The Atlantic World: A History, 1400 - 1888

by Egerton (Author)

New
Paperback
2007
$71.93

Before the voyage of Columbus in 1492, the Atlantic Ocean stood as a barrier to contact between the people (and their ideas and institutions), plants, animals, and microbes of Eurasia and Africa on the one hand and the Americas on the other. Following Columbus' voyage, the Atlantic turned into a conduit for transferring these things among the four continents bordering the ocean in ways that affected people living on each of them. The appearance of The Atlantic World marks an important achievement, for it stands out as the first successful attempt to combine the many strains of Atlantic history into a comprehensive, thoughtful narrative. At the core of this ground-breaking and eloquently written survey lies a consideration of the relationships among people living in Europe, Africa, and the Americas, with a focus on how these relationships played important roles - often the most important roles - in how the histories of the people involved unfolded. The ways of life of millions of people changed, sometimes for the better but often for the worse, because of their relationship to the larger Atlantic world. And unlike existing texts dealing with one or another aspect of Atlantic history, The Atlantic World does not subjugate the history of Africa and South America to those of the 'British Atlantic' or Europe. With historians and other scholars beginning to reconceptualise the Atlantic World as a dynamic zone of exchange in which people, commodities, and ideas circulated from the mid-fifteenth century until the dawn of the twentieth century, the interconnections between people along the Atlantic rim create a coherent region, one in which events in one corner inevitably altered the course of history in another. As this book testifies, Atlantic history, properly understood, is history without borders - in which national narratives take backstage to the larger examination of interdependence and cultural transmission. Conceived of and produced by a team of distinguished authors with countless hours of teaching experience at the college level, this thoughtfully organised, beautifully written, and lavishly illustrated book will set the standard for all future surveys intended as a core text for the new and rapidly growing courses in Atlantic History.

Synopsis

Before the voyage of Columbus in 1492, the Atlantic Ocean stood as a barrier to contact between the people (and their ideas and institutions), plants, animals, and microbes of Eurasia and Africa on the one hand and the Americas on the other. Following Columbus' voyage, the Atlantic turned into a conduit for transferring these things among the four continents bordering the ocean in ways that affected people living on each of them. The appearance of The Atlantic World marks an important achievement, for it stands out as the first successful attempt to combine the many strains of Atlantic history into a comprehensive, thoughtful narrative. At the core of this ground-breaking and eloquently written survey lies a consideration of the relationships among people living in Europe, Africa, and the Americas, with a focus on how these relationships played important roles - often the most important roles - in how the histories of the people involved unfolded. The ways of life of millions of people changed, sometimes for the better but often for the worse, because of their relationship to the larger Atlantic world. And unlike existing texts dealing with one or another aspect of Atlantic history, The Atlantic World does not subjugate the history of Africa and South America to those of the 'British Atlantic' or Europe. With historians and other scholars beginning to reconceptualise the Atlantic World as a dynamic zone of exchange in which people, commodities, and ideas circulated from the mid-fifteenth century until the dawn of the twentieth century, the interconnections between people along the Atlantic rim create a coherent region, one in which events in one corner inevitably altered the course of history in another. As this book testifies, Atlantic history, properly understood, is history without borders - in which national narratives take backstage to the larger examination of interdependence and cultural transmission. Conceived of and produced by a team of distinguished authors with countless hours of teaching experience at the college level, this thoughtfully organised, beautifully written, and lavishly illustrated book will set the standard for all future surveys intended as a core text for the new and rapidly growing courses in Atlantic History.

$71.93

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20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 542
Edition: 1
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Published: 09 May 2007
ISBN 10: 0882952455
ISBN 13: 9780882952451

Media Reviews

I congratulate the authors of [The Atlantic World], who have not simply put together a comprehensive monograph about the Atlantic, but have put specialists from all the regions. They have produced a highly readable book not as a collection of articles, but as a joint written effort we seldom see. ...they may have presaged the way we all have to work in future collaborative schemes. (Dennis R. Hidalgo, Adelphi University, for H-Net Reviews, November 4, 2007)

The authors' goal of writing a truly borderless and interconnected history of the Atlantic produces many new and provocative insights. ...Arguably the book's strongest accomplishment is the integration of West Africa into Atlantic history. ...a major contribution to the field of Atlantic history. (H-Net Reviews, November 5, 2007)

Author Bio

Douglas R. Egerton is Professor of History at Le MoyneCollege. He is the author of the forthcoming Death or Liberty: African Americans and American Revolution (2007), He ShallGo Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesey (1999), Gabriel's Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of1800 and 1802 (1993), and Charles Fenton Mercer and theTrial of National Conservatism (1989).

Alison Games teaches Atlantic history at GeorgetownUniversity, where she is the Dorothy M. Brown DistinguishedProfessor of History. She is the author of Migration and theOrigins of the English Atlantic World (1999), winner of theTheodore Saloutos Prize in Immigration and Ethnic History. She haswritten extensively on different aspects of Atlantic history, andher articles have appeared in such journals as Slavery andAbolition, Itinerario, the American Historical Review, and theWilliam and Mary Quarterly.

Jane Landers is Associate Professor of History atVanderbilt University and the author and editor of a number ofbooks on Africans and the circum-Atlantic world, among them theprize-winning Black Society in Spanish Florida.

Kris Lane is Associate Professor of History at theCollege of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. His booksinclude Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas,1500-1750 (1998) and Quito, 1599: City & Colony inTransition (2002). His other published works treat the topicspiracy, Slavery, gold mining, headhunting, and witchcraft incolonial Ecuador and Colombia. He is currently completing a book onthe early modern emerald trade.

Donald R. Wright is Distinguished Teaching Professor ofHistory at the State University of New York-Cortland, where heteaches African, African American, and world history. He is theauthor of The World and a Very Small Place in African: A Historyof Globalization in Niumi, The Gambia (2nd ed., 2004), and twobooks in Harlan Davidson's American History Series: African Americans in the Colonial Era: From African Originsthrough the American Revolution (2nd ed., 2000), and AfricanAmericans in the Early Republic, 1789-1831 (1993).