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ABSTRACT
This article examines developments in the field of Atlantic History within the past two decades and through the prism of slavery studies and a number of close sub-fields. By paying attention to what Atlantic historians have achieved since the turn of the century, it discusses contributions and critiques in equal measure, highlighting the field’s place in wider global discussions. While probing a number of methodological challenges that are already being tackled by numerous Atlantic historians, this article also explores the potential obstacles that lay ahead and suggest possible ways to negotiate them successfully. Rather than offering yet another painstaking reconstruction of the birth and growth of Atlantic History, this piece focuses squarely on the field’s twenty-first century’s saga: past, present and future.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Historical studies using the Atlantic as a new interpretative and analytical framework to offer new insights into hemispherical concerns began appearing as early as in the mid-1950s with early works by Bernard Bailey, Jacques Godechot and Robert R. Palmer, among others. See, for example, Bailyn, “Communication and Trade,” 378–387; Godechot and Palmer, “Le problème de l’Atlantique du XVIIIème au XXième siècle,” 175–239.
2 Perhaps the most comprehensive genealogical study of the field of Atlantic History can be found in Bailyn, Atlantic History. See also, Butel, Histoire de l’Atlantique.
3 Canny, “Atlantic History,” 399–411; Armitage, “Three Concepts of Atlantic History,” 7–28; Gabaccia, “A long Atlantic in a wider world,” 1–27; Games, “Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities,” 741–757; Tortarolo, “Eighteenth-Century Atlantic History,” 369–374; Greene and Morgan, eds., Atlantic History; Cañizares-Esguerra, “Some Caveats about the ‘Atlantic’ Paradigm,” 1–4; Cañizares-Esguerra and Breen, “Hybrid Atlantics,” 597–609.
4 Atlantic Studies adopted the new subtitle Global Currents in 2011 to reflect its commitment to expanding the scope of the discipline and its potential within other fields, such as Global and Imperial studies, as well as the recognition that oceanic flows are not confined.
5 A third journal specifically focused on the South Atlantic, the South Atlantic Quarterly has been published by Duke University Press since 1901. Further, other journals like the Anuario de Estudios Atlánticos, published since 1955 by the Casa de Colón in Gran Canaria, and Les Cahiers d’Outre-Mer, published by the Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux since 1948 have been publishing works on Atlantic History for several decades.
6 See, for example, Gould and Onuf, eds., Empire and Nation; Adelman, Sovereignty and Revolution; Blanchard, Under the Flags of Freedom; Armitage and Subrahmanyam, eds., The Age of Revolutions in Global Context; Desan, Hunt and Nelson, eds., The French Revolution in Global Perspective; Eastman and Sobrevilla, eds., The Rise of Constitutional Government in the Iberian Atlantic World; Echeverri, Indian and Slave Royalists in the Age of Revolution.
7 Scott, A Common Wind. Other notable authors who looked into the Atlantic repercussions of slave movements in the Americas at the time, include, but are not limited to, David Barry Gaspar, Emilia Viotti da Costa, Michael Craton, Eugene Genovese, Robert L. Paquette, and John K. Thornton.
8 Childs, The 1812 Aponte Rebellion; Ferrer, Freedom’s Mirror; Dubois, A Colony of Citizens; Dun, Dangerous Neighbors; Eller, We Dream Together; Morel, A revolução do Haiti e o Brasil escravista.
9 Geggus, ed., The Impact of the Haitian Revolution; Garraway, ed., Tree of Liberty; Gómez, Le spectre de la Révolution noire; Gaffield, Haitian Connections.
10 Reid-Vazquez, The Year of the Lash; Barcia, West African Warfare in Bahia and Cuba; Finch, Rethinking Slave Rebellion in Cuba. See also Childs, The 1812 Aponte Rebellion.
11 Brown, Tacky’s Revolt.
12 Kars, Blood on the River.
13 Johnson, “Denmark Vesey and His Co-Conspirators,” 915–976; For a concise state of the debates around La Escalera over the years, see Paquette, Sugar is Made with Blood.
14 Among the scholars to get involved in this discussion in the following issue of The William and Mary Quarterly 59, no. 1 (2002), were Robert A. Gross, Douglas R. Egerton, Philip D. Morgan, Winthrop Jordan and Robert L. Paquette.
15 For recent works where this debate is resuscitated see Egerton and Paquette, The Denmark Vesey Affair; Kytle and Roberts, Denmark Vesey’s Garden; Tomlins, In the Matter of Nat Turner, 29–31.
16 For the original article that led to the exchange between Lovejoy and Reis, as well as for the replies and counter-replies, see Lovejoy, “Jihad na África Ocidental,” 15–28; Reis, “Resposta a Paul Lovejoy,” 374–389; Lovejoy, “Jihad, “Era das Revoluções” e história atlântica,” 390–395.
17 In addition to the previously cited works by Barcia and Brown, see Belmonte Postigo, “No obedecen a nadie, sino cada uno gobierna a su familia,” 813–840; Cuevas Oviedo, “La guerra y las resistencias esclavas en la Revolución neogranadina,” 40–64.
18 Due to reasons of space, it is impossible to include every debate that has taken place in the past twenty years in this review essay. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning here that there have been others covering a wide range of issues, from natural disasters to the reinterpretation of plantation slavery in the Americas and intra-imperial transatlantic relations. For some notable examples, see: Tomich, Through the Prism of Slavery; Rodrigo, Indians a Catalunya; Berbel, Marquese and Parron, eds., Escravidão e Política; Piqueras, La esclavitud en las Españas; Paquette, Imperial Portugal in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions; Fradera, La nación imperial; Klooster, Tussen honger en zwaard.
20 Brown, Moral Capital; Christopher, A Merciless Place; Huzzey, Freedom Burning; Nerin, Traficants d’ànimes; Scanlan, Freedom’s Debtors; Anderson and Lovejoy, eds., Liberated Africans and the Abolition of the Slave Trade; Everill, Not Made by Slaves; Belton, “‘A deep interest in your cause’”; Harris, The Last Slave Ships; Sanjurjo Ramos, In the Blood of Our Brothers.
21 See, for example, Kelly, “Rice and its consequences in the greater “Atlantic” world,” 273–275; Morrison and Hauser, “Risky business,” 371–392; Maat, “Commodities and anti-commodities,” 335–354.
22 See, among others, Law, Ouidah; Sparks, Where the Negroes are Masters; Green, A Fistful of Shells.
23 Three of the most influential works in this field over the past few years are those of Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery; Mustakeem, Slavery at Sea; Johnson, Wicked Flesh.
24 Araujo, Candido and Lovejoy, eds., Crossing Memories; Greene, West African Narratives of Slavery; Araujo, Slavery in the Age of Memory.
25 Landers, “A Nation Divided,” 99–116; Funes Monzote, From Rainforest to Cane Field; Carney and Rosomoff, In the Shadow of Slavery; Hawthorne, From Africa to Brazil; Norton, Profane Pleasures; Sweet, Domingos Álvares; Ferreira, Cross-Cultural Exchange; Millett, The Maroons of Prospect Bluff; DuPlessis, The Material Atlantic; Anishanslin, Portrait of a Woman in Silk; Mancall, Nature and Culture in the Early Modern Atlantic; Gómez, The Experiential Caribbean; Paton, The Cultural Politics of Obeah; Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives.
26 Linebaugh and Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra; Rediker, Outlaws of the Atlantic; Head, Privateers of the Americas; Cromwell, The Smugglers’ World.
27 Graden, Disease, Resistance, and Lies; Salgado and Gomes, eds., Escravidão, doenças e práticas de cura no Brasil; Hogarth, Medicalizing Blackness; Barcia, The Yellow Demon of Fever; Lockley, Military Medicine and the Making of Race; Kananoja, Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa; Fisk, “Black knowledge on the move.”
28 See, for example, Miller, Way of Death; Heywood, Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora; Thornton Africa and the Africans; Warfare in Atlantic Africa; Shumway, The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade; Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery; Jihad in West Africa during the Age of Revolutions; Sweet, Recreating Africa.
29 Hawthorne, From Africa to Brazil; “The Idea of the Atlantic World,” 353–366. Other books that have followed Hawthorne’s lead in more recent years are Candido, An African Enslaving Port; Misevich, Abolition and the Transformation of Atlantic Commerce; Anderson, Abolition in Sierra Leone; Anderson and Lovejoy, eds., Liberated Africans; Domingues da Silva, The Atlantic Slave Trade.
30 Mamigonian, Africanos livres.
31 Castillo, Entre a oralidade e a escrita; Borucki, From Shipmates to Soldiers; Nicolau Parés, O rei, o pai, e a morte; Lovejoy, Prieto.
32 Sparks, The Two Princes of Calabar; Adderley,“New Negroes from Africa”; Landers, Atlantic Creoles; Scott and Hébrard, Freedom Papers; Falola, The African Diaspora; Reis, Gómes, and de Carvalho, The Story of Rufino.
33 Among these pioneering microhistorical studies see Putnam, “To Study the Fragments/Whole,” 615–630; Ferreira, “Atlantic Microhistories,” 99–128; Scott, “Microhistory set in Motion,” 84–111.
34 Scully and Paton, eds., Gender and Slave Emancipation in the Atlantic World; Candlin and Pybus, eds., Enterprising Women; Cowling, Conceiving Freedom; Paugh, The Politics of Reproduction; Newman, A Dark Inheritance; Walker, Jamaica Ladies; Oliveira, Slave Trade and Abolition.
35 Games, “Atlantic History and Interdisciplinary Approaches,” 189.
36 Pearson, Distant Freedom; Singleton, Slavery behind the Wall; Kelly and Fall, “Employing archaeology,” 317–335.
37 See, for example, Viegas, Cais do Valongo.
38 Webster, “Slave Ships and Maritime Archaeology,” 6–19. A number of archaeological studies currently underway in Cuba, the United States, Mexico and South Africa have not yet produced academic papers, being at various stages of development.
39 Blum, “Introduction: oceanic studies,” 151–155; Armitage, Bashford, and Sivasundaram, eds., Oceanic Histories; Buchet and Le Bouëdec, eds., The Sea in History; Abulafia, The Boundless Sea.
40 Dawson, Undercurrents of Power.
41 Burnard, The Atlantic in World History; Kupperman, The Atlantic in World History; Cañizares-Esguerra and Seeman, eds., The Atlantic in Global History.
42 Linebaugh and Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra; Goetz, The Baptism of Early Virginia; Altman and Wheat, The Spanish Caribbean & the Atlantic World; Dodds-Pennock, “Aztecs Abroad?,” 787–814; Eltis, Wheat and Borucki, eds., From the Galleons to the Highlands; Staller, Converging on Cannibals; Coclanis, ed., The Atlantic Economy; Kelleher, The Alliance of Pirates; Metcalf, Mapping an Atlantic World.
43 Rupert, Creolization and Contraband; Morgan and Rushton, Banishment in the Early Atlantic World; Pestana, Protestant Empire; Gerbner, Christian Slavery; Villepastour and Peel, eds., The Yoruba God of Drumming; Rugemer, Slave Law and the Politics of Resistance; Heinsen, Mutiny in the Danish Atlantic World; Bennett, African Kings and Black Slaves; Willard, Engendering Islands.
44 See, for example, Rushford, Bonds of Alliance; Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier; Weaver, The Red Atlantic; Miki, Frontiers of Citizenship; De la Torre, The People of the River.
45 Gabaccia, “A long Atlantic in a wider world.”
46 O’Rourke and Williamson, Globalization and History; Sheller, Consuming the Caribbean; Martinez, The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law; Delné, La Révolution haïtienne; Christopher, Freedom in White and Black; Green, The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade; Ermus, ed., Environmental Disaster in the Gulf South.
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Notes on contributors
Manuel Barcia
Manuel Barcia is Chair of Global History at the University of Leeds. He has published extensively on the history of slavery and the slave trade in the Atlantic World. His most recent book, The Yellow Demon of Fever: Fighting Disease in the Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Slave Trade, was published by Yale University Press in 2020.