Global Knighthood: Indigenous, African, and Asian Members of the Noble Military Orders of the Iberian World, 1502-1700.
Video Arts & Humanities 2025 Graduate ExhibitionPresentation by Hector Linares Gonzalez
Exhibition Number 508
Abstract
This presentation provides a synthesis of my research and the main arguments of my dissertation. My dissertation, entitled Global Knighthood, explores cases of Indigenous, African, and Asian vassals of the Spanish king who, despite legal and ideological barriers, were appointed knights of the three Spanish military orders. Admittance in these institutions symbolized a public and official recognition of blood purity, nobility, and calidad, critical elements for social promotion in early modern Iberia. My research challenges the image of the Castilian knight as a Spanish nobleman. Rather, it shows that despite the official campaign of whitening in these institutions, many vassals of color achieved chivalric nobility in early modernity. In so doing, this dissertation contributes to showing the plurality of lived experiences of people of color in the early modern Iberian world.
Importance
My research challenges the image of the racially and ethnically "pure" knight that chivalric administrators and intellectuals forged and promoted in the early modern period. For decades, historians have denied the possibility that people of African, indigenous, and Asian descent, as well as religious minorities, could achieve the rank of knight. These scholars claimed that these demographics could not be admitted because they were deemed legally and ideologically ineligible to embody the ideal of knighthood. My research, however, recovers the full range of ethnic diversity of the military orders and proves that Iberian notions of nobility were compatible with race in premodern times.
DEI Statement
My research contributes to the diversity of some of the most prominent aristocratic institutions of the early modern period. It shows that people of African, indigenous, and Asian descent, as well as religious minorities, participated in the construction of Iberian society from positions of socio-political authority. My research dismantles many popular and academic assumptions about the lived experiences of vassals of color in the Spanish empire. It shows that despite multiple legal, ideological, and social barriers, some were able to successfully negotiate with imperial administrators and achieve nobility.