Reconciliation and repression in the Iberian Monarchies (as co-convenor)

In recent years historiography has been slowly acknowledging the potential of civil societies to restore concord after profound divisions during the Ancien Régime. It also has uncovered the pacification strategies of authorities to reconcile and reincorporate individuals and social groups after periods of revolt. Still, most aspects of these early modern pacification and reconciliation processes have been largely ignored. Hence, the international conference in Kortrijk – also the XIIth conference on the history of the Iberian monarchies - provided an important forum for both European scholars (Belgium, Spain, France, Italy and Portugal) and their American colleagues (United States, Mexico and Peru) to discuss their recent findings in this field, and above all, to compare them within a transregional and transatlantic perspective. The main question was to better explain why the Habsburg Empire could govern so long and so resourcefully, despite the repetitive crises happening in all parts of the Empire, and to analyze whether the peace making strategies (both induced by natives or magistrates) helped in this respect. By organizing panels on the top-down as well as from a bottom-up perspective, the working hypothesis that the Habsburg dynasty engaged extensively with peace making strategies was during the conference to be validated or refuted by different regional studies. In any case, the conference also proposed to examine to which extent local actors and transregional elites fostered peace making on the ground in the different parts of the Empire.status: publishe