Atlantic history

[1] 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 Americas, Europe, and Africa—constituted a regional system or common sphere of economic and cultural exchange that can be studied as a totality.

It encompasses a wide range of demographic, social, economic, political, legal, military, intellectual and religious topics treated in comparative fashion by looking at both sides of the Atlantic.

In particular, they argue that the boundaries between nation states which traditionally determined the limits of older historiography should not be applied to such transnational phenomena as slavery, colonialism, missionary activity and economic expansion.

Environmental history and the study of historical demography also play an important role, as many key questions in the field revolve around the ecological and epidemiological impact of the Columbian exchange.

Its purpose was to advance the scholarship of young historians of many nations interested in the common, comparative, and interactive aspects of the lives of the peoples in the lands that are part of the Atlantic basin, mainly in the early modern period in order to contribute to the study of this transnational historical subject.

[6] Bailyn's Atlantic History: Concepts and Contours (2005) explores the borders and contents of the emerging field, which emphasizes cosmopolitan and multicultural elements that have tended to be neglected or considered in isolation by traditional historiography dealing with the Americas.

Other scholars in the field include Ida Altman, Kenneth J. Andrien, David Armitage, Trevor Burnard, Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, Nicholas Canny, Philip D. Curtin, Laurent Dubois, J.H.

Many were trained in early modern European history and were familiar with the historiography of the British Empire, which had been introduced a century before by George Louis Beer and Charles McLean Andrews.

[11] According to Caroline Dodds Pennock, indigenous people are often seen as static recipients of transatlantic encounter, despite the fact that thousands of Native Americans crossed the ocean during the sixteenth century, some by choice.