Between Columbus' first expedition in 1492 and the Peace of Paris in 1763, West Europeans created empires of trade and settlement that re-made the social, economic, and political environments not only of their own peoples, but also those of the other societies around the North Atlantic. This study invites readers new to early modern Atlantic Studies to consider from some possible explanations for these extraordinary transformations of the lives of millions of people, free and unfree, and of the political powers of societies that previously had been separated by rather than linked by the ocean. In particular, Seymour invites readers to ponder how the first century of, in effect, Iberian monopoly, became displaced by an Anglophone hegemony. This volume is constructed around the questions to be addressed in any consideration of the early modern North Atlantic; reflections upon the factors contributing to the processes—technical, technological, economic, and social; the availability of alternatives to Atlantic empires; possible environmental factors; then a brief survey of interpretative themes in the period, divided into distinct chronological phases. In conclusion, the author suggests that, because the eventual triumph of an Anglophone Atlantic may not be regarded as inevitable, we should be conscious in the present of the unpredictability of the historical experience.

In 1492, an Italian sailor left Spain and happened upon some islands off the coast of North America. This book recounts how various Europeans followed to find riches in this new land, only to settle and develop a burning desire for independence. It also tells the story of the African slaves, who were brought here against their will, and of the Native people who struggled to keep their lands and their ways of life. Book jacket.

U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender.

Presents an illustrated examination of the Atlantic Ocean and the transformative role it has played as a corridor for the exchange of people, technologies, ideas, goods, and cultures for over two thousand years as exploration and discovery helped in the growth of global commerce.

A first-of-its-kind reference resource traces the interactions among four Atlantic-facing continents—Europe, Africa, and the Americas (including the Caribbean)—between 1400 and 1900. Until recently, the age of exploration and empire building was researched and taught within imperial and national boundaries. The histories of Europe, Africa, North America, and South America were told largely as independent stories, with the development of individual places within each continent further separated from each other. The indigenous populations of places colonized by Europeans fit into the history even more uneasily, often mentioned only in passing. Encyclopedia of the Atlantic World, 1400–1900 synthesizes a generation of historical scholarship on the events on four continents, providing readers an invaluable introduction to the major people, places, events, movements, objects, concepts, and commodities of the Atlantic world as it developed during a key period in history when the world first started to shrink. The entries discuss specific topics with an eye toward showing how individual items, people, and events were connected to the larger Atlantic world. This accessibly written reference book brings together topics usually treated separately and discretely, alleviating the need for extra legwork when researching, and it draws from the latest research to make a vast body of scholarship about seemingly far-flung places available to readers new to the field.

This book explores seventeenth-century English overseas expansion, offering a unique interpretation of the history of the early modern English Empire.