The Atlantic Ocean and India
- LAST REVIEWED: 26 August 2013
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 August 2013
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0215
- LAST REVIEWED: 26 August 2013
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 August 2013
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0215
Introduction
Growing interest in world, global, and what Subrahmanyam 2007 (cited under Portuguese) calls “connected histories” have increasingly led historians to query the permeable and imprecise boundaries of the Atlantic, and to consider its relationship with the rest of the world. As European ships, goods, people, and ideas were increasingly diffused around the world, jurisdictional boundaries failed to hew neatly to arbitrary divisions between the seas and oceans, while itinerants, merchants, and pirates alike similarly defined their own economic, political, and social worlds in the space between the Eastern and Western hemispheres. Though there is a long tradition of historiography that has understood the way Atlantic and Indian empires have comingled in the metropolitan markets of Europe, historians have also come to more direct connections between the Atlantic and India along the “webs” of empire (see Games 2008, cited under British: Imperial and Global Connections), from the earliest European efforts to find various maritime routes to Asia via the Atlantic through the diffusion of Spanish American silver in South Asian markets to the late 18th-century dumping of English East India Company tea into Boston Harbor. For some, the recognition of the interfluvial nature of the oceans has increasingly become the framework for a methodological critique of Atlantic history itself; for others, it has opened up a wealth of new subjects and possibilities for enhancing our understanding of the nature of the early modern Atlantic world. In this spirit, and given the somewhat diffuse nature of this particular subject, the emphasis in this bibliography is on a sampling of different perspectives and approaches that scholars have used to pursue the historical or historiographical relationships between the Atlantic world and South Asia, directly and often self-consciously, in whole or in part. It is also delimited quite specifically to the early modern Atlantic and India, though at times it inevitably hints at work on the Indian Ocean writ large as well as the great interest, particularly in economic history, in Atlantic empires and East Asia. As such, the list below is intended simply to suggest a variety of overlapping points of entry for scholars who are interested in exploring the various consequences for Atlantic history, when considering comparisons, connections, and ramifications of the worlds beyond its borders, and specifically with India.
Methodological Overviews
As no coherent field of study of “The Atlantic world and India” exists as such, some of the strongest and most comprehensive treatments of that subject have come in the form of conceptual and programmatic proposals. Canny 2003; Coclanis 2002; Games, et al. 2006; and Benton 2009 represent the ways in which these connections have been raised to varying degrees as a cautionary critique of the field of Atlantic history, often from the vantage of global or world history, while still (for some more than others) reinforcing the value of the Atlantic as a zone of study. Though brief in its proposal, Lawson 1986 suggests ways in which the concept of “Greater Britain” (articulated in Seeley 1883), which has formed one historiographical foundation of Atlantic historiography, could be extended to India, especially with regard to 18th-century British Parliamentary politics. Zagarri 2011 offers an historiographical review of recent efforts to connect early US history to India, while also suggesting fruitful avenues for future study. Lewis 1999 approaches the problem from a quite different perspective, showing in striking ways how the divisions among the seas and oceans are a consequence of modern conceptions of geographical space, rather than any reflection of the natural, human, or institutional histories that take place upon and between them. For further meditations on the subject, one could also see the various introductions and selected methodological essays found elsewhere in this bibliography, especially the introductions to Armitage and Subrahmanyam 2010 and Bowen, et al. 2012 (both cited under Collaborations), as well as Bowen’s article “Britain in the Indian Ocean Region and Beyond,” in Bowen, et al. 2012 (cited under Collaborations).
Benton, Lauren. “The British Atlantic in Global Context.” In The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800. 2d ed. Edited by David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick, 271–289. Basingstoke, UK, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
An addition to the second edition of this volume, this essay seeks to debunk many “common generalizations” about the divisions between early modern Atlantic enterprises and those elsewhere, especially in the Indian Ocean. Provides a brisk overview both of metropolitan connections—for example, investors and colonial promoters involved in various enterprises—as well as the global economic, political, and intellectual forces and processes that shaped both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds.
Canny, Nicholas. “Asia, the Atlantic and the Subjects of the British Monarchy.” In A Companion to Stuart Britain. Edited by Barry Coward, 45–66. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.
A survey of 17th-century overseas commerce and colonization in both British and global perspective. As in a number of Canny’s various other articles and essays on this issue (as in Greene and Morgan 2009, cited under Collaborations), makes a case for situating the overseas British experience in a global context, while still arguing for the value and coherence of Atlantic history.
Coclanis, Peter A. “Drang Nach Osten: Bernard Bailyn, the World-Island, and the Idea of Atlantic History.” Journal of World History 13.1 (2002): 169–182.
A provocative critique of Atlantic history focused particularly, though not exclusively, on Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn’s formulation of the field. Though it does not address South Asia specifically, the essay cites a variety of connections between the Atlantic and both territorial and maritime Eurasia in its call for “greater scholarly cosmopolitanism.” See also Coclanis’s essays in Games, et al. 2006 and Greene and Morgan 2009 (the latter cited under Collaborations).
Games, Alison, Paul Mapp, Philip J. Stern, and Peter Coclanis. “Forum: Beyond the Atlantic.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 63.4 (2006): 675–742.
Forum in the leading journal of colonial American history that explores a variety of ways in which Atlantic history might be opened up to larger, continental, oceanic, and global perspectives.
Lawson, Philip. “The Missing Link: The Imperial Dimension in Understanding Hanoverian Britain.” Historical Journal 29.3 (1986): 747–751.
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X00019014
A brief but strong call-to-arms for recognizing the equal if not greater relevance of India issues in defining British Parliamentary politics in the later 18th century, when compared with Atlantic concerns and specifically the American Revolution. See also Lawson 1997 (cited under British: A Swing to the East?).
Lewis, Martin W. “Dividing the Ocean Sea.” Geographical Review 89.2 (1999): 188–214.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1931-0846.1999.tb00213.x
Historicizes the divisions among the oceans, identifying the four-ocean model as a product of 19th- and 20th-century geography and politics. Calls for new connections and perspectives on the relationship among the oceans by rethinking our received and perceived notions of the compartmentalization of oceanic space. Part of a special issue of the Geographical Review on “Oceans Connect,” many of the other essays in which are also germane to the subject of this bibliography.
Seeley, J. R. The Expansion of England: Two Courses of Lectures. London: Macmillan, 1883.
Though Seeley himself saw the Atlantic and Indian imperial experiences as fundamentally distinct, his now famous call-to-arms that “the history of England” was to be found “not in England but in America and Asia” can serve as a starting point for investigating the connections between the two. Recovery of Seeley’s late-19th-century concept of “Greater Britain” has served for many as a theoretical foundation for exploring connections between empire and English history.
Zagarri, Rosemarie. “The Significance of the ‘Global Turn’ for the Early American Republic: Globalization in the Age of Nation-Building.” Journal of the Early Republic 31.1 (2011): 1–37.
Looks at recent developments in the “Global Turn” in the field of early American history after the Revolution. Highlights three modes of connecting British India with the early Republic: movement of people, ideas, and things; missionary activity; and a comparative history of how early-19th-century British and American regimes treated the problem of race.
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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