Dr Emanuel Buttigieg, of the Department of History, Faculty of Arts, was one of a small group of international academics invited to participate in the symposium 'The Habsburg Mediterranean, 1500-1800', organised at the Austrian Hospice in Jerusalem.
In the light of recent debates on Mediterranean contact zones, mobile imperial agents, and Habsburg-Ottoman frontier zones, this conference explored the early modern ‘Habsburg Mediterranean’. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, the Mediterranean was a profoundly significant space for the Habsburg monarchy. Yet up to now, research did not address the cultural, economical, material, military and political presence of Habsburg subjects in the early modern Mediterranean in a comparative perspective. The conference sought to reflect on a Habsburg Thalassography that centred on the early modern Mediterranean.
Dr Buttigieg's paper was entitled 'Habsburgs and Hospitallers in the early modern Mediterranean: Contacts, Relations, Movement, c.1690-c.1750'. This contribution sought to discuss ‘Habsburgs’ and ‘Hospitallers’ – both very porous categories of analysis – in an attempt to define a Hospitaller-Habsburg-Mediterranean that was both a geographical reality and a symbolic space.
The symposium was held under the auspices of HIRH Archduke Karl von Habsburg-Lothringen.
