This course considers the early modern Atlantic world, one of the most significant fields of inquiry in European and American studies, covering the period from the European “discovery” of the Americas until the Americas began to achieve political independence at the end of the 1700s. Many of the interactions which spanned the Atlantic were imperial in character, and this course considers the British, French, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese imperial encounters with the Atlantic. However, these encounters were not just imperial, they were also economic, environmental, intellectual, political and literary, encompassing not only transatlantic empire, but also transatlantic commodities (such as sugar and mahogany), transatlantic labor migration (including African slavery and European servitude), transatlantic merchants and consumers, transatlantic political upheaval, and literature.
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