¿Si fuera cierto? Espías y agentes en la frontera (siglos XVI-XVII)

Abstract

Frontier again? Today this word, so characteristic of Historiography, returned to all the international media. However, the “frontiers” of newspapers have little to do with the image by historians. In fact, the most important aspects for the scholars continue to be linked to contact, sometimes peaceful, sometimes conflictual, between the two sides of the frontier. The protagonists of our pages are not so different from those who move along the current borders: Syrian and Iraqi refugees with the Moriscos, who fled to the four corners of the world, the so-called mafias with the merchants of captives or the exiles of our time with the overthrown princes. If there is a common denominator of all frontiers, it is, without a doubt, that they are spaces where a multitude of information is generated. Discordant, stereotyped and perhaps absurd, news from the frontiers has a transcendental value for the society. For all these reasons, this volume aims to present the relationship between frontier and information during the early modern period with analytical approaches that examine the most controversial aspects and paying special attention to spies and informal agents.