The early modern Atlantic World was an interconnected place. Some of its citizens, such as Samuel Champlain, made dozens of crossings. For others, including hundreds of Indigenous peoples, thousands of settlers, and many more slaves, the voyage was one way. Yet in a pre-national era it was the Atlantic that linked residents in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. This class will explore the nature of the Atlantic World from its beginnings in the fifteenth century to the dawn of a more "global" age around 1850. Exploration, cultural interaction, trade, concepts of sex and gender, slavery, war, and revolutions were Atlantic phenomena. Ideas, like currents, circulated from one shore to the next. Critical reading of academic articles and primary sources will enable us to explore the Atlantic Ocean as a highway (for administrators), a goldmine (for pirates), a death sentence (for slaves), and much more. |