Colonial Governance in the Atlantic World
- LAST REVIEWED: 26 June 2019
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 June 2019
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0280
- LAST REVIEWED: 26 June 2019
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 June 2019
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0280
Introduction
From the beginning of the European overseas expansion into the Atlantic in the 15th century onward, Europeans had to figure how to govern the newly conquered lands and peoples across Africa and the Americas. Western European polities transplanted to their Atlantic territories forms of governance already tested within the European context, but institutions of colonial governance were built in fits and starts and constantly adapted to local demands and characteristics. American elites sought and sometimes achieved a relationship with the imperial center that could be similar to the one experienced by European local elites. However, Old World models of government were deeply transformed by distance, by environmental conditions, and, above all, by the variety of peoples that were under European rule. Atlantic governance involved the (often violent) seizure of substantial portions of the American and (in a much lesser scale) African and Asian lands, along with the transfer of people of European descent to settle the conquered lands. Local populations were often forced to labor for their new overlords and were gradually dispossessed of their lands and institutions, while sub-Saharan Africans were compulsorily transported across the Atlantic to work as slaves. As a result of racial prejudice and power relations, they were assigned a subaltern status that deprived them from many civic and political rights, becoming a subaltern majority. This posed new problems that transformed templates brought by European colonizers, such as the patterns of government developed in the Iberian Reconquista and in the English domination of Ireland. All empires dealt with similar problems in the Atlantic: the need to establish its own authority, to defend the settlements, and to produce enough revenue to pay for it all. A high level of flexibility was needed at first because European authorities had little knowledge of Atlantic realities. Afterward, the slowness of communication and the need to obtain local cooperation to achieve any goal, from the conquest itself to defense and taxing local production, required collaboration, not only from colonists of European descent but also from Native Americans, sub-Saharan Africans, and the multiethnic populations that grew throughout the Early Modern era. Colonial governance should not be understood, therefore, as a top-down imposition from Europe to Africa and the Americas, but as a contested struggle between many opposing groups and factions. Recent historiography has been increasingly cognizant of temporal and spatial differences, but there is still need for a deeper engagement between different linguistic traditions. Atlantic expansion was a multinational endeavor, and so should be its study.
General Overviews
There is no account that both covers the whole Atlantic world and brings together all themes that can conceivably be thought of as colonial governance. The book that comes closer to meet these criteria is Paquette 2019, which is valuable both to students and to specialists. Many other syntheses are available for each empire, as well as comparative studies. Canny 1998 and Marshall 1998 can be profitably used in the classroom to study the British imperial endeavor. Bowen, et al. 2012, a far more recent and updated volume, is useful for the same purpose. Elliott 2006 is a major work that weaves together two empires (the Spanish and the British) and contrasts them at every turn. Yun-Casalilla 2018 is a new synthesis that integrates early Iberian experience in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Beyond its many qualities, Lockhart and Schwartz 1983 merits applause for not subsuming the Brazilian experience under the better-known Spanish case. Fragoso, et al. 2013 goes beyond the Portuguese Empire to insert Brazil in a wider Atlantic picture. Cardim, et al. 2012 is a useful introduction with short articles on Iberian Empires, above all for its effort to connect the conquest of the New World with European political and constitutional culture. Other Atlantics—such as sub-Saharan Africa and its inhabitants—have been neglected for a long time, but Havard and Vidal 2014 offers a compelling and complex picture of French North America, while Klooster 2016 (cited under Ruling from Afar) is an excellent starting point to understand the Dutch Atlantic.
Bowen, Huw V., Elizabeth Mancke, and John G. Reid, eds. Britain’s Oceanic Empire: Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds, c. 1550–1850. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Featuring some of the most recent scholarship on the British overseas rule in the Early Modern period, this collective volume examines the imperial endeavors in the Atlantic and in Asia in an interconnected way. This comprehensive book is divided into four main parts (natural conditions, governance, diplomacy and military interactions, commercial relations) and has the additional advantage of covering the period that goes from the mid-16th century to the mid-19th century.
Canny, Nicholas, ed. The Oxford History of the British Empire. Vol. 1, The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Apart from its comprehensive character, another advantage of this collective volume—thoughtfully edited by Nicholas Canny—is the fact that among its contributors are many of the historians responsible for renovating the field of Atlantic history. Featuring a variety of approaches (from political history to cultural analysis, economic history, network analysis of trade, and so on), this particular volume is mostly devoted to the Atlantic, and regards in an interconnected way developments in Europe and across the Americas.
Cardim, Pedro, Tamar Herzog, José Javier Ruíz Ibañez, and Gaetano Sabatini, eds. Polycentric Monarchies: How Did Early Modern Spain and Portugal Achieve and Maintain a Global Hegemony? Brighton, UK: Sussex Academic, 2012.
A collection that gathers Ibero-American, French, and Italian historians that emphasize the relevance of the Iberian empires in the early modern world. Collectively, their main innovation is the conceptualization of the Portuguese and Spanish monarchies as a network that connected various centers that collaborated in the making of empire.
Elliott, John H. Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.
As Elliott is one of the major historians of early modern European politics, colonial governance is one of the main topics of the book. Thanks to Elliott’s deep knowledge of the European political culture, this book demonstrates that the history of metropolitan territories and the trajectory of the overseas lands are intertwined. He focuses, though, much more on the relationship between Crown and colonists than on the subaltern majorities.
Fragoso, João, Thiago Krause, and Roberto Guedes. A América Portuguesa e os Sistemas Atlânticos na Época Moderna: Monarquia Pluricontinental e Antigo Regime. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 2013.
A recent overview of colonial Brazil that puts the Portuguese Empire in an Atlantic perspective, comparing it with the British and Spanish cases and emphasizing connections, similarities, and distinctions.
Havard, Gilles, and Cécile Vidal. Histoire de l’Amérique Française. 4th ed. Paris: Flammarion, 2014.
Originally published in 2003, this work of synthesis offers a full and nuanced portrait of colonial governance that includes metropolitan administration and its American representatives, but also deals extensively with slavery and interethnic relationships.
Lockhart, James, and Stuart Schwartz. Early Latin America: A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Despite being published in the early 1980s, it remains the sole work that gives Portuguese and Spanish colonization the same level of attention. Though more focused on economic and social history, political institutions are also expertly analyzed.
Marshall, Peter J., ed. The Oxford History of the British Empire. Vol. 2, The Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
This collective volume presents a comprehensive overview of the British imperial expansion from the Glorious Revolution to the early 19th century. Although a few contributions are somewhat outdated, the ensemble of the book continues to be effective for instructors.
Paquette, Gabriel. The European Seaborne Empires: From the Thirty Years’ War to the Age of Revolution. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2019.
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctvgc61x6
This new synthesis is a connected and comparative history that both narrates European imperial expansion in the early modern world and analyzes main themes such as colonial governance, political economy, and labor regimes. It is the only overview written by a leading historian that manages to weave together the global history of the Iberian, English, French, and Dutch empires.
Yun-Casalilla, Bartolomé. Iberian World Empires and the Globalization of the World, 1415–1668. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
A new synthesis by one of the foremost scholars of the early Spanish Empire, this book emphasizes the outsized role played by empire (both in Asia and in the Americas) in the making of Early Modern Iberian monarchies. It pays much attention to political economy, thanks to the author’s background as an economic historian.
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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
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- Hanoverian Britain
- Havana in the Atlantic World
- Hinterlands of the Atlantic World
- Histories and Historiographies of the Atlantic World
- Honor
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- 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
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- Insurance
- Internal Slave Migrations in the Americas
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- 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
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- 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