População e Sociedade no. 33

Isilda Monteiro (diretora)

População e Sociedade no. 33 presents a thematic dossier addressing “Motivations in Medieval War. A Comparative Approach Between Two Territorial Peripheries (Iberia and Baltic)”. The included articles propose a new reading concerning war in two peripheries of medieval Europe. Two of the works focus on the Portuguese case. One of them deals with the role of the Military Orders in the Portuguese medieval military organization (Paula Pinto Costa and Leandro Ferreira), while the other addresses some aspects of the Orders of Avis and Santiago at the end of the Middle Ages, particularly with regard to their military interests (Maria Cristina Pimenta). The other two articles present interesting approaches in the field of comparative history, from the observation of both territories under study. Kim Bergqvist analyses the motivations and mobilization in the context of rebellion and civil war, which occurred in Iberia and Scandinavia around 1250-1350; and Leandro Ferreira and Martin Neuding Skoog draw a parallel between crossbowmen in Portugal and Sweden in the late Middle Ages. As a whole, the texts that make up this thematic dossier converge on a suggestive set of clues and questions, some of comparative nature, posed by Portuguese and Swedish researchers, that enrich the historiography on the theme of war in late Middle Ages.

The Varia section consists of a study that aims to understand how potatoes were introduced and spread in Trás-os-Montes during the 18^th and 19^th centuries.