2006/06/01 by A. Games · 6 citations
Social Sciences · #Colonialism, slavery, and trade #History
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/ahr.111.3.741
openalex publication_date 2006/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
A historical study centered on a stretch of water has all the charms but undoubtedly all the dangers of a new departure. Fernand Braudel launched his massive history of the Mediterranean with an epigraph by the sixteenth-century priest José de Acosta. “To this day,” wrote Acosta in his own equally massive Natural and Moral History of the East and West Indies, “they have not discovered at the Indies any mediterranian sea as in Europe, Asia and Affrike.”2 The irony is delicious in hindsight. While Europeans never found their own Mediterranean in the Americas, historians have since discovered the Atlantic as a unit of historical analysis. The very ocean that Acosta crossed to undertake missionary work in America has become an organizing principle through which scholars investigate the histories of the four landmasses it links. Yet the Atlantic does not have the coherence that Acosta first identified for the Mediterranean, nor that Braudel proposed and delineated centuries later; nor, indeed, is it possible to speak with confidence of an Atlantic system or a uniform region. Attempts to write a Braudelian Atlantic history—one that includes and connects the entire region—remain elusive, driven in part by methodological impediments, by the real disjunctions that characterized the Atlantic's historical and geographic components, by the disciplinary divisions that discourage historians from speaking to and writing for each other, and by the challenge of finding a vantage that is not rooted in any single place. But if a broad vision of the Atlantic such as the one Braudel sought for the Mediterranean is elusive, it nonetheless remains desirable. Scholars working in the field of Atlantic history have demonstrated the explanatory power of this geographic region as a unit of analysis: Atlantic perspectives deepen our understanding of transformations over a period of several centuries, cast old problems in an entirely new light, and illuminate connections hitherto obscured. Braudel remarked in 1972 that he believed that two “truths” of his analysis remained “unchallenged.” His first truth was what he characterized as the “unity and coherence of the Mediterranean region.” The Mediterranean itself was, as Braudel put it, a “complex of seas,” but nonetheless the self-contained nature of the sea and the common features of the kingdoms and empires that it linked enabled Braudel and those who followed him to insist on the value of writing about the region in its entirety, privileging commonalities and connections over discrete and local features.3 As Acosta recognized, the unit had long historical precedent, made visible on maps of ancient empires whose holdings circled the sea and whose dominion provided political unity to much of the region. Here we confront the first crucial divergence between the Atlantic and the spatial perspective that animated Braudel's Mediterranean. The path of hurricanes on their western trek from Africa to the Caribbean and up the North American coast reminds us annually of the environmental connections of the Atlantic, but the landmasses surrounding the Atlantic are characterized by their enormous variety, with hundreds of microclimates, from the swath of the Sahara Desert to the tropical rainforests of equatorial regions to the tundra of Nunavut. The people who lived around the ocean inhabited different disease environments, and those who lived in the Americas had long enjoyed a geographic isolation that had catastrophic consequences in their lack of immunity to Eurasian diseases. Such coherence as Atlantic history might offer will not come from its environmental features. These differences were echoed in political and social practices. The challenges that Braudel identified in his history of the Mediterranean resonate deeply with historians of the Atlantic. His great regret (or so he avowed in his preface) was his uneven treatment of the states of the region. He deplored specifically his inability to come to terms with the Ottoman Empire. Magnify this challenge a thousandfold, and it is possible to begin to appreciate the difficulties of making sense of the individual pieces of the Atlantic and the ways in which these parts ultimately converged or interacted. The kingdoms, states, and empires that became involved in Atlantic exchanges together contained thousands of different languages (two thousand in the Americas alone, with considerably less variation in those European and African states oriented toward the Atlantic). The most fundamental features of many of the people of the Atlantic remain dimly understood. Historians debate population sizes in the Americas, and must estimate where, exactly, people lived. John Thornton's meticulous efforts to map the political boundaries of Atlantic Africa remind us of the absence of some of the crucial building blocks for an ocean-based history: for three of the four landmasses surrounding the ocean, we do not know with the certainty that historians like who lived where, under what jurisdiction, and with how many other people.4 If the Atlantic is a less obvious and coherent unit than the Mediterranean, it is also an anachronistic one. Historians have first had to invent the region: the emergence of the Atlantic as a single unit of analysis reflects trends in historical geography. What we call the Atlantic Ocean, our ancestors perceived as several distinct seas. The regions we have since labeled the North and South American continents are similarly modern creations.5 Well into the nineteenth century, no one had an accurate idea of what these landmasses looked like or whether they were even connected to the Eurasian landmass. The components of Atlantic history—two of the four continents and even the ocean itself—are modern impositions. And yet this unit of analysis, however artificially constructed it might be from the perspective of historical geography, has become sufficiently compelling to drive historical scholarship. Who are these scholars, and what is their impetus toward an Atlantic perspective? In one of the first efforts to articulate the history of this emerging field and to explain the origins of the current interest in the region, Bernard Bailyn argued that Atlantic history was a product of twentieth-century political developments.6 But it is also possible to identify other converging strands of historical inquiry. Indeed, this North Atlantic diplomatic longue durée cannot alone explain the passion that has developed for all things Atlantic. Three converging strands have delineated different and and historians of the have about an Atlantic perspective at the of their with efforts to the of the and with the and on the African field has up the ocean as a coherent unit of study by the who it, to Europe, to the of the Caribbean and the Atlantic, and to the American by the of the and people at the the of all of from political to to to all around the Atlantic other field has so for so many in an Atlantic vision and in the field as a of the most of the Atlantic from this vantage in The and A of toward Atlantic perspectives from historians of in the Three have their geographic into and the historians are in modern European in to the history of the region of their and an Atlantic perspective be a of and historians of to their for about in other European empires in to their up of at A impetus from the of to write a history centered around modern In this the Atlantic what and in their on the Mediterranean in this as the political of these new is this political that scholars to the of the to toward the of the Atlantic. the Atlantic the of the historians of empires have long the Atlantic other ocean their The these on the Atlantic is their to the region from the perspective of and to a single geography, an that up the in in of the of the each of which its own even with a power and in common These two and have converged most historians of the Atlantic. historians and historians of America work characterized by to the European and the of the these two from their Atlantic history scholars in to the of by privileging and and by for new is no that the that for any single Atlantic is and The Atlantic which a analysis of from the to to all an Atlantic the of Atlantic from the of the century, it was not the that a of scholars who Atlantic In that the launched a the in Atlantic History and But it was the that the of Atlantic scholarship. by the of on the History of the Atlantic under the of Bernard historians who are in different of Atlantic those at the of their for the is to at and in North America and Europe, together scholars who investigate different of the A new Atlantic its first in and for in Atlantic Atlantic history is at the in and at some and the of at in Atlantic and together in Atlantic Atlantic history has with a making a between and from to In the a whose the nature of this new in a the a of the field in These trends together the emergence of Atlantic history as a field in which people and for in which offer in which offer as new in the Atlantic and in which the a first in this is a how long historians such as delineated some of the for a These that Atlantic history is and But to a of to an Atlantic history different things to different and it is for the most part that this of and perspective But the Atlantic history that many historians is centered around the ocean, and the ocean is to the and to the between history in and history of the Mediterranean. 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A challenge from the uneven interest in Atlantic history scholars who work on the individual regions of the modern Atlantic of history have than in to an Atlantic The working at the on the History of the Atlantic offer one of this and a of scholars from the is of since it reflects the and of those who to the and are not of the entire of all scholars working on the Atlantic. 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Yet the efforts of to these were with one of and historians have to the of and In of these many will the Atlantic its own If is to the Atlantic from a not geographic but methodological of the most in Atlantic history have by historians whose have no to or in a single or historical geography, the African the history of These us about what a Braudelian Atlantic might will be not the most work on the Atlantic to be in will the Atlantic in the of the that has even if it does so a single of the us to identify what was to the Atlantic and what this region with other ocean will be and The most and challenge is to Africa to the Atlantic. the of Atlantic it is and that this to be as to the those any field or The absence of Africa in of the Atlantic is a of the of Atlantic history by historians of the North Atlantic and of The first ocean from between landmasses their But these by had an on the of the Atlantic, and many scholars the region as a of Europeans and all the and that have to other historians have to ways to put Africa into Atlantic not as a with and the and for have two very different and equally ways of about Africa and and their with the Atlantic indeed, If to such Atlantic history will begin to like a new history the of the Atlantic The of The Atlantic to Africa as the this was as as In Bernard Bailyn the Atlantic as the study of and the The study of people and the study of how historians might the Atlantic in their a region that is from any single or to the methodological that historians scholars toward or one might to put the ocean at the of the analysis, since people around the Atlantic, and as The ocean was not the of but also the which and people were and or offer ways to of the of a history of the Atlantic from to have for of one of the by which the Atlantic became a region of The of such as the these with the that historians of European and African have to of and and to the not of but of and of and how the Atlantic together and the that even a very of had on their has also an interest in the of who lived in different parts of the Atlantic. 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The