This is the blog for HY370, A History of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800. We'll be investigating the ways in which the Atlantic Ocean resembled an early-modern super-highway, moving people, ideas, and products across its waters. We'll ask how the people who shaped this world - rebellious slaves, elite planters, Aztec emperors, wayward sailors, Kongolese kings, infamous pirates, and radical revolutionaries - contributed to the creation of such a vibrant and dynamic space. To answer these questions we'll trace four centuries of interactions among Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans, from the first European forays down the west coast of Africa in the fifteenth century, to the turbulent Age of Revolutions at the close of the eighteenth century. Everyone in class will cover their own Atlantic site for the course of the semester, and I'll be focusing on Barbados, the most easterly island in the Caribbean Sea, and the first port of call for most of the English shipping that crossed the Atlantic Ocean in the seventeenth century. Barbados was also one of the first slave societies to develop in the Americas, and a powerhouse for the production of sugar. Many Atlantic themes can be traced through its history.
