Fernando Chavarría Múgica

discipline History
FCT Postdoctoral Fellow at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal

Research project

Borderland entanglements: A comparative approach to civil-military relations during the First Global Age

 

After the fall of the Berlin Wall the very concept of "territorial border" seemed to become obsolete. It was assumed that as the world became more open, accessible and cosmopolitan, the borders of the old nation-state would eventually fade away. The new era would lead to a "flat" world. Today we do know that our world is not heading towards "borderless" utopia. The rise of ethnic and religious strife, mass migration, and the economic crisis, among other transnational problems, may have eroded some of the old borders but have also encouraged the creation of new ones. The fact of living in a "flat world" has not prevented the building of new barriers and walls. The new boom in border studies during the last years reflects a shared interest in balancing the need for borders and the challenges of an increasingly globalized world.

Perhaps one of the most obvious outcomes of the increase of border tensions around the world is the re-militarization of borderlands. Border surveillance and security policies are intended to protect the territory from foreign threats, but the fact is that they also may have a great impact on homeland population. Militarization could be problematic or even contradictory to our global, democratic, liberal societies. The future consequences of this trend are unpredictable. However, from a historical point of view this is hardly a novelty. It could be said that militarization was one of the most prominent features of borderlands all along history. In the past, borderlands used to work more as bulwarks or buffer territories than ordinary administrative districts. In borderlands, civil and military affairs collided and entangled mutually and intensely. From this point of view a comparative study of borderlands during the First Global Age could provide us useful insights on our own globalization.

The purpose of my project is to study the legal, cultural, and political consequences of the militarization of borderlands in the Spanish Empire from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. This project aims to offer a new approach to the study of territorial sovereignty which takes into account the truly global nature of the Spanish empire, hence avoiding the trap of traditional narratives of nation-state building. My research raises new questions about the concepts of jurisdiction and sovereignty before the rise of modern nation-states.

Biography

 

Dr. Fernando Chavarría-Múgica is a historian of the Early Modern Spanish empire, currently affiliated to the Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences at the University Nova of Lisbon, Portugal. Before arriving to CRASSH he has been CNRS/Marie Curie Intra-European Fellow at the EHESS in Paris, France, and Juan de la Cierva Researcher at the University of Alcalá, Spain. He was awarded his PhD in History and Civilization from the European University Institute, Florence, Italy. His current research interests are: borders and borderlands, civil-military relations, political culture, factionalism, and the History of Emotions.

 

 

Selected publications

 

'El 'ruido' de los confines de Navarra: servicio, reputación y disimulación durante la negociación del intercambio de princesas (1609‐1615)', in A. Esteban Estríngana (ed.), Servir al rey en la Monarquía de los Austrias: Medios, fines y logros del servicio al soberano en los siglos XVI y XVII, Sílex, Madrid, 2012, pp. 227‐259.

 

'La capitulación de la 'cabeza del reino' y la cuestión de los alojamientos: disputa y negociación de la condición privilegiada de Pamplona', in A. Floristán (ed.), 1512: Conquista e incorporación de Navarra. Historiografía, derecho y otros procesos de incorporación en la Europa renacentista, Ariel, Barcelona, 2012, pp. 361‐385.

 

'Más allá de la Provincia: la función defensiva de Fuenterrabía como fundamento de sus prerrogativas en el entramado guipuzcoanno y fronterizo (siglos XVI‐XVIII)', in A. Jiménez Estrella & J.J. Lozano Navarro (eds), Actas de la XI Reunión Científica de la Fundación Española de Historia Moderna. Comunicaciones, vol. 2, Universidad de Granada, Granada, 2012, pp. 986‐996. [CD‐ROM]

 

'Por codicia o necesidad: la exención aduanera vascongada y el sistema fronterizo de conversas a finales del siglo XVII', in L. Salas Almela (ed.), Los ámbitos de la fiscalidad: fronteras, territorio y percepción de tributos en los imperios ibéricos (siglos XV‐XVIII), Instituto de Estudios Fiscales, Madrid, 2011, pp. 77‐105. 

 

Pedro de la Puente, Los soldados en la guardia, [Pavía, 1657], (ed.), Ministerio de Defensa, Madrid, 2006. 

 

institut

junior fellow
EURIAS promotion 2011/2012
Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH)
discipline History
2011
junior fellow
EURIAS promotion 2015/2016
Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH)
discipline Literature
2015
junior fellow
EURIAS promotion 2017/2018
Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH)
discipline Musicology
2017
junior fellow
EURIAS promotion 2018/2019
Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH)
discipline Philosophy
2018