In the nineteenth century, Latin America was home to the majority of the world's democratic republics. Many historians have dismissed these political experiments as corrupt pantomimes of governments of Western Europe and the United States. Challenging that perspective, James E. Sanders contends that Latin America in this period was a site of genuine political innovation and popular debate reflecting Latin Americans' visions of modernity. Drawing on archival sources in Mexico, Colombia, and Uruguay, Sanders traces the circulation of political discourse and democratic practice among urban elites, rural peasants, European immigrants, slaves, and freed blacks to show how and why ideas of liberty, democracy, and universalism gained widespread purchase across the region, mobilizing political consciousness and solidarity among diverse constituencies. In doing so, Sanders reframes the locus and meaning of political and cultural modernity.
As the meeting point between Europe, colonial America, and Africa, the history of the Atlantic world is a constantly shifting arena, but one which has been a focus of huge and vibrant debate for many years. In over thirty chapters, all written by experts in the field, The Atlantic World takes up these debates and gathers together key, original scholarship to provide an authoritative survey of this increasingly popular area of world history. The book takes a thematic approach to topics including exploration, migration and cultural encounters. In the first chapters, scholars examine the interactions between groups which converged in the Atlantic world, such as slaves, European migrants and Native Americans. The volume then considers questions such as finance, money and commerce in the Atlantic world, as well as warfare, government and religion. The collection closes with chapters examining how ideas circulated across and around the Atlantic and beyond. It presents the Atlantic as a shared space in which commodities and ideas were exchanged and traded, and examines the impact that these exchanges had on both people and places. Including an introductory essay from the editors which defines the field, and lavishly illustrated with paintings, drawings and maps this accessible volume is invaluable reading for all students and scholars of this broad sweep of world history.
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’s 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 reconceptualize 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 organized, 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.
From 1400 to 1900 the Atlantic Ocean served as a major highway, allowing people and goods to move easily between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. These interactions and exchanges transformed European, African, and American societies and led to the creation of new peoples, cultures, economies, and ideas throughout the Atlantic arena. The Atlantic World provides a comprehensive and lucid history of one of the most important and impactful cross-cultural encounters in human history. Empires, economies, and trade in the Atlantic world thrived due to the European drive to expand as well as the creative ways in which the peoples living along the Atlantic's borders adapted to that drive. This comprehensive, cohesively written textbook offers a balanced view of the activity in the Atlantic world. The 40 maps, 60 illustrations, and multiple excerpts from primary documents bring the history to life. Each chapter offers a reading list for those interested in a more in-depth look at the period.
This secondary source reader centers around the age of exploration and its resulting encounters between cultures, particularly around the Atlantic Ocean. It examines the varying historical viewpoints on the extent of European domination in the Atlantic World and includes chapter introductions, essay introductions, timelines, and an annotated bibliography.
From ca. 1400 to 1900 the Atlantic Ocean served as a major highway, allowing people and goods to move easily between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. These interactions and exchanges transformed European, African, and American societies and led to the creation of new peoples, cultures, economies, and ideas throughout the Atlantic arena. The Atlantic World provides a comprehensive and lucid history of one of the most important and impactful cross-cultural encounters in human history. Empires, economies, and trade in the Atlantic world thrived due to the European drive to expand as well as the creative ways in which the peoples living along the Atlantic's borders adapted to that drive. This comprehensive, cohesively written textbook offers a balanced view of the activity in the Atlantic world. The 40 maps, 60 illustrations, and multiple excerpts from primary documents bring the history to life. Each chapter offers a reading list for those interested in a more in-depth look at the period.
A first-of-its-kind reference resource traces the interactions among four Atlantic-facing continents—Europe, Africa, and the Americas (including the Caribbean)—between 1400 and 1900. Until recently, the age of exploration and empire building was researched and taught within imperial and national boundaries. The histories of Europe, Africa, North America, and South America were told largely as independent stories, with the development of individual places within each continent further separated from each other. The indigenous populations of places colonized by Europeans fit into the history even more uneasily, often mentioned only in passing. Encyclopedia of the Atlantic World, 1400–1900 synthesizes a generation of historical scholarship on the events on four continents, providing readers an invaluable introduction to the major people, places, events, movements, objects, concepts, and commodities of the Atlantic world as it developed during a key period in history when the world first started to shrink. The entries discuss specific topics with an eye toward showing how individual items, people, and events were connected to the larger Atlantic world. This accessibly written reference book brings together topics usually treated separately and discretely, alleviating the need for extra legwork when researching, and it draws from the latest research to make a vast body of scholarship about seemingly far-flung places available to readers new to the field.
The Atlantic in World History, 1490-1830 looks at the historical connections between four continents – Africa, Europe, North America and South America – through the lens of Atlantic history. It shows how the Atlantic has been more than just an ocean: it has been an important site of circulation and transmission, allowing exchanges and interchanges which have profoundly shaped the development of the world. Divided into four thematic sections, Trevor Burnard's sweeping yet concise narrative covers the period from the voyages of Columbus to the New World in the 1490s through to the end of the Age of Revolutions around 1830. It deals with key topics including the Columbian exchange, Atlantic slavery and abolition, war as a global phenomenon, the Age of Revolution, religious conversion, nation-building, trade and commerce and intellectual movements such as the Enlightenment. Rather than focusing on the 'rise of the West', Burnard stresses the interactive nature of encounters between various parts of the world, setting local case studies within his broader interconnected narrative. Written by a leading historian of Atlantic history, and including further reading lists, images and maps as well as a companion website featuring discussion questions, timelines and primary source extracts, this is an essential book for students of Atlantic and world history.
Focusing on the interconnections of the Atlantic world from 1450-1900, The Atlantic Connection examines the major themes of Atlantic history. During this period, ships, goods, diseases, human beings and ideas flowed across the ocean, tying together the Atlantic basin in a complex web of relationships. Divided into five main thematic sections while maintaining a broadly chronological structure, this book considers key cultural themes such as gender, social developments, the economy, and ideologies as well as: - the role of the Atlantic in ensuring European dominance - the creation of a set of societies with new cultural norms and philosophical ideals that continued to evolve and to transform not only the Atlantic, but the rest of the world - the contestation over rights and justice that emerged from the Atlantic world which continues to exist as a significant issue today. The Atlantic Connection is shaped by its exploration of a key question: how did Europe come to dominate the Atlantic if not through its technological prowess? Adeptly weaving a multitude of events into a larger analytical narrative, this book provides a fascinating insight into this complex region and will be essential reading for students of Atlantic history.
Changing Landscapes in the Atlantic World: Cultures, Societies, Exchanges, and Conflict from 1492 to 1877 provides students with a compilation of secondary writings that discuss the cultural, political, and economic developments of the United States within the Western Atlantic world from European conquest through U.S. Reconstruction. The opening chapter explores the early political aspirations in the Americas and how they factored substantially into the development of the identity of the United States. Chapter 2 addresses the cultural and social developments and interchanges between indigenous Americans, Europeans, and Africans in the Western Atlantic world and the U.S. as the region took on a more diverse identity. In the final chapter, students read about the colonial economic aims in the Americas and how those objectives shaped the development of an economic engine that supported the rise of the American empire. Providing unique and thought-provoking lenses through which to study history, Changing Landscapes in the Atlantic World is an ideal text for American history survey courses.
