Too Many Kings ? Iberia, 1050-1120
2018; Brepols; Linguagem: Inglês
10.1484/m.hama-eb.5.114232
ISSN2294-8473
Autores Tópico(s)Business Strategy and Innovation
ResumoThe present essay tests the applicability of the concept of coopetition to Iberia in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a central period of the Reconquista - the long process of recovery by the Christian kingdoms of lands lost at the time of the Arab/Berber invasion in 711. At its most simple, the Reconquest framework envisions two homogeneous political blocks - Islamic and Christian - on either side of a fixed frontier that was gradually pushed south from the eighth century until the fall of the Kingdom of Granada in 1492. Contemporary scholarship has stressed the problems with this picture, focusing on the porousness of the frontier, on the complex internal histories of both the Islamic- and Christian-controlled areas, and on the nature of the idea of Reconquest in the medieval period itself. The presence in the eleventh and twelfth centuries not of two opposing forces, but rather of clusters of small polities - the taifa states and the Almoravids and Almohads on the Muslim side; the various kingdoms and counties on the Christian side - that were constantly splitting and recombining presented the opportunity for frequent alliances between "natural" rivals, and thus for coopetition. The Iberian situation raises the questions, however, of how coopetition works in a multipolar environment and of how a coopetitive situation can evolve or come to an end.
Referência(s)