Atlantic History: Web Resources

Work in Progress

Instead of a European discovery of a new world, we might better consider it as a sudden and harsh encounter between two old worlds that transformed both and integrated them into a single New World.
D. W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History (1988)

Atlantic history concerns four continents--Europe, Africa, North America, and South America--and the islands between from the fifteenth century to the end slavery in the Americas in the nineteenth century. Its principal theme concerns the movement of peoples, flora and fauna, and ideas. The Atlantic world shaped the foundations of the modern world.

National histories have proven inadequate for understanding such transnational phenomena as slavery, colonialism, disease, the economic expansion of Europe, and environmental transformation.

Oxford Bibiographies asserts the field is "determinedly polycentric rather than monocentric." That is, Europeans are not actors to whom colonized peoples react. Rather, the Atlantic World was one in which diverse peoples interacted in complex and ever-changing ways.

This post lists websites that have value to students and faculty in college courses in Atlantic History (a course that I will teach for the first time in fall 2014). It will be updated. Suggestions are particularly welcome.

General Sites

"Atlantic History," Oxford Bibliographies, http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/obo/page/atlantic-history.

H-Atlantic Discussion Group, http://www.h-net.org/~atlantic/index.html.

International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, 1500-1825, Harvard University, http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~atlantic/.

European Exploration

The European Voyages of Exploration, University of Calgary, http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/eurvoya/index.html.

1492: An Ongoing Voyage, Library of Congress, http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/1492.exhibit/Intro.html.

Columbian Exchange

The Columbian Exchange, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/american-indians/essays/columbian-exchange.

Slavery

The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the University of Virginia, http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/index.php.

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade database, Emory University et al., http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/index.faces.

The African Slave Trade and the Middle Passage (part of Africans in America), PBS, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1narr4.html.

The Abolition Project, East of England Broadband Network, http://abolition.e2bn.org/index.php.

African History

African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies, University of Maryland, Eastern Shore, http://www.umes.edu/ajcjs/default.aspx?id=148.

"I Speak of Africa," King's College, London. Online Exhibit, http://www.kingscollections.org/exhibitions/specialcollections/i-speak-of-africa/.

Kingdom of Ghana, African Studies Center, Boston University, http://www.bu.edu/africa/outreach/resources/k_o_ghana/.

The Ouidah Museum of History, Department of Cultural Patrimony, Benin, http://www.museeouidah.org/accueil.htm

Timbuktu: World Heritage Site, National Geographic, http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/world-heritage/timbuktu/.

European History

Internet Modern History Sourcebook, Fordham University, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook.asp.

British History Online, Institute of Historical Research and History of Parliament Trust, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/Default.aspx.

North America

American Memory, Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/browse/.

The Plymouth Colony Archive Project, http://www.histarch.illinois.edu/plymouth/index.html.

Latin America and Caribbean

Digital Library of the Caribbean, Florida International University, http://www.dloc.com/ufdc/.

Piracy

Piracy Trials, Library of Congress Law Library, http://www.loc.gov/law/help/piracy/piracy_trials.php.

"Sir Francis Drake: A Pictoral Biography by Hans P. Kraus," Rare Book & Special Collections Reading Room, Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/catalog/drake/drake-home.html.

Products

Sugar in the Atlantic World, University of Michigan, http://www.clements.umich.edu/exhibits/online/sugarexhibit/exhibits-caseonlinesugar.php.