Lepanto in the Americas: Global Storytelling and Mediterranean History

This paper reveals the voices, logics, and consequences of sixteenth-century American storytelling about the Battle of Lepanto; an approach that decentres our perspective on the history of that battle. Latin American storytelling about Lepanto, I argue, should prompt us to reconsider historians’ Mediterranean-centred storytelling about Lepanto—the event—by studying the social dynamics of its event-making in the light of early modern global connections. Studying the circulation of news, the symbolic power of festivities, as well as the autobiographical storytelling of global protagonists participating at that battle, this paper reveals how storytelling about Lepanto burgeoned in the Spanish oversea territories.

Stefan Hanß is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Manchester. Working on material culture and cultural encounters in the early modern period, he published widely on the Battle of Lepanto and Christian-Muslim contacts in the early modern period. His current research is dedicated to the history of hair and feather-working. His research has been published in ‘Past & Present’, ‘History Workshop Journal’, and ‘The Historical Journal’. Stefan Hanß was awarded a British Academy Rising Star Award in 2019.