ABSTRACT
The origins of modern Iberian societies were rooted in the centuries-long process of Christian reoccupation of territories in the Iberian peninsula that from the early eighth century had been held by Muslims. Although the Reconquista was mostly completed by the mid-thirteenth century, the Iberian monarchies continued to expand southward into North Africa and islands of the Mediterranean and subsequently the Atlantic. Although in North Africa, Iberian initiatives failed to take them beyond fortified strongholds and in sub-Saharan Africa trading posts (feitorias) predominated, the Atlantic Ocean offered many attractive areas that would be occupied by the expanding powers from the early fifteenth century onwards, first in the islands and then in the territories that would come to be known as the Americas.
