The early modern Atlantic was a revolutionary space. Taking a thematic and topical approach, this course introduces students to the upheavals that made the Atlantic basin a crucible of global change from the mid-16th to the late 18th centuries. As socio-political revolutions occurred on the Atlantic’s peripheries, migrations, implantations, expropriations, and mixings of people crisscrossed the ocean and recreated societies everywhere along it. Empires, states, and societies struggled violently (and sometimes cooperated peacefully) to demarcate the oceanic and terrestrial spaces of the Atlantic and these confrontations changed the world.
This course places the revolts and revolutions of the early modern era—the Netherlands, England, the Americas, France, Haiti—into a global and oceanic frame. Course topics may include the growth of state power and imperial competition; the rise of an ‘Atlantic system’ of commerce and chattel slavery; mobility, migration, and colonial conflicts; changing local and transoceanic networks of exchange; and the origins and consequences of early modern revolutions. The course’s geographical and chronological scope may vary from year to year depending on participating staff.