Fronteras: de la comunidad a la nación en la Castilla bajomedieval

Abstract

In my article, Borders: From Community to Nation in Late Medieval Castile, I argue that the development of concepts of sovereignty, national frontiers and a "national" space in late medieval and early modern Castile was linked, among other theoretical and political developments, to the emergence of territorial boundaries and the ordering of physical space at the level of local communities in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. National boundaries, the idea of the realm as a spatial concept, could not have been articulated or imagined without a previous grounding in local experiences. Thus, the main portions of the article explore the transition from definitions of property as seignorial jurisdiction and rents to a spatial ordering of the land in villages throughout northern Castile. Three types of evidence are examined: 1) sources which describe the limiting of geographical space by the use of artificial landmarks (mojones); 2) those documents which describe the consolidation of property into contiguous estates; 3) transactions of land which show an increased preoccupation with rights of "entry and exit".