Conflicts and Legal Transgressions Along Atlantic Maritime Borders

Spaces, Societies, and Environment

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Extent: 342 pages

Publisher: Wiley-VCH

Subjects: Medieval Studies

Series: Borders, Boundaries, Landscapes

Language: English, French

Hardback (Forthcoming)

(February 2027)

ISBN: 9782503615868

Price: $157.00

The selected essays of this volume focus on the investigation of conflict on the maritime borders of the European Atlantic façade, this volume proposes a broad debate on the specificity of border contexts in the late medieval Atlantic.


This volume offers a wide-ranging examination of the conflicts that unfolded along the maritime borders of western Atlantic Europe in the late Middle Ages, highlighting the particularities of maritime border contexts at a moment when European societies stood at the threshold of overseas expansion. Through twelve essays spanning the Atlantic façade, from Flanders to the Strait of Gibraltar and the Iberian Atlantic archipelagos, the essays gathered here analyse the diverse forms of confrontation that emerged in these liminal spaces, from military clashes to financial and social disputes, and the environmental tensions unique to coastal and port contexts. Bringing together varied materials and approaches, the volume examines how the notion of borders was constructed, how royal authorities sought to govern these shifting zones, and how warfare became a decisive force in defining their contours. Economic conflicts are explored, underscoring the dense networks and frictions inherent to Atlantic borderlands, while a key historiographical contribution lies in the integration of environmental perspectives. Together, the chapters presented here reveal how the sea functioned as a perpetual border that shaped both practices and perceptions of boundary-making in the Atlantic world of the late Middle Ages.