The Atlantic World: 1450a 2000

This ambitious work provides an overview of the Atlantic world, since the 15th century, by exploring the major themes that define the study of this region. Contact with Europeans in Africa and the Americas, the slave trade, gender and race in the early Atlantic world, independence movements in Africa, Caribbean nationalism, and gender and identity in the 20th century are just a few subjects discussed. Moving beyond the micro-histories of the scholarly monograph to connect the fruits of those researches with broader events and processes, this book, in the editors' words, makes "a concerted effort to re-connect elites and non-elites, Old World and New, early modern and modern, and economics and culture." It will be a point of embarkation for a new generation of students of the Atlantic world.

This collection of essays draws together the latest and most recent contentious scholarship on the Atlantic world. Its goal is twofold. First, the essays provide instructors of undergraduate and graduate students a synthesis and basic narrative of Atlantic world history. Second, the introduction clearly explicates that "this volume wholly rejects that traditional depiction of the Atlantic World being dominated by a handful of Europeans." This new approach to the Atlantic world includes those participating in the "drama" of history through the prism of interaction, counteraction, and reaction of the various cultures and people spanning four continents, in both an inclusive and personal perspective. The volume's topical and chronological organization examines the history of civilizations before the emergence of the Atlantic world, through slavery, abolition, postcolonialism, and the Cold War and beyond. The collection also offers a detailed chronological sequence of events featured in two essays summarizing the abolition of slavery and the timetable of African independence movements, comprising essential material for lecture, graduate, or undergraduate uses. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. --Choice C. L. Stacey, Louisiana State University at Alexandria, June 2009

"Each of the four sections contains several finely written and well-formulated essays that will inspire scolars to venture beyond the common tendency to hyper-specialize and to utilize a macro perspective when considering the Atlantic World." --International Journal of Maritime History, Vol. 21, no. 2 Indiana University Press

"Falola and Roberts have opened an avenue for the study of the Atlantic World that insists on complicating historical questions and methods. These complications require a re-assessment of interdisciplinary modes of doing and writing history." --Solimar Otero, Louisiana State University, Intnl Jrnl African Historical Studies, Vol. 42.1 2009 Indiana University Press

"The editors of this volume are to be commended for organizing such an intelligent and well-integrated history of the Atlantic World." --H-Soz-u-Kult, January, 2011

"Falola and Roberts have edited a collection of essays worthy of their goal: to 'represent both the roots of the Atlantic World paradigm and the seemingly limitless potential that the field has in the future.'" --European History Quarterly

"The volume's strength lies in its extensive scope and depth with several chapters that connect African, American, and European experiences with the wider context of the Atlantic world since the 15th century.... Comprehensive and thought--provoking." --Olufemi Vaughan, SUNY Stony Brook Indiana University Press

"[Provides] a very valuable perspective on Atlantic history that places Africans and the oppressed front and centre of the historical narrative. It is not European elites who drive the Atlantic world in this interpretation; it is African slaves, Caribbean nationalists and African and Native American opponents of globalisation who dominate the process... Falola and Roberts have provided a useful corrective to more celebratory accounts of the making of the Atlantic World." --Journal Imperial and Commonwealth History

A comprehensive survey of the Atlantic region from the 15th century to the present

Toyin Falola is the Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor in History at the University of Texas at Austin. He is co-editor of The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World (IUP, 2004).

Kevin D. Roberts is the founder and headmaster of Pope John Paul II Academy in Lafayette, Louisiana. A specialist in comparative slavery, he is author of African American Issues.

Contents

Introduction / Toyin Falola and Kevin D. Roberts

Map of the Atlantic World

Part 1. Nations and Migrations

1. The World of the Atlantic before the "Atlantic World": Africa, Europe, and the Americas before 1450 / Patricia Pearson

2. Contact and Conquest in Africa and the Americas / Timothy P. Grady

3. Migrations and Frontiers / Alison Games

Part 2. Empires and Slavery

4. From Servitude to Slavery / Michael Guasco

5. The Slave Trade's Apex in the Eighteenth Century / Timothy R. Buckner

6. The Nineteenth-Century Black Atlantic / Aribidesi A. Usman

7. Women in the Atlantic World / Ken Aslakson

8. The Black Atlantic: Theory, Method, and Practice / Douglas B. Chambers

Part 3. Independence and Abolition

9. Independence Movements in the New World / David Cahill

10. The Rise of Abolition / Maurice Jackson

11. African Independence Movements / Joel E. Tishken

Part 4. Globalization and Its Discontents

12. The Diasporic Dimensions of Caribbean Nationalism, 19001959 / E. G. Iweriebor and Amanda Warnock

13. The Cold War in the Atlantic World / Carol Anderson

14. Gender and Identity in the Twentieth-Century Atlantic World / Amanda Warnock

15. Reparation and Repair: Reform Movements in the Atlantic World / Maxim Matusevich

Bibliography

List of Contributors

Index