Los mares que corrompen. Nuevas perspectivas sobre los barcos y la tecnología en el Mundo Atlántico, Siglos XV y XVI: The Corrupting Seas. New perspectives on ships and technology in the Atlantic World in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

Much of what is known about the development of technology and ships in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries draws upon our interpretation of 1588, the Great Armada, Sir Francis Drake and all that. This paper questions the development of technology, asking if it was as rapid and marked as many historians have said. The career of the famous English privateer or ‘corsair’ demonstrates that he made extensive use of oared ships, which were crucial to many of his amphibian campaigns. The history of the corsairs of North Africa also underlines the limitations in the use of this new technology of sails and cannons. There can be no doubt that changes occurred in ship design and that they had enormous impact upon the financial and economic organisation of the old continent. But in many cases it is clear that these transformations have to be set in a more nuanced context. The works of recent historians such as the late José Luis Casado Soto, Hugo O’Donnell, Carla Philips, N.A.M. Roger, Kenneth Andrews, Cheryl A.Fury, Peregrine Horden, Arturo Pacini, Nicholas Purcell, Giancarlo Casale, John H.Pryor and Ángel Alloza Aparicio provide a basis from which to rethink the history of these corrupting seas