thomás A S Haddad

Universidade de São Paulo

Tiziana Lazzari

Università di Bologna

Enrico Faini

Università degli Studi di Firenze (University of Florence)

Martin Aurell

Université de Poitiers

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Papers by Ivana Elbl

Olof G. Lidin, Tanegashima: The Arrival of Europeans in Japan. Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2002. Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series No. 90. xiv + 304 pp. ISBN 87-91114-12-8

Itinerario, Mar 1, 2004

John H. A. Munro: Bibliography Of Works

Essays in Honour of John H.A. Munro, 2007

Isabel(s) for Abbess: Identity, Lineage and Power in the Contest for Control of the Monastery of Arouca (Portugal), 1437-1457

Portuguese Studies Review, 2023

In 1441 Dona Isabel de Ataíde was confirmed as Abbess of the Cistercian monastery of Arouca, at t... more In 1441 Dona Isabel de Ataíde was confirmed as Abbess of the Cistercian monastery of Arouca, at the momentary end of a vicious internal conflict that had rocked the convent since March 1437 and continued on and off until Isabel’s death in 1457. It centred on the sexual misconduct of her rival, Dona Leonor Pereira, and on the attempts of Leonor’s family to dominate the nunnery. Isabel was staunchly supported by Arouca nuns from a number of other northern noble families, and was in her own turn accused of sexual misconduct. Establishing the details of the partisan struggle, as well as the identities and connections of the contestants and their principal supporters, hinges on a hitherto underutilized body of notarial documentation included in the collection of papers and correspondence of the Portuguese Abbot of the Florentine Badia (Italy), Dom Gomes Eanes. The office of Abbess at Arouca was not merely an internal matter of the convent but was of concern to important noble lineages in the region and also to key political factions in the realm.The struggle over the abbacy of Arouca presented a draining challenge to the authority of the reigning King Duarte and affected his reputation abroad, particularly at the Roman Curia, when he tried to secure the office for a relative of his Queen-consort Leonor: namely Dona Beatriz de Vilhena. The paper reconstructs the course of the 1437-1441 contest at Arouca, and contextualizes the role that the struggle for abbacy played in the lives of the three candidates. It then sets the entire episode amid the broader currents of Portuguese fifteenth-century history.

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Henry ‘the Navigator’

Journal of Medieval History, Mar 1, 2001

Infante Dom Henrique of Portugal, better known as Henry the Navigator, has enjoyed much attention... more Infante Dom Henrique of Portugal, better known as Henry the Navigator, has enjoyed much attention from historians and public alike. Past writers have elevated him to an icon of chivalry and Portuguese national spirit, or, because of his impact on the early overseas expansion, ascribed to him a Promethean role in the rise of modernity. The works of Sir Peter E. Russell, including his new biography Henry 'the Navigator': a life (New Haven, 2000), have made a great contribution to separating the historical Dom Henrique from his 'culture hero' counterpart, Henry the Navigator. They represent a key point of departure for new research, which will need to focus on placing Dom Henrique in the context of his times and his contemporaries. Thanks to the dramatic advances that have taken place over the last twenty years in the historiography of late medieval Portugal and of the early European overseas expansion, as well as in the prosopography of the Iberian nobility, it is now possible to aspire to an in-depth contextualization of Dom Henrique's life and career. It is likewise possible to exploit much more fully the existing primary sources, both published and unpublished. The foundation now exists for an histoire totale approach to Dom Henrique, an undertaking called for by Vitorino Magalhães Godinho in his comprehensive 1990 program of research on the Portuguese overseas expansion.

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Sand and Dreams: Daily Slave Purchases at the Portuguese Coastal Outpost of Arguim (Mauritania, Saharan West Africa) (1519-1520) ~ Full Raw Serialized Data plus Archival Analysis Annotations

Portuguese Studies Review, 2022

The Arguim fortified commercial outpost (‘factory’/feitoria/fort) was the most important Crown-co... more The Arguim fortified commercial outpost (‘factory’/feitoria/fort) was the most important Crown-controlled locus of early Portuguese Atlantic slave trade. Its potential for sustaining and increasing the volume of slave exports has often been overstated, not taking into consideration its geographical and environmental marginality and logistical limitations (supply lines of all kinds). Juan Fernández de Castro’s contract to purchase as many as 4,300 slaves from Arguim is a pertinent example of the resulting exaggerated and frustrated expectations. The limitations of Arguim are addressed in detail in Ivana Elbl, “The Slave Trade Logistics in Arguim, 1492-1519,” in Manuel F. Fernández Chaves & Rafael M. Pérez García, eds., El desarrollo del tráfico esclavista en la modernidad. Siglos XV-XIX (Seville: Editorial Universidad de Sevilla, expected 2023). The space constraints of the chapter, however, did not permit a presentation of the full datasets derived from the slave purchase registers of 1508 (ANTT, Núcleo Antigo 888) and 1519-1520 (ANTT, Núcleo Antigo 889), which provide detailed information on daily slave purchases over a number of months. The consistently documented purchase patterns offer key insights into supply, and the sex, age and value assessments of every single slave. The registers permit extensive dynamic comparison with the evidence provided by surviving maritime bills of lading (conhecimentos) that summarize the number of slaves, sex and age of slaves departing Arguim for Portugal by ship. The ledgers clearly demonstrate that the isolated desert-coast outpost of Arguim was wholly dependent on the willingness and seasonal readiness of regional (Mauritania, Western Sahara, and Sahel) suppliers to bring slaves to a point-of-sale (either Arguim or agreed-upon/conventional [‘expeditionary’] locations in the close Mauritanian hinterland), and offer them for purchase either individually or in small groups.

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Friendship, Disasters, and Social Capital: The Silva Meneses, 1415-1481

Portuguese Studies Review, 2022

The article explores the friendships that bound Infante D. Pedro, Aires Gomes da Silva and their ... more The article explores the friendships that bound Infante D. Pedro, Aires Gomes da Silva and their families, over two generations. The political upheavals of the period, astride the middle of the fifteenth century, severely tested mutual commitments and loyalty, often leading the protagonists to making choices that were dangerous to careers and even sheer survival. Yet, unlike others, the members of the Silva/Silva Meneses family managed not only to recover from the consequences of their allegiances to Infante D. Pedro and his son, Pedro V of Aragon, but gradually regained their confiscated property and secured high court offices. An adaptation of the concepts and forms of scial capital developed in 2007 by Helmut Ehler provides here a theoretical framework that elps to explain the recuperative power of the Silva/Silva Meneses. Their behaviour and actions were fully compatible with the expectations of their social environment. They never lost any of he “system capital” stemming from social positions and networks in which they were embedded. Their fortunes were more volatile in terms of the relational social capital (their personal social resources, stemming from evolving position, the shifting trust of key actors, and obligations stemming from relationships and positions). It is in the latter area that friendship played an essential and at times volatile role, precluding the application of informed, calculated self-interest. However, at no point were the three Silva Meneses socially isolated enough for their decisions and actions based on friendship and loyalty to preclude relations with other social actors that could remedy the consequences of emotive decisions. In the longer run, they Silva Meneses even enhanced their social capital balance.

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A 'Great Man' Who Became a Virgin: The Masculinity of Prince Henry the ‘Navigator’

The Male Body and Social Masculinity in Premodern Europe, ed. Jacqueline Murray, 2022

Prince Henry of Portugal (1394–1460), long after his death dubbed ‘the Navigator,’ believed himse... more Prince Henry of Portugal (1394–1460), long after his death dubbed ‘the Navigator,’ believed himself to be, and assiduously had himself represented as, a paragon of noble masculinity. His idea of princely varonia (masculinity, manliness) was quite conventional in its insistence of physical prowess, deeds of arms, and noble enterprises. Henry’s panegyrics and surviving egodocuments agree he strove to be an embodiment of varonia and saw himself predestined to become one the great men of history. His insistence — both for himself and his protégés — on physical prowess, deeds of arms, and the need to engage in noble ventures, helped fuel the early Portuguese overseas expansion. The concept of noble varonia did not, however, include sexual activity or procreation. Historians have been fascinated by Henry’s claims to virginity, interpreting them alternatively as proof of saintliness or covert homosexuality. The image of noble masculinity created about him is exceptional in the sense that it merges the secular Iberian notions of varonia, with its emphasis on service and fighting the “infidel”, for which the physical body was a vital tool, with a very rare quality usually associated with saints: the denial of the sexual dimension of the body.

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Ceuta: The “Red Herring” of Portuguese Politics, 1425−1481

Encounters in the Borderlands: Portugal, Ceuta, and the "Other Shore", ed. Martin Elbl, 2019

Baywolf Press has undertaken appropriate steps to establish rights to use of the material printed... more

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Prince Henry the Navigator

Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, 2017

The Bull Romanus Pontifex (1455) and the Early European Trading in Sub-Saharan Atlantic Africa

Portuguese Studies Review, 2009

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Group Identities in the Early Portuguese Overseas Expansion in Africa: Concepts and Expressions

Portuguese Studies Review, 2007

The most significant conceptual contributions come from the evolving field of social psychology. ... more The most significant conceptual contributions come from the evolving field of social psychology. Starting with the works of H. Tajfel on social identity and intergroup relations, social psychologists, particularly those willing to adopt a historical perspective, began to create a conceptual and theoretical platform needed to capture these complex phenomena.

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Prestige Considerations and the Changing Interest of the Portuguese Crown in Sub-Saharan Atlantic Africa, 1444-1580

Portuguese Studies Review, 2002

Henry ‘the Navigator’

Journal of Medieval History, 2001

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Men without Wives': Sexual Arrangements in the Early Portuguese Expansion in West Africa

Desire and Discipline, 1996

The Volume of the Early Atlantic Slave Trade, 1450–1521

The Journal of African History, 1997

Although slaves were the most common merchandise in the Portuguese-dominated opening period of th... more Although slaves were the most common merchandise in the Portuguese-dominated opening period of the seaborne trade between Europe and Africa, relatively little conclusive information is available on their overall numbers. Even less is known about the distribution of these early exports of slaves in space and time, although these are two of the key factors in assessing the much debated societal impact of the early Atlantic slave trade and the role of slavery in West and West-Central African economic, social and political life.

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Archival Evidence of the Portuguese Expansion in Africa, 1440-1521

Primary Sources & Original Works, 1993

Abstract The archival evidence relating to the early Portuguese expansion is scarce and much of i... more Abstract The archival evidence relating to the early Portuguese expansion is scarce and much of it has been published. Unfortunately, lack of knowledge of the overall shape and structure of the surviving documentation continues to hamper the maximum exploitation of this material. To establish such essential patterns as archival, chronological, geographical and, most importantly, institutional distribution of the existing documents; and to examine the links between these patterns, are fundamental tasks to underpin the study of the early Portuguese expansion in Africa.

The Horse in Fifteenth-Century Senegambia

The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 1991

Page 1. The International Jorwnal of African Historical Studies, Volume 24, No. 1 (1991) 8 5 THE ... more

Nation, Bolsa, and Factory: Three Institutions of Late-Medieval Portuguese Trade with Flanders

The International History Review, 1992

... Goncalves was succeeded in office by Joao Estevens, who was factor between 1466 and 1471.Este... more

Cross-Cultural Trade and Diplomacy: Portuguese Relations with West Africa, 1441-1521

Journal of World History, 1992

Page 1. Cross-Cultural Trade and Diplomacy: Portuguese Relations with West Africa, 1441-1521* IVA... more

Reviews by Ivana Elbl

Book Review: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM

International Journal of Maritime History, 2001

settlement. In the meantime, the survivors realized that they had been surrounded by hundreds of ... more settlement. In the meantime, the survivors realized that they had been surrounded by hundreds of men armed with spears, bows, and muskets. When a Dutch cannon was fired, more or less by accident, a fierce fight broke out, leaving some forty-five Europeans dead. The survivors were stripped of all their possessions, including their clothes. After ten days they were allowed to leave for the French settlement of Goree. During the week-long march, many died from starvation, wounds, or severe sunburn. Some 100 men and a few female passengers eventually reached the settlement, whereupon the group dispersed, sailing from Goree on different ships. The introduction by Roelof van Gelder focuses on the story as recounted by a young German, Peter Carl Zimmermann. Copies of his book, Reise nach Ostund WestIndien, are very rare so much so that his book had escaped all previous researchers and bibliographers of VOC or Dutch and German travel literature. It was Van Gelder, in his published thesis, Het Oost-Indiscn avontuur. Duitsers in dienst van de VOC (1997), who first drew attention to this small volume. Zimmermann came to Amsterdam from northeast Germany as an apothecary's apprentice. Lured by tales of riches in the East, he decided to join the VOC. Yet he would never reach Asia. Following the shipwreck of Blydorp he boarded a slave ship to the West Indies. Eventually he married, had three sons, and settled on the Danish island of St. John. There he wrote a long letter in 1743 to his relatives back in Germany which was published in 1771 as Reise nach Ostund West-Indien. In his brief introduction, Van Gelder provides an excellent summary of the events of the shipwreck and its aftermath, together with information on Germans in the service of the VOC and details about Zimmermann's life taken from his book as well as from the archives of the VOC and the City of Amsterdam. All that is missing in Van Gelder's introduction is some information on the African side of the story. What was the attitude at the time of the people of Senegal towards Europeans? What do we know of their reaction to a ship stranding on their shores and shipwreck survivors appearing on their beaches? The book brings together all the printed sources of the Blydorp shipwreck, together with a well-researched introduction on the events and particularly on the story as recounted by Carl Peter Zimmermann. He is a good example of the many young men who left Europe at this time hoping to find wealth in the East but who never reached their goal.

Olof G. Lidin, Tanegashima: The Arrival of Europeans in Japan. Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2002. Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series No. 90. xiv + 304 pp. ISBN 87-91114-12-8

Itinerario, Mar 1, 2004

John H. A. Munro: Bibliography Of Works

Essays in Honour of John H.A. Munro, 2007

Isabel(s) for Abbess: Identity, Lineage and Power in the Contest for Control of the Monastery of Arouca (Portugal), 1437-1457

Portuguese Studies Review, 2023

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Henry ‘the Navigator’

Journal of Medieval History, Mar 1, 2001

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Sand and Dreams: Daily Slave Purchases at the Portuguese Coastal Outpost of Arguim (Mauritania, Saharan West Africa) (1519-1520) ~ Full Raw Serialized Data plus Archival Analysis Annotations

Portuguese Studies Review, 2022

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Friendship, Disasters, and Social Capital: The Silva Meneses, 1415-1481

Portuguese Studies Review, 2022

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A 'Great Man' Who Became a Virgin: The Masculinity of Prince Henry the ‘Navigator’

The Male Body and Social Masculinity in Premodern Europe, ed. Jacqueline Murray, 2022

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Ceuta: The “Red Herring” of Portuguese Politics, 1425−1481

Encounters in the Borderlands: Portugal, Ceuta, and the "Other Shore", ed. Martin Elbl, 2019

Baywolf Press has undertaken appropriate steps to establish rights to use of the material printed... more

Download

Prince Henry the Navigator

Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, 2017

The Bull Romanus Pontifex (1455) and the Early European Trading in Sub-Saharan Atlantic Africa

Portuguese Studies Review, 2009

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Group Identities in the Early Portuguese Overseas Expansion in Africa: Concepts and Expressions

Portuguese Studies Review, 2007

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Prestige Considerations and the Changing Interest of the Portuguese Crown in Sub-Saharan Atlantic Africa, 1444-1580

Portuguese Studies Review, 2002

Henry ‘the Navigator’

Journal of Medieval History, 2001

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Men without Wives': Sexual Arrangements in the Early Portuguese Expansion in West Africa

Desire and Discipline, 1996

The Volume of the Early Atlantic Slave Trade, 1450–1521

The Journal of African History, 1997

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Archival Evidence of the Portuguese Expansion in Africa, 1440-1521

Primary Sources & Original Works, 1993

The Horse in Fifteenth-Century Senegambia

The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 1991

Page 1. The International Jorwnal of African Historical Studies, Volume 24, No. 1 (1991) 8 5 THE ... more

Nation, Bolsa, and Factory: Three Institutions of Late-Medieval Portuguese Trade with Flanders

The International History Review, 1992

... Goncalves was succeeded in office by Joao Estevens, who was factor between 1466 and 1471.Este... more

Cross-Cultural Trade and Diplomacy: Portuguese Relations with West Africa, 1441-1521

Journal of World History, 1992

Page 1. Cross-Cultural Trade and Diplomacy: Portuguese Relations with West Africa, 1441-1521* IVA... more

Book Review: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM

International Journal of Maritime History, 2001

A “Compromisso” for the Future: 500th Anniversary of the First Printed Edition of the Compromisso of the Confraternity of the Misericórdia

Renaissance and Reformation, 2018

comptes rendus 247 centrale. Pour les chercheurs dont l'accès direct à ces travaux reste difficil... more comptes rendus 247 centrale. Pour les chercheurs dont l'accès direct à ces travaux reste difficile et parfois impossible pour des raisons linguistiques, il s'agit d'une précieuse porte d'entrée dans ce monde qui mérite d'être mieux connu et exploré. Grâce à la très belle qualité globale de ce recueil, Louthan et Murdock atteignent pleinement leur objectif. Ils offrent un aperçu synthétique sans équivalent d'une partie encore insuffisamment étudiée des mutations religieuses qui ont bouleversé la chrétienté européenne à l'époque des réformes. hugues daussy

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The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870

Journal of World History , 1999

Book Review: The Atlantic Slave Trade

International Journal of Maritime History, 2003

categorizes Atlantic histories, not British Atlantic ones. Bailyn's insistence is repeated by Mic... more categorizes Atlantic histories, not British Atlantic ones. Bailyn's insistence is repeated by Michael Braddick and Sarah Pearsall, who then offer superb essays that look exactly like British imperial social history. This attempt to escape any association with a defunct and brutal empire can be sustained only by ignoring the fact that the language of power, credit, politics and class was English. In clear contrast, Nuala Zahedieh on British Atlantic economics, Elizabeth Mancke on diplomacy and state formation, Christopher Brown on the politics of slavery and abolition, Eliga Gould on the consequences of revolutions in Britain and America, and J.H. Elliott in a masterly concluding comparison of British and Spanish experience, are all frankly discussing the British empire, as inhabitants of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic would have done. The post-imperial representation ofthis transnational field, stripped of its obvious imperial features, may help account for the current popularity of Atlantic studies both in Britain (more on the edge of Europe than ever) and in the multicultural United States of America (quite blatantly globalizing). However, some rather central matters with profound social and cultural consequences are notably absent from this collection. Although these authors generously acknowledge debts to Charles M.

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Book Review: Captive Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Making of the Americas

International Journal of Maritime History, 2003

drawn into this commerce. Shipbuilders and importers of goods such as textiles, which wouldbe exc... more drawn into this commerce. Shipbuilders and importers of goods such as textiles, which wouldbe exchanged with the WestAfrican traders, were obviousparticipants in the slave trade,but lessapparentwerethecoppersmelters whosheathedthehullsof theslavingships, thebrassfounders whoproducedpotsandbracelets forparticularWestAfrican marketsand the victuallers whoprovided the horsebeansto feedthe slaves. Voluminous endnotesoffer the fruitsof extensive research into this vastcommercial infrastructure, whileallowingthe bodyof the text to remain accessible to the moregeneralreader. Perhaps understandably, the least successful dimensionof the book is also the mostambitious. Theauthorattempts toexamine theoft-quoted, anonymous claimthat&quot;there is not a brick in the citybut what is cemented withthe blood of a slave.&quot;She notes that the relationship between theslavetradeandeighteenth-centuryurbandevelopment hasattracted littleattentionfromurbanhistorians suchasPeterBorsay. Yetsheopensthis important line of enquiryonly to providea relatively narrowanalysis of the linksbetweenthe slavetrade and the growing gentilityof Bristol&#39;s elite. Her focus is essentially on the homes of the gentryratherthanon speculative investment in lessexclusive housing, whichcomprised the majorityofBristol&#39;sdevelopment intheeighteenth century. It is unsurprising that thehomes of the wealthy merchants in Queen Square and, later, the suburb of Clifton should be constructed, at leastin part,on the profitsof the slavetrade.A moresignificant question is the extentof reinvestment of the proceeds of the slavetrade in the widerhousingmarketof eighteenth-century Bristol. It is, of course, unfair to expect these questions to be fully addressed in a volume concerned predominantly with representation and attitudes. Additional work wiIl be required to establish the real extent to which the physical .development of ports such as Bristol and Liverpool was based on this hugely profitable trade. Thisisanattractively-presented volume, butonafewoccasionseditorialoversight has not been maintained. There are instances of repetition (e.g., p. 82) and typographical errors(e.g., the &quot;I 860s&quot; shouldbe the &quot;1680s&quot; on p. 100). But theseare veryminorflaws in an impressive bookwhichbreaksgenuinely new groundin the searchto understand the widerimpactofthe slavetradeon Britishsocietyand culture.

Olof G. Lidin, Tanegashima: The Arrival of Europeans in Japan. Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2002. Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series No. 90. xiv + 304 pp. ISBN 87-91114-12-8

Itinerario, 2004

Niumi in World History

The Journal of African History, 1999

Correspondance d'un Ambassadeur Castillan au Portugal dans les Années 1530, Lope Hurtado de Mendoza

The Sixteenth Century Journal, 2003

The English Historical Review (EHR) deals not only with British history, but also with almost all... more

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