In this innovative volume, leading historians of the early modern Americas examine the subjects of early modern, continuing colonization, and the relations between established colonies and frontiers of settlement. Their original essays about centers and peripheries in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and British America invite comparison.

This innovative volume brings together original essays by leading historians of the Atlantic World, representing the latest developments in historiography of the period. The volume takes a comparative approach, with individual essays examining governance in British, Portuguese, French, Dutch and Native America. As a whole, these essays present the argument that coercive imperial authority has been vastly overrated in previous scholarship due to factors like distance, the primacy of trade over politics, and the refusal of "colonized" peoples to recognize European authority. While some of the essays look at the relationships between imperial centers and colonial peripheries, others examine interactions and experiences of people at the peripheries of their respective empires, including Native Americans, African Americans and Euroamericans. No other book collects essays on the New World empires in one volume. Contributors:Ida Altman, H.V. Bowen, Philip Boucher, Amy Turner Bushnell, Leslie Choquette, Christine Daniels, Jack P. Greene, Mary Karasch, Wim Klooster, Elizabeth Mancke, Peter S. Onuf, John Jay Tepaske, David J. Weber, Michael Zuckerman.

Thema dieses Buches ist die Organisation und Regulierung von Seuchenbekämpfung und Gesundheitsfürsorge in der britischen Kolonie South Carolina und der französischen Kolonie Louisiana zwischen 1720 und 1763. Welche Akteure waren an der Implementierung und Durchsetzung von Maßnahmen im Gesundheitsbereich beteiligt? Welche Handlungsweisen wählten sie? Diese Fragen stehen im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchung. Die Autorin zeigt, dass sich die Formen lokaler politischer Organisation in den beiden Kolonien trotz der tiefgreifenden Unterschiede in Bezug auf Strukturen und Strategien der beiden Kolonialmächte stark ähnelten. Dies legt den Schluss nahe, dass die lokalen Gegebenheiten innerhalb der Kolonien einen mindestens ebenso großen Einfluss auf lokale Governanceformen hatten wie die Struktur des jeweiligen Kolonialreichs. Das Buch eröffnet damit einen frischen Blick auf die Realitäten kolonialen Regierens im frühneuzeitlichen Nordamerika. Focusing on the field of health care and disease control as a field of policy that was of pivotal importance for the existence and stability of European colonies in the south-eastern areas of the North American continent, the book analyzes modes of local organization and regulation in French Louisiana and British South Carolina during the first half of the eighteenth century. The work shows that, in spite of completely different imperial strategies and systems of rule, striking similarities existed between French and British colonies with regard to governance modes and the nature of agents involved in political organization. This attests to the fact that governance practices on the local and the colonial levels were informed at least as much by local conditions as by the nature of the empire to which the colonies respectively belonged. The work offers a fresh and unique perspective on the realities of colonial rule in early modern North America, thus challenging traditional notions which stress the differences between the French and British colonial empires in North America with regard to administrative practices.

In The Making and Unmaking of Empires P. J. Marshall, distinguished author of numerous books on the British Empire and former Rhodes Professor of Imperial History, provides a unified interpretation of British imperial history in the later eighteenth century. He brings together into a common focus Britain's loss of empire in North America and the winning of territorial dominion in parts of India and argues that these developments were part of a single phase of Britain's imperial history, rather than marking the closing of a 'first' Atlantic empire and the rise of a 'second' eastern one. In both India and North America Britain pursued similar objectives in this period. Fearful of the apparent enmity of France, Britain sought to secure the interests overseas which were thought to contribute so much to her wealth and power. This involved imposing a greater degree of control over colonies in America and over the East India Company and its new possessions in India. Aspirations to greater control also reflected an increasing confidence in Britain's capacity to regulate the affairs of subject peoples, especially through parliament. If British objectives throughout the world were generally similar, whether they could be achieved depended on the support or at least acquiescence of those they tried to rule. Much of this book is concerned with bringing together the findings of the rich historical writing on both post-Mughal India and late colonial America to assess the strengths and weaknesses of empire in different parts of the world. In North America potential allies who were closely linked to Britain in beliefs, culture and economic interest were ultimately alienated by Britain's political pretensions. Empire was extremely fragile in two out of the three main Indian settlements. In Bengal, however, the British achieved a modus vivendi with important groups which enabled them to build a secure base for the future subjugation of the subcontinent. With the authority of one who has made the study of empire his life's work, Marshall provides a valuable resource for scholar and student alike.

Accounts of U.S. empire building in Latin America typically portray politically and economically powerful North Americans descending on their southerly neighbors to engage in lopsided negotiations. Dennis Merrill's comparative history of U.S. tourism in L

This book examines the trade networks that connected the British and Dutch colonies in the Atlantic and how they formed a central part of the commercial activity in the early Atlantic World.

The Spanish Empire is famous for being, at its height, the realm upon which "the sun never set." It stretched from the Philippines to Europe by way of the Americas. And yet we know relatively little about how Spain managed to move that crucial currency of governance—paper—over such enormous distances. Moreover, we know even less about how those distances were perceived and understood by people living in the empire. This book takes up these unknowns and proposes that by examining how documents operated in the Spanish empire, we can better understand how the empire was built and, most importantly, how knowledge was created. The author argues that even in such a vast realm, knowledge was built locally by people who existed at the peripheries of empire. Organized along routes and centralized into local nodes, peripheral knowledge accumulated in regional centers before moving on to the heart of the empire in Spain. The study takes the Kingdom of Guatemala as its departure point and examines the related aspects of documents and distance in three sections: part one looks at document genre, and how the creation of documents was shaped by distance; part two looks at the movement of documents and the workings of the mail system; part three looks at document storage and how archives played an essential part in the flow of paper.