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This article analyses the influence of confessional divides in the construction of a Mediterranean frontier between the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb at the very beginning of the early modern period. Questioning the influence that religious difference had on the geopolitics of the early modern Mediterranean could seem superfluous since historians have traditionally depicted the Mediterranean world as a space of confrontation between two confessional empires, the Ottoman and the Habsburg. Nevertheless, by focusing on a selection of diplomatic negotiations from the Western Mediterranean it appears that several actors envisioned a scenario where religious and political frontiers were far from coincide. This article will analyse the diplomatic negotiations promoted by different Muslim communities from the Maghreb to voluntarily enter under the rule of the Catholic Monarchs in the framework of the Spanish imperial expansion at the beginning of the sixteenth century. In studying these negotiations from an actor-based approach my aim is not to deny the religious or the political divide existing between the Christian and the Islamic shores. I will argue, however, that this frontier was constructed through the interaction of a wide array of agents such as local elites, royal officers, military men, religious actors, and rulers, with changing agendas towards religious difference.

La historia de las relaciones entre civiles y militares ha privilegiado la violencia de los segundos sobre los primeros por lo que sabemos poco sobre la violencia ejercida por civiles contra soldados. Este artículo se centra en ella examinando un corpus de pleitos sobre las agresiones sufridas por soldados a manos de agentes de la autoridad local, campesinos o trabajadores, en una nueva ciudad de frontera: la Pamplona del s. XVI. Este análisis muestra que la violencia civil sobre los soldados, más que una mera respuesta a sus abusos era el resultado de la incorporación de los militares al tejido social local, así como de la activa participación de los civiles en la configuración de las prácticas y normas que regulaban la interacción a ras de suelo entre civiles y militares.

A crucial asset for cross-cultural communication during the early modern period, diplomatic gifts have been traditionally associated with courtly diplomacy and peaceful encounters. However, recent scholarship on this topic has emphasized how gifts can reveal bitter political rivalries and asymmetries of power. Building on this line of inquiry, this article explores the complex roles of gifts in the dynamics of cross-cultural violence on the frontiers of the Iberian empires in Southeast Asia. Through the examination of a wide array of sources, I aim to show how gift-giving turned into one of the multiple factors fueling the violent conflict between Moluccan sultans and Iberian authorities in the region between 1575 and 1606.

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