From Mexico to Algiers. Tracing the Itineraries of Spanish-American Goods in the Pre-Modern Maghrib

This paper restores the forgotten place of the Maghrib in the early modern material exchange across the Atlantic and the Mediterranean by investigating the trajectories of American foodstuffs, materia medica, intoxicants, and dyes in North Africa between the late 15th and mid 17th century. Shedding light on overlooked sites and actors of exchange, this paper attempts to chart what we gain from rewriting the history of early modern consumption and global material exchanges from the standpoint of Saʿdī and Ottoman North Africa.


Ana Struillou is a Past and Present Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research (London). Her doctorate, conducted at the European University Institute, explored the material culture of travel across the Christian and Islamic Mediterranean realm (sixteenth-seventeenth centuries). Her research interests include, amongst others, material culture, mobility and cross-religious relations in the early modern Mediterranean