Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

New perspectives in the Atlantic

2008; Routledge; Volume: 34; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2008.08.006

1873-541X

Allan Potofsky,

Historical Economic and Social Studies

Abstract This essay is a general introduction to the special number on recent research on Atlantic history. While the topics here presented are diverse, most focusing on the first French Empire, particularly in North America during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the authors share several common themes: (1) In Africa and the Americas, they seek to view the question of the Empire as a series of contested, temporary, and uncertain alliances and collaborations, in which negotiation rather than submission was most often the basis of power relations; (2) In the realm of political economy in theory and practice, the authors refuse pre-established notions of an Atlantic “community” of commodities and merchants functioning within an Atlantic “system.” Instead, they focus on closed networks of merchants functioning within the dynamics of merchant capitalism. (3) The authors seek alternatives to traditional approaches focusing on the nation-state and its institutions. Instead, they examine communities and regions in the Atlantic that include social elites, such as, merchants, the nobility, the gentry, and intellectuals, as well as neglected native peoples and forgotten spaces such as Africa. Keywords: Atlantic historyFrance in AmericaFrench AtlanticAmerindiansPolitical economySlaving networksCommodity circuitsMerchant capitalismPost-colonialism Notes 1 For the original program which varies from this special issue: http://www.univ-paris8.fr/intell-hist/ Funding and organization for this conference were provided by the « Groupe de recherche en histoire intellectuelle » (GRHI). Director: Ann Thomson. UPRES/EA 1569. 2 Allan Potofsky, “The One and the Many: the Two Revolutions Question and the ‘Consumer-Commercial Atlantic, 1789 to the Present’, ed. Manuela Albertone, Antonino De Francesco, Rethinking the Atlantic World. Europe and America in the Age of Democratic Revolutions (Basingstoke and NY, in press). 3 Although this being corrected for the Atlantic as a whole: Alison Games, Adam Rothman, ed. Major Problems in Atlantic History (Boston, 2007). 4 Cécile Vidal, ‘The Reluctance of French Historians to Address Atlantic History’, Southern Quarterly 43 (4, Summer 2006):153–189. One valuable exception: Gilles Havard and Cécile Vidal, Histoire de l’Amérique française (Paris, 2003). 5 Examples include: Evan Haefeli and Kevin Sweeney, Captors and Captives: the 1704 French and Indian raid on Deerfield (Amherst, Mass., 2003). James Pritchard, In Search of Empire: the French in the Americas, 1670–1730 (Cambridge, 2004). Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787–1804 (Chapel Hill, 2004). Idem, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 2004). 6 ‘AHR Forum Entangled Empires in the Atlantic World’, The American Historical Review 112, no. 3 (June 2007), 710–99. 7 Havard, Vidal, Histoire de l’Amérique française, 19. 8 Gary Nash, Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early North America (Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1999), 64–70; 200–5. 9 A few examples: Itinerario: European Journal of Overseas History, ‘Round table conference: the Nature of Atlantic History’, 23 (1999), 48–173. Dix-Huitième Siècle, n° 33.1 (2001), L’Atlantique, Marcel Dorigny, ed. Horst Pietschmann, ed., Atlantic History: History of the Atlantic System, 1580–1830 (Göttingen, 2002). Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History. Concept and Contours (Cambridge & London, Harvard University Press, 2005). Alison Games, ‘Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities’. American Historical Review 111.3 (2006), 741–57. 10 Bernard Bailyn, ‘The Idea of Atlantic History’, Itinerario, 20, 1, 1996. P.C. Emmer, Introduction, in Idem., O. Pétré-Grenouilleau, J.V. Roitman, A Deus Ex Machina Revisited: Atlantic Colonial Trade And European Economic Development (Leiden, 2006). Also, P.C. Emmer, ‘European Expansion and Migration; the European Colonial Past and Intercontinental Migration, An Overview’, Itinerario vol. 14/1 (1990), 11–24. David Hancock, ‘The British Atlantic World Co-Ordination, Complexity, and the Emergence of an Atlantic Market Economy, 1615–1815’, Itinerario, 23:2 (1999), 107–126, 108. 11 T. Burnard, ‘Empire matters? The historiography of imperialism in early America, 1492–1830’, History of European Ideas 33 (2007), 87–107: 91. 12 Durand Echeverria, Mirage in the West. A History of the French Image of American Society to 1815 (Princeton, 1957). Michèle Duchet, Anthropologie et histoire au siècle des Lumières 2. ed. (Paris, 1995). 13 David Armitage, ‘Three Concepts of Atlantic History’, ed. Idem., Michael J. Braddick, The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800 (London, 2002), 11–27:16. 14 David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (New York, 2000). 15 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic. Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, Mass., 1993). Peter Linabaugh, Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Cambridge, Mass., 2000). 16 Gilroy, 2. 17 The fellowship description: “Black Atlantic Studies builds on important interdisciplinary research on Africa's impact in Europe and the Americas and signals an emerging paradigm shift in African Diaspora studies. Inspired, but by no means defined, by Paul Gilroy's innovative work in black cultural studies, the shift can be described as one from ‘roots’ to ‘routes’, recasting Africa from a ‘baseline’ to a process, predicated on ethnic mixing and hybrid forms from the very beginning of the triangle trade”. http://programs.ssrc.org/dpdf/blackatlantic/index.html. 18 David Eltis, Philip D. Morgan, David Richardson, ‘Agency and Diaspora in Atlantic History: Reassessing the African Contribution to Rice Cultivation in the Americas’, American Historical Review 112, no. 5 (December 2007), 1329–58. 19 Alison Games, ‘Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities’, American Historical Review 111.3 (2006): 741–57. 20 Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society (London: Europa. Publication Limited, 1982). Roy Porter, John Brewer, ed., Consumption and the World of Goods (New York & London, Routledge, 1993). Daniel Roche, l’Histoire des choses banales (Paris: Fayard, 1997). 21 See, in particular, Mary Quarterly Forum on postcolonial theory and history, especially, Jack P. Greene, ‘Colonial History and National History: Reflections on a Continuing Problem’, William and Mary Quarterly 64.2 (April 2007), 251–4. 22 Michael Warner, ‘What's Colonial about Colonial America?’, in Possible Pasts. Becoming Colonial in Early America, ed. Robert Blair St. George (Ithica, NY), 49–70: 61–62. 23 Jack P. Greene, ‘Elaborations’, The William and Mary Quarterly 64.2 (2007).