Atlantic history is a fast developing field of historical inquiry that interrogates the interactions between different peoples and cultures on four continents and many islands in the period between Columbus’ voyages to the New World in the late fifteenth century and the end of slavery in the Americas in the late nineteenth century. Atlantic Historians explore the relationships, movements, and interactions between the peoples, ideas, and objects in the Atlantic World – a world encompassing the continents of Africa, Europe, North America and South America and many islands, from the Canary Islands near Africa to the Caribbean islands and to Bermuda in the North Atlantic, focusing especially on whether these regions came to constitute a single, integrated system, joined, rather than separated by the Atlantic Ocean. Key topics in Atlantic History include: migration and colonialism; the African slave trade; New World slavery and its abolition; trans-oceanic commerce and the development of history’s first worldwide cash economy; violence, mixing and transculturation among Europeans, Africans and indigenous Americans; negotiation of knowledge about medicine, geography and the natural world; and the evolution of imperial systems, and the wars of Independence. This module introduces students to the vibrant field of Atlantic History, and helps students to develop an understanding of key conceptual and theoretical approaches to Atlantic History, a command of emerging historiographies in the field, and an appreciation of key historical research skills for historical research projects in the field of Atlantic History.

In “Atlantic History, 1450-1810 B: Making Atlantic History, New Approaches to Atlantic History”  [Term 2] we explore recent historiography that has reshaped particular themes in the Atlantic History, such as Knowledge, Science, Rules of Law, Emancipation, and Gender, Violence, Race, and the Archive. Our seminar discussions focus on new approaches and research methods, (how historians make their history), and will help members develop the methodological tools to devise and conduct preliminary research on a project related to their interests in Atlantic History (broadly conceived), and develop the skills to structure and scaffold their scholarly arguments.