From Islands to Oceans. Gendered Strategies of Kinship and Patrimony Among Portuguese Women in Canary Islands (16th–17th Centuries)

Abstract

This article reassesses the presence and agency of Portuguese women in Tenerife during the Iberian Union (1580–1640) through a prosopographic reading of notarial, inquisitorial and ecclesiastical documentation. Drawing on life‑course approaches, the study examines the legal and documentary moments through which Portuguese women became visible, situating their agency within the transitions that structured early modern family and mobility trajectories. Rather than attempting to reconstruct the Portuguese population as a whole, the study focuses on a small but analytically rich set of women whose actions — recorded in powers of attorney, wills, debt claims and trans‑archipelagic property transactions — make it possible to observe gendered strategies of mobility, representation and patrimonial management. By integrating a life‑course perspective with insights from Atlantic history and nesology, the analysis identifies three recurrent patterns: the central role of women in the transmission of property across islands; the heightened legal visibility associated with widowhood and the absence of male proxies; and the participation of certain households, particularly those linked to the Azores, in macro‑Atlantic circuits of craft, labour and migration. Comparisons by origin (Madeira, the Azores, continental Portugal) and civil status further clarify how women adapted a shared repertoire of strategies to different legal and familial contexts. The findings show that Portuguese women were not marginal actors but key architects of archipelagic continuity, transforming the constraints of insular life into forms of resilience that shaped kinship, identity and mobility across the early modern Atlantic.