Encyclopedia of the Atlantic World, 14001900: Europe, Africa, and the Americas in an Age of Exploration, Trade, and Empires [2 volumes]

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Description

A first-of-its-kind reference resource traces the interactions among four Atlantic-facing continentsEurope, 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, 14001900 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.

Reviews

Entries are deep and nuanced, but they are intended for the general reader and readily explain the subject's significance. Recommended for highschool, academic, and public libraries. * Booklist *
This two-volume set provides a great deal of information on the history of the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean, following their discovery by Europeans. . . . Libraries of all kinds will find this a useful set. . . . For libraries at several levels, this will provide 'student and interested nonspecialist readers' (p. xiv) an introduction to this fascinating and important world. The book is available both in print and as an eBook and is quite readable. * ARBA *

Author Bio

David Head, PhD, is a lecturer of history at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.