Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents the different facets of the Iberian world during the period between the fifteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. It aims to present the universe in all its diversity and complexity, to analyse in depth a space marked by many affinities and similarities, but also by innumerable differences, tensions, exclusions, and conflicts. The book traces the social construction of a world indelibly marked by diversities. It explores the history of the mutual constitution of the various polities that existed in the Iberian peninsula. The book sets out the historical dynamics of the Iberian peninsula from the fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth century. It provides the basic coordinates—in the political, social, economic and cultural spheres—of the Iberian space in the course of that period. The book focuses on the expansionary processes initiated by the Portuguese and the Spanish.