The Atlantic World

D'Maris Coffman, Adrian Leonard, William O'Reilly, D'Maris Coffman, Adrian Leonard, William O'Reilly

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317576044
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

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.

Chapter One
The Atlantic World

Definition, theory, and boundaries

D’Maris Coffman and Adrian Leonard

What is meant by the term ‘Atlantic World’ and how has its usage evolved in the last thirty years? If ‘Atlantic history’ has entered its fourth decade, what is left of the intellectual project inaugurated in the 1980s by Bernard Bailyn at Harvard and Jack Greene at Johns Hopkins? How should the Braudelian ambitions of the longue durée of Atlantic regional history sit with postcolonial explorations of the African and Native American experiences, which are by their nature punctuated by political narratives?

Historians have traditionally defined ‘Atlantic history’ by the ocean itself and through the interactions among the continents that compose its basin: the Americas, Africa, and Europe. For over a decade, David Armitage’s construction of three types of Atlantic history: circum-Atlantic, trans-Atlantic, and cis-Atlantic, have underpinned the debate. Circum-Atlantic history focused in this typology on the Atlantic as a geographical expression, while trans-Atlantic history was essentially comparative, and cis-Atlantic history (the ideal type) was contextualist, offering ‘history of a place in relation to the wider Atlantic world’ (Armitage, 2002, pp. 21–24). Although seldom acknowledged, such an approach contained within it a bias for particular flavors of intellectual history or micro-histories done by social and cultural historians, which had come to the fore in the intellectual climate of the 1990s. Older approaches still had some currency, though they often bore the stain of ‘trans-Atlantic history.’

That has begun to change. Peter Coclanis has recently added a fourth category to Armitage’s tripartite system: conjuncto-Atlantic history (Coclanis, 2009, p. 349). This approach links Atlantic studies with other historiographies, in order to gain further insights into broader historical experiences. It does so by exploring the interrelationships between, and impacts upon, ex-Atlantic regions, institutions, and peoples arising from the various political, social, and economic developments which occurred in the Atlantic region. This approach adopts Atlantic history as a field of the even newer discipline of world history, and seems for Coclanis to act as a justifying raison d’être for studies of the Atlantic world, helping to overcome what he has described as its ‘limiting’ explanatory power (2009, p. 338). (Indeed, if Armitage was correct in his 2002 declaration [p. 11] that ‘we are all Atlanticists now,’ then we are all world historians today.) There is much to be said for adopting Atlantic history to investigate bigger historiographical questions, maybe even to contribute to the resurgent grand-theory history which has returned to the discipline. Much recent work that is or could be classed as Atlantic history has made such contributions. That said, Coclanis’s complaint could be made of any branch of history, yet the vast majority of the entries on publishers’ swelling lists in all historical branches prove that it is possible to avoid antiquarianism, and to make a genuine contribution to historical understanding, without addressing the ‘big questions’ of history, or adopting a world history approach.

The extended Armitage assignment of types of Atlantic history has been augmented by several reflective assessments of the structure of the discipline. In their introduction to Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal (2009), editors Jack Greene and Philip Morgan present and refute five ‘objections’ to the idea of Atlantic history, declaring it ‘not necessarily a flawed, conceptually muddled subject.’ They then offer a complex framework to avoid these perceived potential pitfalls. These prescriptions – to avoid the reductionism which lurks when looking for sharp similarities or differences in comparative Atlantic history; to look across borders; to focus sometimes on sectors; to consider the circulation of values and ideas; to consider the traditional questions of imperial history in the context of the Atlantic world; and to pay close attention to chronologies – have all been embraced by at least some Atlanticists since Greene and Morgan wrote (and had in many instances been considered much earlier). These are useful methodological guidelines, but they may also be constrictive. Recent works, such as Guy Chet’s The Ocean is a Wilderness: Atlantic Piracy and the Limits of State Authority, 1688–1856 (2014), have respected all of these guiding principles to a greater or lesser degree, but moved beyond them to consider broader questions in a way which follows the direction set out by Coclanis (in the case of Chet, to examine questions of the nature and reaches of sovereignty).

In assembling the chapters for this book, the editors have sought intentionally to eschew Atlantic history which follows a prescribed course. The Atlantic world, according to most chronological brackets adopted to define it, was distinctively early modern. As such, it was part of Europe’s evolution to modernity, its great period of transition when new ideas were floated, new institutions built, and new approaches adopted. While the ‘old world’ was in the throes of this tumultuous change, it was simultaneously shrugging off the truths of scholasticism in a world now known to extend far beyond the knowledge of the ancients. Europeans were entering unknowns both at home and abroad. In this way the Atlantic could operate as an experimental space, a bolt-hole, and a wild west. This opens the door to an array of historical explorations which may extend or enlighten other historiographies of the early modern experience, or indeed may rest, freestanding, upon their own merits. Unconstrained historical research, work which is seen as Atlantic history by the researcher, or indeed by the consumers of the product, should therefore be a component of Atlantic history, regardless of its scope or focus. This may, of course, make Atlantic history something of a dog’s breakfast, yet that in itself does not necessarily make it conceptually muddled, provided reductionism is avoided.

This goal is not always accomplished, of course. The danger exists in the study of Atlantic history – as in any field of historical enquiry – that one can give greater weight to events in one’s own Atlantic world than they merit in a broader context. This happens often, such as the observation that Atlantic exploits ‘involved the nation in expensive wars’ (Kupperman, 2012, p. 96). In fact, for the most part, the great, distinctively home-grown dynastic conflicts which were fundamental to the shaping of early modern Europe were played out in part in the Atlantic and other realms of European empires (as had never been possible before), but activities in these distant locations were not in and of themselves casual. Indeed, much of this rivalry was expressed not in the Atlantic, but in the eastern reaches of the British, Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish empires. Thus, reductionism can be unwittingly accomplished with equal ease when some of the favorite subjects of Atlantic history, from economic integration to evangelization, are considered in an Atlantic context to the exclusion of important, related, and often modifying developments in other realms which had been opened to direct access by European navigation. Again, Coclanis would applaud such expansive consideration of broader histories.

Thus, this volume is not meant to serve as a handbook of Atlantic history as such. Those looking for one would be much better served by the recent publication of the Oxford History of the Atlantic World (Canny and Morgan, 2011) which offers a comprehensive view of the current state of play from within Atlantic history as an established discipline. Our volume on the ‘Atlantic World’ offers something radically different, and encapsulates an approach that does not fit neatly within historical schema. Our Atlantic World, as befits the Routledge Worlds series, reflects an ecumenical approach to the topic, one that seeks neither to compartmentalize nor to discipline practitioners, but rather to illustrate the methodological diversity of more recent ‘post-Atlantic’ approaches. Our authors consider not only traditional interactions amongst Africa, Europe, and the Americas, but also look to the Pacific, the Baltic region, the Cape Colony, and North Africa for evidence of commercial and cultural exchanges. Essays in this volume consider the natural world alongside that of a human-built environment, and make no clear distinctions between maritime and oceanic historical approaches. Many of the essays in this volume take up neglected themes, which were marginalized by traditional approaches to Atlantic history, but upon closer inspection should be central to the project. The history of Judaism and Islam in the Atlantic World is considered alongside more familiar accounts of Catholic and Protestant Christianity. Atlantic slavery is explored from all angles, including that of Europeans enslaved by Barbary piracy. Although the chapters are not deliberately arranged to highlight disagreements amongst authors, perceptive readers will detect them.

As two of the editors are financial historians by trade, the volume also explores the Atlantic experience of money and credit, and considers the integration of Atlantic financial and money markets with those in Europe in particular. Political economy is not divorced from histories of consumption and commerce, and mercantile practice is considered alongside state practice. The editors hope that the sheer scale and scope of this work will prove stimulating for students and established scholars alike.

Structure of the Book

Part I, entitled ‘Atlantic Explorations,’ examines the physical world as experienced both by indigenous peoples and by European settlers. In Chapter Two, James T. Carson and Karim M. Tiro offer a lyrical description of attitudes and beliefs of the native peoples towards the animal world as they experienced it, and show how those differed from those of European settlers. They describe a centuries-long process by which Palaeolithic land use patterns were rapidly replaced by Old World post-Neolithic farming practices, with predictable results for native flora, fauna, and peoples. Sandra Rebok’s Chapter Three explores the Spanish encounter with the New World and considers how the discovery altered the European consciousness, informing not only science and humanistic scholarship, but also re-shaping ideology and religion. Her account concentrates on contemporary narratives of New World exploration, and considers the entire period from first contact in the fifteenth-century through to late nineteenth-century writers. In Chapter Four, David Starkey offers a compelling example of a new maritime history that goes beyond traditional treatments of oceangoing vessels to a wider explanation of the maritime economic sector, especially fish and fisheries, upon which so many livelihoods depended. His treatment considers simultaneously the social, economic, technological, institutional, and geographical influences upon those communities whose main employment came from the harvesting of food from the sea. Not only does his chapter introduce students to the Nordic Atlantic, so often neglected in other treatments, but also he connects these apparently regional economies to larger global networks.

If Part I frames the physical world for the reader, Part II considers the ‘Movement of Peoples’ through a multitude of often-neglected imperial frames. In Chapter Five, Laura Matthew explores the uneasy place of the history of the indigenous peoples of South and Central America in the historiography of the Iberian Atlantic world. The tragic destruction of the Mexica and Inca empires owed both to the fierce rivalries between them and the arrival of Europeans, but Matthew argues forcibly that the new arrivals were not only Spanish, but also French, Italian, English, Irish, and Dutch in origin. Her essay conveys both a sense for the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century experiences and for the fate of indigenous peoples in Iberia after the Bourbon succession and the Atlantic revolutions. Gerald Groenewald surveys rarely acknowledged connections between South Africa and the Southern Atlantic World in Chapter Six. As he acknowledges, part of the neglect of the pivotal role played by the Cape colony in the historiography was a result of the isolation of South African scholars in Apartheid. Over two decades later, the progress of re-integration remains a slow one, with the most attention paid to the slaving and whaling activities of the Dutch East Indian Company (VOC) in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Groenewald suggests additional possibilities for research, as the Cape colony served as a portal between the Atlantic and Indian oceans. William O’Reilly’s Chapter Seven, a reprint of an article that appeared in Wiener Zeitschrift zur Geschichte der Neuzeit ten years ago, reminds readers of an equally overlooked corner of Atlantic history, namely that of emigration from Hapsburg lands to the New World in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. O’Reilly explains that Protestants migrating for religious reasons could move to Magyar lands and that many did. Thus migration to the New World from the Empire occurred on a small scale, involving individuals, families or small groups. The one exception to what O’Reilly calls ‘micro-migration’ involved the Protestants of Salzburg, whose eighteenth-century experience he explores in detail. By the early nineteenth century, emigration controls were relaxed enough in practice (though not in theory) to permit mass emigration to the Americas. In Chapter Eight, Brian Rouleau investigates neglected early-nineteenth-century seafaring communities, finding them paradoxically playing a central role in the broader Atlantic experience. Rouleau reminds readers of the significance that complaints of seamen and their masters had for the American Revolutionaries, and considers the myths and realities of their ‘radical republican’ politics and the putatively loose morality of waterfronts. Seafaring communities resisted most reformist impulses, but ultimately oceangoing commerce, the vessels and their crews were transformed by the technological shift from sail to steam.

Part III explores a variety of ‘Cultural Encounters,’ echoing many of the themes in Part II while showcasing a variety of new methodological approaches and surprising source material available to the current generation of Atlantic historians. In Chapter Nine, Mélanie Lamotte looks at experiences of color prejudice in the French Atlantic using Guadeloupe as a case study. She argues that color prejudice existed from the outset of French colonization in the Caribbean. Lamotte considers how the legislation produced by the governmental élite in Guadeloupe and across the broader Caribbean and French Atlantic World contributed to the entrenchment of color prejudice. Drawing upon a wealth of under-explored sources, she also illustrates cases of fluidity across color lines in the social life of early modern Guadeloupe. Echoing many of the themes in Chapter Eight, Catherine Styer’s treatment of Barbary slavery in Chapter Ten contextualizes the practice, which ultimately saw over twenty-five thousand captives put to work in North Africa as slaves. Contrary to popular histories of Barbary slavery (which romanticize it in comparison with New World slavery), Styer finds that the overwhelming majority of captured Britons died in captivity, often through over-work, starvation and violence. She argues that historiography which promotes the comparison of Barbary slavery to New World slavery does violence to our understanding of both phenomena, which can be better understood on their own terms. In Chapter Eleven, James Brown ponders the consequence of considering the place of Morocco in Atlantic historiography. In contrast to Styer, he de-emphasizes narratives of piracy in favor of considering the sultanate of Morocco as a state actor, in particular in the context of the struggle over Gibraltar as a gateway to the Atlantic. While Morocco remained firmly part of the ‘Old World’, Brown emphasizes that the European powers saw North Africa as part of the same imperial frame as the rest of their Atlantic empires. Modern historians have done otherwise at our peril, even as Brown’s findings challenge the ‘Atlantic paradigm’ so prevalent in earlier generations of Atlantic historiography. Paul D’Arcy takes an even wider perspective in Chapter Twelve with his exploration of the implications of the emerging Pacific historiographies for Atlantic history. D’Arcy’s essay will be especially useful to students as he helps his readers conceive of the complex physical and human geographies, the weather patterns and the enormous distances involved. Pacific Islanders left traces of their own pre-historic encounters with the indigenous peoples of the Atlantic world. These contacts continued into the colonial period and by the eighteenth century, they even travelled on western ships and settled in western colonies. In effect, Groenewald’s case for the importance of considering Southern Africa in Chapter Six is mirrored by D’Arcy’s survey of the significance of the Pacific context. This section closes with Chapter Thirteen, a reprint of an essay by Laurent Dubois which considers the importance of Michèle Duchet’s Anthropologie et histoire au siècle des lumières (Anthropology and History in the Century of the Enlightenment) for our understanding of the intellectual history of the French Atlantic. This piece was chosen because universalist histories of the sort attempted by Duchet should be rendered comprehensible and made far more meaningful by the first four chapters in this section. Duchet’s focus on the problems of colonial governance anticipates the theme of the next section.

In Part IV, the authors consider problems of ‘Warfare and Governance’ in the Atlantic context, beginning with the everyday realities of violence in Chapter Fourteen. Smolenski argues, somewhat controversially, that violence and preconceptions legitimizing its use served as a kind of ‘perpetual motion machine of colonial domination’ (Smolenski, p. 256). In constructing his narrative around this theme, he finds commonalities in the British, French, Spanish and Portuguese Atlantic experiences of race and slavery, and in the processes of conquest and colonization. Without seeking to supplant more traditional approaches, Smolenski’s example suggests the possibilities of thematic approaches to comparative cultural histories of institutional practices. In Chapter Fifteen, Geoffrey Plank also looks at the role of violence in shaping four and a half centuries of the Atlantic experience, but mainly restricts his enquiry to warfare, particularly interstate warfare, in an attempt to give students a good grounding in the political narratives of conquest and colonization. In Chapter Sixteen, Charles Drummond turns instead to militias...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 The Atlantic World: Definition, Theory, and Boundaries
• PART I: ATLANTIC EXPLORATIONS
• PART II: THE MOVEMENT OF PEOPLES
• PART III: CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS
• PART IV: WARFARE AND GOVERNANCE
• PART V: RELIGION
• PART VI: CREDIT, FINANCE, AND MONEY
• PART VII: COMMERCE, CONSUMPTION, AND MERCANTILE NETWORKS
• PART VIII: THE CIRCULATION OF IDEAS
• Index