Atlantic world
Encyclopedia
The Atlantic World is an organizing concept for the historical study of the Atlantic Ocean
rim from the beginning of the Age of Exploration to the anad modern era. In many ways the history of the "Atlantic world" culminates in the "Atlantic Revolutions
" of the late 18th century and early 19th century. Atlantic slave trade
continued into the 19th century, subsiding with the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
outlawing slavery in 1865 and the abolishment of slavery in Brazil
in 1888. The historical subdiscipline concerned with the study of the Atlantic World is Atlantic history
.
, Africa
, North America
, South America
, Antarctica; the Arabian
and Caribbean
subcontinents are the furthest extent of the Atlantic rim from East to West. The Mediterranean Sea
and Black Sea
in the Old World
, as well as the Caribbean Sea
and Gulf of Mexico
in the New World
, represent the core of global affairs on either side of the Rim. The Arctic Ocean
and Antarctic Ocean are Northern and Southern frontiers on the Atlantic Rim.
Until the invention of aircraft in the twentieth century, seafaring was the primary—in many cases, the only—mode of long-distance travel. New settlements were typically established on seacoasts; over time the population gradually spread inland. The Atlantic rim was a community created by maritime traffic on the Atlantic Ocean. Distant settlements were linked by elaborate sea-based trading networks. The Atlantic Rim is in many respects a counterpart to the Pacific Rim
.
, the Mediterranean Basin
had functioned as an interconnected cultural, economic and geopolitical sphere, the focal point of what the Greeks called the Oikumene. This regional unity reached its apotheosis in the pan-Mediterranean political dominion imposed by the Roman Empire
but persisted even after the Fall of the Roman Empire and into the early modern period
and beyond. The first historian to offer a comprehensive account of this unified Mediterranean history was the French
historian of the Annales School
Fernand Braudel
, who argued in his books The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II and The Structures of Everyday Life that the countries that bordered the Mediterranean should not be studied as isolated and discrete nation states, but should instead be situated within the larger geographic, economic and political context of the Mediterranean World.
Following the earliest European voyages to the New World
and Africa
and the division of the Americas between the Spanish Empire
and the Portuguese Empire
effected by the Treaty of Tordesillas
, a network of economic, geopolitical and cultural exchange—an "Atlantic World" comparable to Braudel's "Mediterannean World" -- began to coalesce among the nations and peoples that inhabited the Atlantic litoral of North America
and South America
, West Africa
and Western Europe
.
, numerous plants, animals, and diseases were transplanted—both deliberately and inadvertently—from one continent to another. The epidemiological impact of this exchange on the indigenous peoples of the Americas was profound, causing massive and widespread mortality (see Population history of American indigenous peoples
). Many foods that are common in present-day Europe, including tomato
es and potato
es, originated in the New World and were unknown in Europe before the sixteenth century. Similarly, some staple crops of present-day West Africa, including cassava
and peanut
s, originated in the New World. Some of the staple crops of Latin America, such as coffee
and sugarcane
, were introduced by European settlers in the course of the Columbian Exchange
.
, mining
, or other extractive industries, but they lacked the work force that they needed to exploit their lands effectively. Consequently, they turned to a variety of coercive labor systems to meet their needs. Native Americans were employed through Indian slavery and through the Spanish system of encomienda
. European workers arrived as indentured servant
s or transported felons
. African workers were imported via the Atlantic slave trade
and were used extensively throughout North and South America.
The extent of voluntary immigration
to the Atlantic world varied considerably by region, nationality, and time period. Many European nations, particularly the Netherlands and France, failed to obtain as many voluntary European immigrants as they hoped to. In New Netherland
, the Dutch coped by recruiting immigrants of other nationalities. In New England
, the massive Puritan
migration of the first half of the seventeenth century created a large free workforce and thus obviated the need to use unfree labor on a large scale. Colonial New England's reliance on the labor of free men, women, and children, organized in individual farm households, is called the family labor system.
The French colony of Saint-Domingue
was one of the first American jurisdictions to end slavery, in 1794. Brazil was last nation in the Western Hemisphere to end slavery, in 1888.
es conquered the Aztec
empire in present-day Mexico
and the Inca empire in present-day Peru
with ease, assisted by horses, guns, and above all by the devastating mortality inflicted by newly introduced diseases such as smallpox
. To some extent the prior emergence of the Inca and Aztec empires as regional powers aided the transfer of governance to the Spanish, since these native empires had already established road systems, state bureaucracies and systems of taxation and intensive agriculture that were in some cases inherited wholesale by the Spanish. The early Spanish conquerors of these empires were also aided by political instability and internal conflict within the Aztec and Incan regimes, which they successfully exploited to their benefit.
One of the problems that most European governments faced in the Americas was how to exercise authority over vast expanses of territory. Spain, which colonized Mexico, Central America, and the greater part of South America, established a network of viceroyalties to administer different regions of its New World holdings: the Viceroyalty of New Spain (1535), the Viceroyalty of Peru
(1542), the Viceroyalty of New Granada
(1717/1739), and the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata (1776). Britain approached the task of governing its New World territories in a similar, though less centralized, manner, establishing about twenty distinct colonies in North America and the Caribbean from 1585 onward. Each British colony had its own governor and elected assembly. In both New Spain and British North America, each viceroyalty or colony interacted directly with the Spanish or British Crown and had no formal relationship with the other American colonies that belonged to its mother country.
Independence movements in the New World began with the American Revolutionary War
and the Haitian Revolution
soon followed. The Quasi-War
, Louisiana Purchase
, Barbary Wars
, War of 1812
, Monroe Doctrine
and American Colonization Society
signified stability and aggressive autonomy on the part of Americans. The New World equalized its power to the Old, in the quagmire of vicious wars raging throughout Europe and abundance of land to expand in under Manifest Destiny
. Ultimately, Americans as Age of Enlightenment
successors of the English Renaissance
Virginia colony
and Age of Reason
Virginia Company
would inherit colonial economic competition and political conditions from the Wars of the Three Kingdoms
in the form of the violent American Civil War
. Remnants of the Cavalier
London Company
and Roundhead
Plymouth Company
would resurrect in their respective forms of Confederacy
and Union
.
traces the concept of the Atlantic world to an editorial published by journalist Walter Lippmann
in 1917. The alliance of the United States and Great Britain in World War II, and the subsequent creation of NATO, heightened historians' interest in the history of interaction between societies on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
In American and British universities, Atlantic World history is supplementing (and possibly supplanting) the study of specific European colonial societies in the Americas, e.g. British North America or Spanish America. Atlantic world history differs from traditional approaches to the history of colonization in its emphasis on inter-regional and international comparisons and its attention to events and trends that transcended national borders. Atlantic world history also emphasizes how the colonization of the Americas reshaped Africa and Europe.
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
rim from the beginning of the Age of Exploration to the anad modern era. In many ways the history of the "Atlantic world" culminates in the "Atlantic Revolutions
Atlantic Revolutions
"Atlantic Revolutions" is a cover term for a wave of late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century revolutions associated with Atlantic history during the The Age of Enlightenment.* Corsican Revolution * American Revolution...
" of the late 18th century and early 19th century. Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
continued into the 19th century, subsiding with the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, passed by the House on January 31, 1865, and adopted on December 6, 1865. On...
outlawing slavery in 1865 and the abolishment of slavery in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
in 1888. The historical subdiscipline concerned with the study of the Atlantic World is Atlantic history
Atlantic history
Atlantic history is a specialty field in history that studies of the Atlantic World in the early modern period. It is premised on the idea that, following the rise of sustained European contact with the New World in the 16th century, the continents that bordered the Atlantic Ocean—the...
.
Geography
The Atlantic World comprises the five continents bordering the Atlantic Ocean: EuropeEurope
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
, North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
, South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
, Antarctica; the Arabian
Arabian Plate
The Arabian Plate is one of three tectonic plates which have been moving northward over millions of years and colliding with the Eurasian Plate...
and Caribbean
Caribbean Plate
The Caribbean Plate is a mostly oceanic tectonic plate underlying Central America and the Caribbean Sea off the north coast of South America....
subcontinents are the furthest extent of the Atlantic rim from East to West. The Mediterranean Sea
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...
and Black Sea
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
in the Old World
Old World
The Old World consists of those parts of the world known to classical antiquity and the European Middle Ages. It is used in the context of, and contrast with, the "New World" ....
, as well as the Caribbean Sea
Caribbean Sea
The Caribbean Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean located in the tropics of the Western hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico and Central America to the west and southwest, to the north by the Greater Antilles, and to the east by the Lesser Antilles....
and Gulf of Mexico
Gulf of Mexico
The Gulf of Mexico is a partially landlocked ocean basin largely surrounded by the North American continent and the island of Cuba. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. In...
in the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
, represent the core of global affairs on either side of the Rim. The Arctic Ocean
Arctic Ocean
The Arctic Ocean, located in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Arctic north polar region, is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceanic divisions...
and Antarctic Ocean are Northern and Southern frontiers on the Atlantic Rim.
Until the invention of aircraft in the twentieth century, seafaring was the primary—in many cases, the only—mode of long-distance travel. New settlements were typically established on seacoasts; over time the population gradually spread inland. The Atlantic rim was a community created by maritime traffic on the Atlantic Ocean. Distant settlements were linked by elaborate sea-based trading networks. The Atlantic Rim is in many respects a counterpart to the Pacific Rim
Pacific Rim
The Pacific Rim refers to places around the edge of the Pacific Ocean. The term "Pacific Basin" includes the Pacific Rim and islands in the Pacific Ocean...
.
Emergence
Since Classical AntiquityClassical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
, the Mediterranean Basin
Mediterranean Basin
In biogeography, the Mediterranean Basin refers to the lands around the Mediterranean Sea that have a Mediterranean climate, with mild, rainy winters and hot, dry summers, which supports characteristic Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub vegetation...
had functioned as an interconnected cultural, economic and geopolitical sphere, the focal point of what the Greeks called the Oikumene. This regional unity reached its apotheosis in the pan-Mediterranean political dominion imposed by the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
but persisted even after the Fall of the Roman Empire and into the early modern period
Early modern period
In history, the early modern period of modern history follows the late Middle Ages. Although the chronological limits of the period are open to debate, the timeframe spans the period after the late portion of the Middle Ages through the beginning of the Age of Revolutions...
and beyond. The first historian to offer a comprehensive account of this unified Mediterranean history was the French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
historian of the Annales School
Annales School
The Annales School is a group of historians associated with a style of historiography developed by French historians in the 20th century. It is named after its scholarly journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, which remains the main source of scholarship, along with many books and...
Fernand Braudel
Fernand Braudel
Fernand Braudel was a French historian and a leader of the Annales School. His scholarship focused on three main projects, each representing several decades of intense study: The Mediterranean , Civilization and Capitalism , and the unfinished Identity of France...
, who argued in his books The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II and The Structures of Everyday Life that the countries that bordered the Mediterranean should not be studied as isolated and discrete nation states, but should instead be situated within the larger geographic, economic and political context of the Mediterranean World.
Following the earliest European voyages to the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
and Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
and the division of the Americas between the Spanish Empire
Spanish Empire
The Spanish Empire comprised territories and colonies administered directly by Spain in Europe, in America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. It originated during the Age of Exploration and was therefore one of the first global empires. At the time of Habsburgs, Spain reached the peak of its world power....
and the Portuguese Empire
Portuguese Empire
The Portuguese Empire , also known as the Portuguese Overseas Empire or the Portuguese Colonial Empire , was the first global empire in history...
effected by the Treaty of Tordesillas
Treaty of Tordesillas
The Treaty of Tordesillas , signed at Tordesillas , , divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between Spain and Portugal along a meridian 370 leagueswest of the Cape Verde islands...
, a network of economic, geopolitical and cultural exchange—an "Atlantic World" comparable to Braudel's "Mediterannean World" -- began to coalesce among the nations and peoples that inhabited the Atlantic litoral of North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
and South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
, West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
and Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
.
Environmental history
The beginning of extensive contact between Europe, Africa, and the Americas had sweeping implications for the environmental history of all the regions involved. In a process known as the Columbian exchangeColumbian Exchange
The Columbian Exchange was a dramatically widespread exchange of animals, plants, culture, human populations , communicable disease, and ideas between the Eastern and Western hemispheres . It was one of the most significant events concerning ecology, agriculture, and culture in all of human history...
, numerous plants, animals, and diseases were transplanted—both deliberately and inadvertently—from one continent to another. The epidemiological impact of this exchange on the indigenous peoples of the Americas was profound, causing massive and widespread mortality (see Population history of American indigenous peoples
Population history of American indigenous peoples
The population figures for Indigenous peoples in the Americas before the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus have proven difficult to establish and rely on archaeological data and written records from European settlers...
). Many foods that are common in present-day Europe, including tomato
Tomato
The word "tomato" may refer to the plant or the edible, typically red, fruit which it bears. Originating in South America, the tomato was spread around the world following the Spanish colonization of the Americas, and its many varieties are now widely grown, often in greenhouses in cooler...
es and potato
Potato
The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial Solanum tuberosum of the Solanaceae family . The word potato may refer to the plant itself as well as the edible tuber. In the region of the Andes, there are some other closely related cultivated potato species...
es, originated in the New World and were unknown in Europe before the sixteenth century. Similarly, some staple crops of present-day West Africa, including cassava
Cassava
Cassava , also called yuca or manioc, a woody shrub of the Euphorbiaceae native to South America, is extensively cultivated as an annual crop in tropical and subtropical regions for its edible starchy tuberous root, a major source of carbohydrates...
and peanut
Peanut
The peanut, or groundnut , is a species in the legume or "bean" family , so it is not a nut. The peanut was probably first cultivated in the valleys of Peru. It is an annual herbaceous plant growing tall...
s, originated in the New World. Some of the staple crops of Latin America, such as coffee
Coffee
Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...
and sugarcane
Sugarcane
Sugarcane refers to any of six to 37 species of tall perennial grasses of the genus Saccharum . Native to the warm temperate to tropical regions of South Asia, they have stout, jointed, fibrous stalks that are rich in sugar, and measure two to six metres tall...
, were introduced by European settlers in the course of the Columbian Exchange
Columbian Exchange
The Columbian Exchange was a dramatically widespread exchange of animals, plants, culture, human populations , communicable disease, and ideas between the Eastern and Western hemispheres . It was one of the most significant events concerning ecology, agriculture, and culture in all of human history...
.
Slavery and other labor systems
The slave trade played a role in the history of the Atlantic world almost from the beginning. As European powers began to conquer and claim large territories in the Americas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the role of chattel slavery and other forced labor systems in the development of the Atlantic world expanded. European powers typically had vast territories that they wished to exploit through agricultureAgriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
, mining
Mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...
, or other extractive industries, but they lacked the work force that they needed to exploit their lands effectively. Consequently, they turned to a variety of coercive labor systems to meet their needs. Native Americans were employed through Indian slavery and through the Spanish system of encomienda
Encomienda
The encomienda was a system that was employed mainly by the Spanish crown during the colonization of the Americas to regulate Native American labor....
. European workers arrived as indentured servant
Indentured servant
Indentured servitude refers to the historical practice of contracting to work for a fixed period of time, typically three to seven years, in exchange for transportation, food, clothing, lodging and other necessities during the term of indenture. Usually the father made the arrangements and signed...
s or transported felons
Penal labour
Penal labour is a form of unfree labour in which prisoners perform work, typically manual labour. The work may be light or hard, depending on the context. Forms of sentence which involve penal labour include penal servitude and imprisonment with hard labour...
. African workers were imported via the Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
and were used extensively throughout North and South America.
The extent of voluntary immigration
Immigration
Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...
to the Atlantic world varied considerably by region, nationality, and time period. Many European nations, particularly the Netherlands and France, failed to obtain as many voluntary European immigrants as they hoped to. In New Netherland
New Netherland
New Netherland, or Nieuw-Nederland in Dutch, was the 17th-century colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the East Coast of North America. The claimed territories were the lands from the Delmarva Peninsula to extreme southwestern Cape Cod...
, the Dutch coped by recruiting immigrants of other nationalities. In New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
, the massive Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
migration of the first half of the seventeenth century created a large free workforce and thus obviated the need to use unfree labor on a large scale. Colonial New England's reliance on the labor of free men, women, and children, organized in individual farm households, is called the family labor system.
The French colony of Saint-Domingue
Saint-Domingue
The labour for these plantations was provided by an estimated 790,000 African slaves . Between 1764 and 1771, the average annual importation of slaves varied between 10,000-15,000; by 1786 it was about 28,000, and from 1787 onward, the colony received more than 40,000 slaves a year...
was one of the first American jurisdictions to end slavery, in 1794. Brazil was last nation in the Western Hemisphere to end slavery, in 1888.
Political history
The Spanish conquistadorConquistador
Conquistadors were Spanish soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who brought much of the Americas under the control of Spain in the 15th to 16th centuries, following Europe's discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492...
es conquered the Aztec
Aztec
The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the late post-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Aztec is the...
empire in present-day Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
and the Inca empire in present-day Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
with ease, assisted by horses, guns, and above all by the devastating mortality inflicted by newly introduced diseases such as smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
. To some extent the prior emergence of the Inca and Aztec empires as regional powers aided the transfer of governance to the Spanish, since these native empires had already established road systems, state bureaucracies and systems of taxation and intensive agriculture that were in some cases inherited wholesale by the Spanish. The early Spanish conquerors of these empires were also aided by political instability and internal conflict within the Aztec and Incan regimes, which they successfully exploited to their benefit.
One of the problems that most European governments faced in the Americas was how to exercise authority over vast expanses of territory. Spain, which colonized Mexico, Central America, and the greater part of South America, established a network of viceroyalties to administer different regions of its New World holdings: the Viceroyalty of New Spain (1535), the Viceroyalty of Peru
Viceroyalty of Peru
Created in 1542, the Viceroyalty of Peru was a Spanish colonial administrative district that originally contained most of Spanish-ruled South America, governed from the capital of Lima...
(1542), the Viceroyalty of New Granada
Viceroyalty of New Granada
The Viceroyalty of New Granada was the name given on 27 May 1717, to a Spanish colonial jurisdiction in northern South America, corresponding mainly to modern Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela. The territory corresponding to Panama was incorporated later in 1739...
(1717/1739), and the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata (1776). Britain approached the task of governing its New World territories in a similar, though less centralized, manner, establishing about twenty distinct colonies in North America and the Caribbean from 1585 onward. Each British colony had its own governor and elected assembly. In both New Spain and British North America, each viceroyalty or colony interacted directly with the Spanish or British Crown and had no formal relationship with the other American colonies that belonged to its mother country.
Independence movements in the New World began with the American Revolutionary War
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...
and the Haitian Revolution
Haitian Revolution
The Haitian Revolution was a period of conflict in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which culminated in the elimination of slavery there and the founding of the Haitian republic...
soon followed. The Quasi-War
Quasi-War
The Quasi-War was an undeclared war fought mostly at sea between the United States and French Republic from 1798 to 1800. In the United States, the conflict was sometimes also referred to as the Franco-American War, the Pirate Wars, or the Half-War.-Background:The Kingdom of France had been a...
, Louisiana Purchase
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the United States of America of of France's claim to the territory of Louisiana in 1803. The U.S...
, Barbary Wars
Barbary Wars
The Barbary Wars were a series of wars between the United States of America and the Barbary States of North Africa in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. At issue was the Barbary pirates' demand of tribute from American merchant vessels in the Mediterranean Sea. If ships failed to pay, pirates...
, War of 1812
War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire. The Americans declared war in 1812 for several reasons, including trade restrictions because of Britain's ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant...
, Monroe Doctrine
Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine is a policy of the United States introduced on December 2, 1823. It stated that further efforts by European nations to colonize land or interfere with states in North or South America would be viewed as acts of aggression requiring U.S. intervention...
and American Colonization Society
American Colonization Society
The American Colonization Society , founded in 1816, was the primary vehicle to support the "return" of free African Americans to what was considered greater freedom in Africa. It helped to found the colony of Liberia in 1821–22 as a place for freedmen...
signified stability and aggressive autonomy on the part of Americans. The New World equalized its power to the Old, in the quagmire of vicious wars raging throughout Europe and abundance of land to expand in under Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny was the 19th century American belief that the United States was destined to expand across the continent. It was used by Democrat-Republicans in the 1840s to justify the war with Mexico; the concept was denounced by Whigs, and fell into disuse after the mid-19th century.Advocates of...
. Ultimately, Americans as Age of Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
successors of the English Renaissance
English Renaissance
The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the late 15th and early 16th centuries to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late 14th century; like most of northern...
Virginia colony
Colony and Dominion of Virginia
The Colony of Virginia was the English colony in North America that existed briefly during the 16th century, and then continuously from 1607 until the American Revolution...
and Age of Reason
Age of reason
Age of reason may refer to:* 17th-century philosophy, as a successor of the Renaissance and a predecessor to the Age of Enlightenment* Age of Enlightenment in its long form of 1600-1800* The Age of Reason, a book by Thomas Paine...
Virginia Company
Virginia Company
The Virginia Company refers collectively to a pair of English joint stock companies chartered by James I on 10 April1606 with the purposes of establishing settlements on the coast of North America...
would inherit colonial economic competition and political conditions from the Wars of the Three Kingdoms
Wars of the Three Kingdoms
The Wars of the Three Kingdoms formed an intertwined series of conflicts that took place in England, Ireland, and Scotland between 1639 and 1651 after these three countries had come under the "Personal Rule" of the same monarch...
in the form of the violent American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. Remnants of the Cavalier
Cavalier
Cavalier was the name used by Parliamentarians for a Royalist supporter of King Charles I and son Charles II during the English Civil War, the Interregnum, and the Restoration...
London Company
London Company
The London Company was an English joint stock company established by royal charter by James I of England on April 10, 1606 with the purpose of establishing colonial settlements in North America.The territory granted to the London Company included the coast of North America from the 34th parallel ...
and Roundhead
Roundhead
"Roundhead" was the nickname given to the supporters of the Parliament during the English Civil War. Also known as Parliamentarians, they fought against King Charles I and his supporters, the Cavaliers , who claimed absolute power and the divine right of kings...
Plymouth Company
Plymouth Company
The Plymouth Company was an English joint stock company founded in 1606 by James I of England with the purpose of establishing settlements on the coast of North America.The Plymouth Company was one of two companies, along with the London Company, chartered with such...
would resurrect in their respective forms of Confederacy
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...
and Union
Union (American Civil War)
During the American Civil War, the Union was a name used to refer to the federal government of the United States, which was supported by the twenty free states and five border slave states. It was opposed by 11 southern slave states that had declared a secession to join together to form the...
.
As a historical concept
Historian Bernard BailynBernard Bailyn
Bernard Bailyn is an American historian, author, and professor specializing in U.S. Colonial and Revolutionary-era History. He has been a professor at Harvard University since 1953. Bailyn has won the Pulitzer Prize for History twice . In 1998 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected...
traces the concept of the Atlantic world to an editorial published by journalist Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann was an American intellectual, writer, reporter, and political commentator famous for being among the first to introduce the concept of Cold War...
in 1917. The alliance of the United States and Great Britain in World War II, and the subsequent creation of NATO, heightened historians' interest in the history of interaction between societies on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
In American and British universities, Atlantic World history is supplementing (and possibly supplanting) the study of specific European colonial societies in the Americas, e.g. British North America or Spanish America. Atlantic world history differs from traditional approaches to the history of colonization in its emphasis on inter-regional and international comparisons and its attention to events and trends that transcended national borders. Atlantic world history also emphasizes how the colonization of the Americas reshaped Africa and Europe.
See also
- Atlantic historyAtlantic historyAtlantic history is a specialty field in history that studies of the Atlantic World in the early modern period. It is premised on the idea that, following the rise of sustained European contact with the New World in the 16th century, the continents that bordered the Atlantic Ocean—the...
- Age of DiscoveryAge of DiscoveryThe Age of Discovery, also known as the Age of Exploration and the Great Navigations , was a period in history starting in the early 15th century and continuing into the early 17th century during which Europeans engaged in intensive exploration of the world, establishing direct contacts with...
- Naval historyNaval historyNaval history is the area of military history concerning war at sea and the subject is also a sub-discipline of the broad field of maritime history....
- Global empire
- Albion's SeedAlbion's SeedAlbion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America is a 1989 book by David Hackett Fischer which describes four regional British cultures or ‘folkways’ which, the author argues, were transplanted to North America during the large-scale migrations of the 17th and 18th Centuries...
- Atlantic slave tradeAtlantic slave tradeThe Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
- Atlantic RevolutionsAtlantic Revolutions"Atlantic Revolutions" is a cover term for a wave of late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century revolutions associated with Atlantic history during the The Age of Enlightenment.* Corsican Revolution * American Revolution...
- Colonial AmericaColonial AmericaThe colonial history of the United States covers the history from the start of European settlement and especially the history of the thirteen colonies of Britain until they declared independence in 1776. In the late 16th century, England, France, Spain and the Netherlands launched major...
- New FranceNew FranceNew France was the area colonized by France in North America during a period beginning with the exploration of the Saint Lawrence River by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Spain and Great Britain in 1763...
- New NetherlandNew NetherlandNew Netherland, or Nieuw-Nederland in Dutch, was the 17th-century colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the East Coast of North America. The claimed territories were the lands from the Delmarva Peninsula to extreme southwestern Cape Cod...
- New SpainNew SpainNew Spain, formally called the Viceroyalty of New Spain , was a viceroyalty of the Spanish colonial empire, comprising primarily territories in what was known then as 'América Septentrional' or North America. Its capital was Mexico City, formerly Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire...
Further reading
- Bailyn, Bernard. Atlantic History: Concept and Contours. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005.
- Egerton, Douglas, Alison Games, Kris Lane, and Donald R. Wright. The Atlantic World: A History, 1400-1888. Wheeling: Harlan Davidson, 2007.
- Seed, Patricia. Ceremonies of Possession in Europe's Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
- Taylor, Alan. American Colonies. New York: Viking, 2001.
- Thornton, John. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1680. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 199