CFP: Anglo-Spanish Lives in Port Cities
3rd Annual Conference of the AHRC Project
'Imperial Entanglements: Trans-Oceanic Basque Networks in British and
Spanish Colonialism and their Legacy'
9-10 August 2019
Museum of Liverpool, Liverpool UK
Port-cities in Britain are known and studied as crossroads and gateways of empire.
People, ideas, goods, money, etc. flowed in and out of these porous urban
environments. For many people, port-cities were not only a place of transience, they
could also be a home city with a strong sense of community. From the 16th through
the 19th centuries, some of those who called port-cities their homes were part of the
Anglo-Spanish diaspora. From Cadiz to London or Bilbao to Liverpool, Spanish and
British citizens crossed the oceans in order to participate in Anglo-Spanish trade and
imperial expansion. These voyages inevitably led to the creation of Anglo-Spanish
communities in the littoral regions of both empires. The growth and success of Anglo-
Spanish communities in port-cities was driven in part by imperial ventures such as the
textile industry, mining, and the slave trade. It is not always easy to reconcile the
history of exploitative ventures with the immigrant communities whose creation they
facilitated. However, it is important to bring together local and imperial histories in
order to understand how Anglo-Spanish communities were built, thrived, and
sometimes waned.
This conference seeks to bring together scholars interested in the lives of Anglo-
Spanish communities across both the Spanish and British empires. The conference
also seeks to address the tensions that investigating family and local history can bring
to communities today. The conference will be open to the public in the hopes that
those interested in the conference themes will come and engage with the ideas being
presented. The themes of this conference were inspired by the histories of two Anglo-
Basque families, the Zuluetas and the Larrinagas, both of whom have contentious
legacies in London and Liverpool.
We are particularly interested in paper or panel proposals in the areas of family
history; literature; art history; business history; food history; urban history; slavetrade
history; shipping history; and cultural history.
We encourage PhD students and ECRs to apply. We are cognisant that attending
conferences can be a financial burden for scholars and we are hoping to make some
funding available for travel and accommodation. If you have any funding questions
please get in touch and we will do what we can to help.
Please send individual paper or panel proposals and any queries to Dr. Anna
Brinkman at:
a.brinkman@warwick.ac.uk
All proposals are due by midnight 28 May. Please note that proposals for all-male
panels will not be accepted.