HIST 646 The British Atlantic
This course explores the scholarship on the British Atlantic in the early modern period. In recent years the study of "Atlantic" dynamics has transformed early modern history, both of individual regions touching the Atlantic (North and South America, Europe, and Africa) and of the early modern world overall. The intense processes of movement and exchange - of people, goods, and ideas - that characterized the Atlantic world have been described as the roots of much of the modern world and the processes that made it: the consumer revolution, imperial competition and intensified state-building, slavery, increased contact between diverse peoples, and revolutionary politics. By paying attention to all of these issues, we will try to understand the uses of Atlantic history, what distinguishes it from other kinds of history, whether it constitutes a subject or a methodology, and how it can contribute to our own work. We will reflect more broadly, too, on the value of large-scale and comparative histories and how to practice (or resist) them effectively.