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List of contents
Part One: History and Historiography
1. Introduction: The Idea of Atlantic History
2. The Atlantic and World History
Part Two: The Atlantic World Over Time
3. The Columbian Exchange
4. The Spanish Lake, 1560-1800
5. Old Worlds Respond 1444-1750
6. Contact, Invasion and Crisis, 1600-1750
7. The Age of Revolutions, 1750-1830
Part Three: Places in the Atlantic World
8. West Africa
9. Western Europe
10. South and Central America and the Caribbean
11. North America
12. The Plantation World
Part Four: Themes in Atlantic History
13. War in the Atlantic
14. Movement of Things: People and Goods
15. Movement of Ideas: The Atlantic in Global Consciousness
16. Conclusion: From the Atlantic World to Globalization to Nationalism
Notes
Index
About the author
Trevor Burnard is Wilberforce Professor of Slavery and Emancipation and Director of the Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull, UK. Among his major works are The Plantation Machine: Atlantic Capitalism in French Saint-Domingue and British Jamaica (2016), Planters, Merchants, and Slaves: Plantation Societies in British America, 1650-1820 (2015), Mastery, Tyranny and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World (2004) and Creole Gentlemen: The Maryland Elite, 1691-1776 (2002). He is also the Editor in Chief of the Oxford Bibliographies in Atlantic History.
Summary
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.
Foreword
A concise history of the Atlantic world, exploring the exchanges of peoples, goods and ideas across continents from the 15th to the 19th century.
Additional text
[The Atlantic in World History: 1490-1830] is a highly readable account which admirably brings together the local and the global.
