Alcuzcuz and Muslims “de nación”: Naturalizing Religious Difference in Debates about Enslavement in Early Modern Granada and Manila

• Published in: The Sixteenth century journal Vol. 55; no. 1-2; pp. 31 - 55
• Main Author: Feild-Marchello, Erica
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chicago University of Chicago Press 01.03.2024
• Subjects: 16th century; Calderon de la Barca, Pedro (1600-1681); Drama; Early modern period; Islam; Muslims; Racialization; Religious beliefs; Rhetoric; Slavery; Spanish history; Spanish literature; Philippines; Granada Spain; Spain
• ISSN: 0361-0160; 2326-0726
• DOI: 10.1086/731064

It is no accident that the literary and historical paper trail of early modern Spain and the Spanish empire is littered with racialized names and terminologies that activate associations with Islam. This article analyzes the roles of naming choices across different genres of writing via integrated case studies of the 1567 Pragmatic, a local rebuttal to that pragmatic, and royal orders and laws regarding enslavement practices in Granada and the Philippines, as well as the play Amar después de la muerte by Calderón de la Barca to shed light on the traffic of rhetorical strategies between literary and historical documents, as well as between Spain and the Philippines. It argues that early modern writers (from playwrights to court and colonial officials to King Felipe II) frequently drew on racialized vocabularies that mobilized naturalized understanding of religious inheritance as they entered into debates regarding the enslavement of Muslims (in the Philippines) and converts from Islam and their descendants (in Spain).