Eleonora Poggio

I am an Early Modern global and colonial historian specializing in the entanglements of non-Spanish Europeans within the Spanish Empire and colonial Latin America between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. My research bridges migration, political, economic, fiscal, social, religious, and legal history, utilizing actor-centered methodologies such as prosopography, network analysis, and social microhistory. I analyze diverse archival sources from the Americas, Europe, and Southeast Asia to examine how migration and trade networks shaped colonial societies and economic systems.

My work has revealed the significant influence of Northern European labor immigrants in New Spain and Peru on technological innovations, such as gold separation from silver, and transforming colonial economies and administrative systems. I have also studied how taxation and state-imposed measures shaped notions of foreignness within the Spanish Empire, alongside strategies migrants used to adapt and integrate into colonial societies.

Additionally, I have examined the economic and diplomatic roles of foreign merchant networks, demonstrating their impact on Atlantic and Pacific trade systems and the Spanish Crown’s global economic warfare strategies during the Thirty Years’ War. Recently, my research expanded to include nineteenth-century Southeast Asia, focusing on the diplomatic and economic implications of treaties between the Sulu Sultanate and Spain.

Through this interdisciplinary approach, I challenge traditional narratives of Spanish colonial exceptionalism, highlighting the transnational and multi-ethnic dimensions of empire-building and the formation of hybrid identities within colonial societies. My findings contribute to understanding global migration, the interplay of local and imperial systems, and the resilience of individuals within broader historical processes.

My current projects:                  

2024-2025 PI Global Atlantic Pacific Connections Network, GATPAC (RJ Research Initiation F24-0159).

2021-2025 PI (principal investigator) Shaping foreignness: The effects of state action on social categorization processes in colonial Latin America, 1590-1700 (Swedish Research Council).

2021-2026 Co-applicant Imperial expansion and intercultural diplomacy: Treaty-making in Southeast Asia, c. 1750-1920 (Swedish Research Council,). PI Stefan Amirell.