Networks for Migrations and Mobility
- LAST REVIEWED: 30 September 2013
- LAST MODIFIED: 30 September 2013
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0191
- LAST REVIEWED: 30 September 2013
- LAST MODIFIED: 30 September 2013
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0191
Introduction
Two themes are at the center of this bibliography: networks and mobility. Together they constitute the thread connecting the diverse selections cited in this article. A “network” is defined as an interconnected system that facilitates mobility and is composed of nodes, hubs, and linkages. Nodes are a network’s most basic members; they can be human beings, commodities, ideas, etc. Linkages are the relationships that connect the nodes. A concentration of nodes and linkages constitutes a hub. This bibliography considers an extensive number of networks that facilitated the movement of a wide range of members. Chronologically, the networks covered here were built and operated across the early modern and modern periods, although the 18th century emerges as a chronological focal point. Geographically, these networks operated across the Atlantic basin, not only within the “national Atlantics” of the Iberian, British, French, and Dutch zones but also at the intersections of these worlds. As will become evident, networks fostered transnational movements in ways that were difficult, if not impossible, for the nation-states and empires that comprised the Atlantic world. “Mobility” is also broadly defined, referring to both the movement of members across space and to social mobility. The networks examined here range in their levels of formality. Some were created by discrete, identifiable institutions, such as a church or a fraternity; others were less formal but nonetheless highly effective in facilitating mobility. The following sections include key works that examine imperial, communication, commercial, diasporic, migratory, fraternal, religious, and scientific networks. Taken together, these networks formed the matrix of connections and movements that brought the Atlantic world into being and made it a thriving zone of exchange and interchange for more than four centuries. The networks examined here shared many functional similarities—the importance of letter writing in lubricating network mechanisms, the role of self-organization in a network’s ability to expand and adapt, and the limitations on network functionality imposed by both internal and external forces. Also discussed in the following sections are the historical manifestations of Atlantic networks and the concept’s utility as a methodological and theoretical model. Many of the scholars cited in this article have used networks to pursue two challenging objectives: first, determining and examining the complex ways in which the local and the global intersect, and, second, striking an appropriate balance between interpretations that emphasize structural forces and those that focus on human agency.
General Overviews
Rarely does one come across a work in Atlantic history (whether or not it is explicitly conceptualized as an Atlantic project) that does not deploy the term “network.” Indeed, the mobility of people, goods, capital, ideas, and ideologies around and through the Atlantic basin and the networks that facilitated such movements are fundamental to the concept of Atlantic history itself. One of the first works to put forth the notion of a networked Atlantic is Gilroy 1993. More recently, several historians, including Bailyn 2005, Games 2006, and Bailyn and Denault 2009 identify networks as a major unifying theme of Atlantic history. Other historians explore the historiographical significance of Atlantic networks. Bailyn 2005 traces the origins of Atlantic history, as a practice, to the economic, political, and academic networks of the post–World War II world, whereas Armitage and Braddick 2009 describes Atlantic networks as providing a meaningful context for the practice of transnational, comparative history. Still others promote the methodological benefits of a networks-based approach and social network analysis. Cooper 2001 presents a thoughtful reflection on the relationship among networks, structures, and discourses. Hancock 2007 and Perl-Rosenthal and Haefeli 2012 offer sophisticated arguments in favor of systematically deploying the concept of networks to probe Atlantic history.
Armitage, David, and Michael J. Braddick, eds. The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800. 2d ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Seminal collection of essays in Atlantic history. Networks are central to the editors’ conceptualization of the Atlantic world and the practice of Atlantic history. Networks “provide a meaningful context for comparative history: it is not an arbitrary creation of historical scholarship but corresponds to real networks of social, political, and economic connection in the past” (p. 3).
Bailyn, Bernard. Atlantic History: Concept and Contours. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
Part 1 traces how historians in the post–World War II period began uncovering the economic and political networks of the Atlantic region and, in the process, gave shape to the nascent practice of Atlantic history. Part 2 presents the major themes in the history of the Atlantic world, using networks in the discussion of commerce, religious communities (e.g., the “elaborate transdynastic and transterritorial” networks of Protestants [p. 100]), and creoles.
Bailyn, Bernard, and Patricia L. Denault, eds. Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500–1800. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.
Edited collection of essays on a broad range of topics including the impact of the ecology on the slave trade, interimperial smuggling, the Atlantic lives of individuals, and the circulation of ideas. Networks figure centrally in chapters by David J. Hancock (chapter 3), J. Gabriel Martínez-Serna (chapter 5), Rosalind J. Beiler (chapter 6), and Mark A. Peterson (chapter 10), as well as in the Introduction, in which Bailyn reflects on the major themes of Atlantic history, including commercial networks, religious networks, and networks of scientific exchange.
Cooper, Frederick. “Networks, Moral Discourse, and History.” In Intervention and Transnationalism in Africa: Global-Local Networks of Power. Edited by Thomas M. Callaghy, Ronald Kassimir, and Robert Latham, 23–46. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511558788.003
Exploration of the relationship among structures, networks, and discourses to determine how attitudes toward slavery, colonialism, and apartheid changed over time. Includes a helpful reflection on networks and a definition of networks as “organizations which stress voluntary and reciprocal patterns of communication and exchange, which if not necessarily ‘horizontal’ are not fully controlled by vertical systems of authority” (p. 24).
Games, Alison. “Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities.” American Historical Review 111.3 (2006): 741–757.
Wide-ranging historiographical assessment. After reviewing the challenges and shortcomings of Atlantic history, Games identifies the study of mobility (of people, commodities, ideas, etc.) as the field’s primary opportunity. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
Although not fully theorized, the idea of the network features prominently in Gilroy’s conceptualization of the Black Atlantic. Explores how networks of people and news connected blacks throughout the Atlantic basin. Cultural artifacts, such as Martin R. Delany’s novel Blake (Boston: Beacon, 1970), also “locate the Black Atlantic world in a webbed network, between the local and the global” (p. 29).
Hancock, David. “Combining Success and Failure: Scottish Networks in the Atlantic Wine Trade.” In Irish and Scottish Mercantile Networks in Europe and Overseas in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Edited by David Dickson, Jan Parmentier, and Jane H. Ohlmeyer, 5–37. Ghent, Belgium: Academia, 2007.
One of the few historical studies that deploys the concept of the network in a reflective and critical way (includes a useful section on the etymology of “network” and contemporary understandings of “correspondent” and “connection”). Notable for its attention to the failures as well as successes of networks in order to arrive at a richer understanding of early modern markets.
Perl-Rosenthal, Nathan, and Evan Haefeli. “Transnational Connections: Special Issue Introduction.” In Special Issue: Anglo-Dutch Revolutions. Edited by Nathan Perl-Rosenthal and Evan Haefeli. Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 10.2 (Spring 2012): 227–238.
Sophisticated deployment of networks as “a conceptual ground and unifying thread for writing transnational history” (p. 229). Analyzes various Atlantic networks in terms of their shape (large or small; dense or thin), the nature of their nodes, the quality of their linkages, and the effect of “noise” (friction that impeded the flow of nodes across linkages). Available online by subscription.
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Article
- Abolition of Slavery
- Abolitionism and Africa
- Africa and the Atlantic World
- African American Religions
- African Religion and Culture
- African Retailers and Small Artisans in the Atlantic World
- Age of Atlantic Revolutions, The
- Alexander von Humboldt and Transatlantic Studies
- America, Pre-Contact
- American Revolution, The
- Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Popery
- Argentina
- Army, British
- Arsenals
- Art and Artists
- Asia and the Americas and the Iberian Empires
- Atlantic Biographies
- Atlantic Creoles
- Atlantic History and Hemispheric History
- Atlantic Migration
- Atlantic New Orleans: 18th and 19th Centuries
- Atlantic Trade and the British Economy
- Atlantic Trade and the European Economy
- Bacon's Rebellion
- Baltic Sea
- Baptists
- Barbados in the Atlantic World
- Barbary States
- Benguela
- Berbice in the Atlantic World
- Black Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Bolívar, Simón
- Borderlands
- Bourbon Reforms in the Spanish Atlantic, The
- Brazil
- Brazil and Africa
- Brazilian Independence
- Britain and Empire, 1685-1730
- British Atlantic Architectures
- British Atlantic World
- Buenos Aires in the Atlantic World
- Cabato, Giovanni (John Cabot)
- Cannibalism
- Capitalism
- Captain John Smith
- Captivity
- Captivity in Africa
- Captivity in North America
- Caribbean, The
- Cartier, Jacques
- Castas
- Catholicism
- Cattle in the Atlantic World
- Central American Independence
- Central Europe and the Atlantic World
- Charleston
- Chartered Companies, British and Dutch
- Cherokee
- Childhood
- Chinese Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World
- Chocolate
- Church and Slavery
- Cities and Urbanization in Portuguese America
- Citizenship in the Atlantic World
- Class and Social Structure
- Climate
- Clothing
- Coastal/Coastwide Trade
- Cod in the Atlantic World
- Coffee
- Colonial Governance in Spanish America
- Colonial Governance in the Atlantic World
- Colonialism and Postcolonialism
- Colonization, Ideologies of
- Colonization of English America
- Communications in the Atlantic World
- Comparative Indigenous History of the Americas
- Confraternities
- Constitutions
- Continental America
- Cook, Captain James
- Cortes of Cádiz
- Cosmopolitanism
- Cotton
- Credit and Debt
- Creek Indians in the Atlantic World, The
- Creolization
- Criminal Transportation in the Atlantic World
- Crowds in the Atlantic World
- Cuba
- Currency
- Death in the Atlantic World
- Demography of the Atlantic World
- Diaspora, Jewish
- Diaspora, The Acadian
- Disease in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Production and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Slave Trades in the Americas
- Dreams and Dreaming
- Dutch Atlantic World
- Dutch Brazil
- Dutch Caribbean and Guianas, The
- Early Modern Amazonia
- Early Modern France
- Economy and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Economy of British America, The
- Edwards, Jonathan
- Elites
- Emancipation
- Emotions
- Empire and State Formation
- Enlightenment, The
- Environment and the Natural World
- Ethnicity
- Europe and Africa
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Northern
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Western
- European Enslavement of Indigenous People in the Americas
- European, Javanese and African and Indentured Servitude in...
- Evangelicalism and Conversion
- Female Slave Owners
- Feminism
- First Contact and Early Colonization of Brazil
- Fiscality
- Fiscal-Military State
- Food
- Forts, Fortresses, and Fortifications
- Founding Myths of the Americas
- France and Empire
- France and its Empire in the Indian Ocean
- France and the British Isles from 1640 to 1789
- Free People of Color
- Free Ports in the Atlantic World
- French Army and the Atlantic World, The
- French Atlantic World
- French Emancipation
- French Revolution, The
- Gardens
- Gender in Iberian America
- Gender in North America
- Gender in the Atlantic World
- Gender in the Caribbean
- George Montagu Dunk, Second Earl of Halifax
- Georgia in the Atlantic World
- German Influences in America
- Germans in the Atlantic World
- Giovanni da Verrazzano, Explorer
- Glasgow
- Glorious Revolution
- Godparents and Godparenting
- Great Awakening
- Green Atlantic: the Irish in the Atlantic World
- Guianas, The
- Haitian Revolution, The
- Hanoverian Britain
- Havana in the Atlantic World
- Hinterlands of the Atlantic World
- Histories and Historiographies of the Atlantic World
- Honor
- Huguenots
- Hunger and Food Shortages
- Iberian Atlantic World, 1600-1800
- Iberian Empires, 1600-1800
- Iberian Inquisitions
- Idea of Atlantic History, The
- Impact of the French Revolution on the Caribbean, The
- Indentured Servitude
- Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World, Indian
- India, The Atlantic Ocean and
- Indigenous Knowledge
- Indigo in the Atlantic World
- Insurance
- Internal Slave Migrations in the Americas
- Interracial Marriage in the Atlantic World
- Ireland and the Atlantic World
- Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)
- Islam and the Atlantic World
- Itinerant Traders, Peddlers, and Hawkers
- Jamaica in the Atlantic World
- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jesuits
- Jews and Blacks
- Labor Systems
- Land and Propert in the Atlantic World
- Language, State, and Empire
- Languages, Caribbean Creole
- Latin American Independence
- Law and Slavery
- Legal Culture
- Leisure in the British Atlantic World
- Letters and Letter Writing
- Lima
- Literature and Culture
- Literature of the British Caribbean
- Literature, Slavery and Colonization
- Liverpool in The Atlantic World 1500-1833
- Louverture, Toussaint
- Loyalism
- Lutherans
- Mahogany
- Manumission
- Maps in the Atlantic World
- Maritime Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Maritime Literature
- Markets in the Atlantic World
- Maroons and Marronage
- Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World
- Maryland
- Material Culture in the Atlantic World
- Material Culture of Slavery in the British Atlantic
- Medicine in the Atlantic World
- Mennonites
- Mental Disorder in the Atlantic World
- Mercantilism
- Merchants in the Atlantic World
- Merchants' Networks
- Mestizos
- Mexico
- Migrations and Diasporas
- Minas Gerais
- Miners
- Mining, Gold, and Silver
- Missionaries
- Missionaries, Native American
- Money and Banking in the Atlantic Economy
- Monroe, James
- Moravians
- Morris, Gouverneur
- Music and Music Making
- Napoléon Bonaparte and the Atlantic World
- Nation and Empire in Northern Atlantic History
- Nation, Nationhood, and Nationalism
- Native American Histories in North America
- Native American Networks
- Native American Religions
- Native Americans and Africans
- Native Americans and the American Revolution
- Native Americans and the Atlantic World
- Native Americans in Cities
- Native Americans in Europe
- Native North American Women
- Native Peoples of Brazil
- Natural History
- Networks for Migrations and Mobility
- Networks of Science and Scientists
- New England in the Atlantic World
- New France and Louisiana
- New York City
- News
- Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World
- Nineteenth-Century France
- Nobility and Gentry in the Early Modern Atlantic World
- North Africa and the Atlantic World
- Northern New Spain
- Novel in the Age of Revolution, The
- Oceanic History
- Oceans
- Pacific, The
- Paine, Thomas
- Papacy and the Atlantic World
- Paris
- People of African Descent in Early Modern Europe
- Peru
- Pets and Domesticated Animals in the Atlantic World
- Philadelphia
- Philanthropy
- Phillis Wheatley
- Piracy
- Plantations in the Atlantic World
- Plants
- Poetry in the British Atlantic
- Political Participation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic...
- Polygamy and Bigamy
- Port Cities, British
- Port Cities, British American
- Port Cities, French
- Port Cities, French American
- Port Cities, Iberian
- Ports, African
- Portugal and Brazile in the Age of Revolutions
- Portugal, Early Modern
- Portuguese Atlantic World
- Potosi
- Poverty in the Early Modern English Atlantic
- Pre-Columbian Transatlantic Voyages
- Pregnancy and Reproduction
- Print Culture in the British Atlantic
- Proprietary Colonies
- Protestantism
- Puritanism
- Quakers
- Quebec and the Atlantic World, 1760–1867
- Quilombos
- Race and Racism
- Race, The Idea of
- Reconstruction, Democracy, and United States Imperialism
- Red Atlantic
- Refugees, Saint-Domingue
- Religion
- Religion and Colonization
- Religion in the British Civil Wars
- Religious Border-Crossing
- Religious Networks
- Representations of Slavery
- Republicanism
- Rice in the Atlantic World
- Rio de Janeiro
- Rum
- Rumor
- Russia and North America
- Sailors
- Saint Domingue
- Saint-Louis, Senegal
- Salvador da Bahia
- Scandinavian Chartered Companies
- Science and Technology (in Literature of the Atlantic Worl...
- Science, History of
- Scotland and the Atlantic World
- Sea Creatures in the Atlantic World
- Second-Hand Trade
- Settlement and Region in British America, 1607-1763
- Seven Years' War, The
- Seville
- Sex and Sexuality in the Atlantic World
- Shakers
- Shakespeare and the Atlantic World
- Ships and Shipping
- Signares
- Silk
- Slave Codes
- Slave Names and Naming in the Anglophone Atlantic
- Slave Owners In The British Atlantic
- Slave Rebellions
- Slave Resistance in the Atlantic World
- Slave Trade and Natural Science, The
- Slave Trade, The Atlantic
- Slavery and Empire
- Slavery and Fear
- Slavery and Gender
- Slavery and the Family
- Slavery, Atlantic
- Slavery, Health, and Medicine
- Slavery in Africa
- Slavery in Brazil
- Slavery in British America
- Slavery in British and American Literature
- Slavery in Danish America
- Slavery in Dutch America and the West Indies
- Slavery in New England
- Slavery in North America, The Growth and Decline of
- Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa
- Slavery in the French Atlantic World
- Slavery, Native American
- Slavery, Public Memory and Heritage of
- Slavery, The Origins of
- Slavery, Urban
- Smuggling
- São Paulo
- Sociability in the British Atlantic
- Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts...
- Soldiers
- South Atlantic
- South Atlantic Creole Archipelagos
- South Carolina
- Sovereignty and the Law
- Spain, Early Modern
- Spanish America After Independence, 1825-1900
- Spanish American Port Cities
- Spanish Atlantic World
- Spanish Colonization to 1650
- Subjecthood in the Atlantic World
- Sugar in the Atlantic World
- Swedish Atlantic World, The
- Technology, Inventing, and Patenting
- Textiles in the Atlantic World
- Texts, Printing, and the Book
- The American West
- The Danish Atlantic World
- The French Lesser Antilles
- The Fur Trade
- The Spanish Caribbean
- Theater
- Time(scapes) in the Atlantic World
- Tobacco
- Toleration in the Atlantic World
- Transatlantic Political Economy
- Travel Writing (in the Atlantic World)
- Tudor and Stuart Britain in the Wider World, 1485-1685
- Universities
- USA and Empire in the 19th Century
- Venezuela and the Atlantic World
- Violence
- Visual Art and Representation
- War and Trade
- War of 1812
- War of the Spanish Succession
- Warfare
- Warfare in Spanish America
- Warfare in 17th-Century North America
- Warfare, Medicine, and Disease in the Atlantic World
- Weavers
- West Indian Economic Decline
- Whitefield, George
- Whiteness in the Atlantic World
- William Blackstone
- William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611)
- William Wilberforce
- Wine
- Witchcraft in the Atlantic World
- Women and the Law
- Women Prophets