Toby Yuen-Gen Liang

Academia Sinica, Institute of History and Philology, Faculty Member

National Taiwan University, History, Faculty Member

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Founder and President
Spain-North Africa Project (SNAP)
http://snap.ucsc.edu

Co-Founder and Co-Director
Wheaton Institute for the Interdisciplinary Humanities
www.wheatonma.edu/wiih

Co-President
New England Renaissance Conference
www.new-england-renaissance-conference.org

Member, Advisory Board
The Mediterranean Seminar
www.mediterraneanseminar.org

Founding Member, Editorial Board
The Medieval Globe
https://mip-archumanitiespress.org/series/arc/tmg/
Address: Department of History
National Taiwan University
No. 1, Section 4, Roosevelt Road
Taipei 10617 TAIWAN

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Aurelio Espinosa

Jose M . Escribano-Páez

Universidad Pablo de Olavide

Claire Gilbert

Saint Louis University

Andrew Devereux

University of California, San Diego

Abigail K Balbale

New York University

Camilo Gómez-Rivas

University of California, Santa Cruz

Eloy Martín Corrales

Pompeu Fabra University

Daniel Hershenzon

University of Connecticut

María Mercedes Delgado Pérez

Universidad de Sevilla

Natividad Planas

Université Clermont Auvergne

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Papers by Toby Yuen-Gen Liang

Spanish North African Enclaves and Urban Networks in the Western Mediterranean in the Early Sixteenth Century

Cheiron, 2021

A partire dal 1497, la Spagna conquistò diverse città nel Nord Africa tra le quali Orano, Melilla... more A partire dal 1497, la Spagna conquistò diverse città nel Nord Africa tra le quali Orano, Melilla e Bugía. Gli studiosi specializzati in storia politica e militare hanno sottolineato la condizione di isolamento di questi avamposti cristiani dall'entroterra musulmano e dalla stessa Spagna. Questo articolo adotta una prospettiva diversa esaminando queste enclave come centri urbani. Gli ufficiali spagnoli concettualizzarono del resto lo spazio del Maghreb come una serie di città. Le campagne militari spagnole si impadronivano più spesso di molteplici insediamenti fra loro collegati che di un solo sito o un vasto territorio. Una volta conquistate queste 'plaças' fornivano le infrastrutture e la popolazione che permettevano di concentrare potere, consumi e scambi. Acquisivano la funzione di punti di ingresso nell'area per gli Spagnoli e nuclei di contatto fra Nord-Africani e Europei. Nel complesso, questi centri facevano parte della vasta rete di città del Mediterraneo occidentale. Lo studio delle relazioni di Orano e Tlemcen negli anni 1520-30 aiuta ad illustrare questa interazione e allo stesso tempo la competizione e le aspettative spesso insoddisfatte che la limitarono.

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History, Historians, and the Production of Societies in the Past and the Future

New Horizons for Early Modern European Scholarship, 2021

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Hidden subjectivities in objective measures: Spanish perceptions of geographic space in North Africa

In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Spanish forces invaded a number of coastal t... more In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Spanish forces invaded a number of coastal towns in North Africa. Historians often consider this encounter as a continuation of a familiar context of Christian-Muslim relations in the western Mediterranean. As such, Spaniards are presumed to have almost had a pre-knowledge of topography that resembled Iberian landscapes and of climates, flora, and fauna that nestle comfortingly within a Braudelian belt of olive trees. How well does this characterization indicate Spanish sensory perceptions of the geographic world of North Africa? Geographic knowledge was critical for the military campaigns that sought to capture overseas territories and the gathering and representing of information overlapped with developing sciences, including engineering. Representations of such data fixated on precise measurements. At the same time, human experience of measurable quantities such as distance were conditioned by subjectivities. Human agency, sensory perception, and even imaginaries of the unknown all altered how the Spaniards encountered the geographic world of North Africa. By juxtaposing geographic perception in measurable and subjective terms, this article presents another side of Spaniards' encounters with North Africa.

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The Interdisciplinary Humanities: A Platform for Experiential Learning of Workplace Skills

by Touba Ghadessi and Toby Yuen-Gen Liang