The Human Tradition in the Atlantic World, 15001850

(Paperback)

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This collection of compact biographies puts a human face on the sweeping historical processes that shaped contemporary societies throughout the Atlantic world. Focusing on life stories that represented movement across or around the Atlantic Ocean from 1500 to 1850, The Human Tradition in the Atlantic World, 15001850 explores transatlantic connections by following individuals whose experience took them far beyond their local communities to new and unfamiliar places. A formidable barrier, the Atlantic Ocean profoundly influenced the lives it touched. For some brave or desperate souls, it offered an escape, a source of adventure or romance. For countless others, it provided a steady source of income. For those who voluntarily undertook the voyage, crossing the Atlantic meant hope for a better, happier life; for the millions of less-fortunate others who relocated because they had been enslaved, tricked, or banished, the Atlantic was a sea of sorrow and loss.

Yet, whatever the reason, tremendous creativity and dynamism resulted from contact between people of different cultures, classes, races, ideas, and systems in Africa, Europe, and the Americas. At its most fundamental level, the syncretic nature of Atlantic world societies was created and re-created on a daily basis by myriad choices made by hundreds of thousands of individuals. By emphasizing movement and circulation in its choice of life stories, this readable and engaging volume presents a broad cross-section of peopleboth famous and everydaywhose lives and livelihoods took them across the Atlantic and brought disparate cultures into contact.

Contributions by: Robert D. Aguirre, Troy Bickham, Olwyn M. Blouet, Sarah Cline, Andrew B. Fisher, John Garrigus, Noah L. Gelfand, Mark Hinchman, Charlene Boyer Lewis, Gail Danvers MacLeitch, Beatriz G. Mamigonian, Mark Meuwese, Joan Meznar, John Navin, Jeff Pardue, Magnus Roberto de Mello Pereira, Cassandra Pybus, and Karen Racine.

Reviews

A refreshing counterpoint to the existing literature, The Human Tradition in the Atlantic World helps us understand at the individual level how the Atlantic was shaped. Featuring sixteen men and women who not only crossed the ocean, but traversed imperial, cultural, and linguistic barriers, this collection admirably illustrates the entangled and dynamic nature of the Atlantic world. -- Wim Klooster, Clark University
This collection introduces a vibrant array of individual lives that Atlantic history might have otherwise forgotten. The contributors to this volume have revealed Jewish translators, Indian visionaries, African entrepreneurs, Iroquois emissaries, and revolutionary men (and women) of color that were part of a dazzling, multicultural Atlantic. Scholars and students will be able to follow the intersecting human itineraries of the Atlantic world like never before. -- Neil Safier, University of British Columbia; author of Measuring the New World: Enlightenment Science and South America
Approaching the interconnected Atlantic world through the experiences of individuals of many different ranks and positions, as these essays do, draws students in and gives them more direct access to the kinds of skills and risk-taking that made that world function. -- Karen Ordahl Kupperman, New York University
The Human Tradition in the Atlantic World is packed with exemplary lives that can only be appreciated in an Atlantic context. These are not textbook heroes, but rather ordinary people caught in the slipstream of Atlantic history in the Age of Sail. Their stories, so well told here, bring this transformative era to lifethey give it flesh and bones. -- Kris Lane, College of William & Mary

Author Bio

Karen Racine is associate professor of history at the University of Guelph, Canada. Beatriz G. Mamigonian is professor of history at the Universidad Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil.