Markets in the Atlantic World
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 November 2022
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 March 2018
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0288
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 November 2022
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 March 2018
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0288
Introduction
The centuries between 1500 and 1800, during which the Atlantic world reached its apogee as a phenomenon, coincided with a period of intensive economic change in the Western world. This was no accident, as the creation of this world occurred along with the quickening pace of market exchange. As networks of trade expanded to bridge greater distances, embrace more people, and require greater capital, the idea of the market also became more capacious. By the early 19th century, the term “market” had different meanings to different people. For enslaved Africans, Atlantic markets were characterized by the forces that brought about their kidnapping in Africa, their desperate voyage across the ocean, and a lifetime of forced labor. However, once in their new world, Africans encountered local markets that were more familiar to them where food and goods were exchanged. Marketplaces continued as important markets for all sorts of people, as did other modes of day-to-day buying and selling. Supplying these outlets were merchants who often understood the market in a much more abstract sense. In both America and Europe, merchant communities, usually concentrated in cities, knew the market as a physical space but also fostered the idea of “the market” as the abstract force it is known as in contemporary society. As economic networks became more elaborate, the two ideas of the market increasingly became connected in both the activities and the minds of those involved. This article describes the multiple guises assumed by “markets” across the Atlantic world. In addition to detailing the process of change that transformed markets in this era, it discusses the way in which these shifts affected a wide variety of Atlantic people. It also assesses the many Atlantic societies that contributed to the changing character of markets. Guides to general works, relevant periodicals, and primary sources are followed by a discussion of books and articles that address Atlantic markets on the most theoretical, intellectual level. Various scales of market experience are also covered, from those at the overseas level to those at the local level. The article concludes with a survey of the most lively areas of recent historical research into Atlantic markets, consumer markets, and the operation of gender and race in the marketplace.
General Overviews
Among the monographs and collections of essays cited in this article are books that provide general overviews, as well as more specialist studies. However, they all share the ambition of providing broad explorations of various aspects of markets around the Atlantic world as they developed after 1500. As such, these sources provide a useful background for understanding the place of markets and market economies in the Atlantic. McCusker and Menard 1985 is perhaps the most statistical and encyclopedic, providing a comprehensive overview of population and economic growth in Britain’s North American colonies. Matson 2006 can be considered as a sequel to that earlier volume, discussing new aspects of the early American economy and offering new theoretical frameworks for its examination. Wrightson 2000, Ogilvie 2011, Braudel 1979, and Tomlins 2010 offer accomplished and sweeping syntheses of important facets of market function and evolution in the Atlantic world and its constituent parts. Bulmer-Thomas, et al. 2006 covers the principal developments in Spanish and Portuguese America. Thornton 1998 aims to set the emergence of Atlantic markets in the context of events in Africa, instead of focusing solely on the Americas.
Braudel, Fernand. Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Centuries. Vol. 2, The Wheels of Commerce. Translated by Siân Reynolds. London: Fontana, 1979.
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Sweeping, magisterial study of the changing character of markets of all types, in Europe and beyond, across the early modern period. Seeks the linkages between local and international markets, and explores the increasingly global connections that brought traders and their goods together.
Bulmer-Thomas, Victor, John Coatsworth, and Roberto Cortés-Conde, eds. The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America. Vol. 1, The Colonial Era and the Short Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
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A comprehensive survey of the Iberian Atlantic economy into the 19th century, tackling both macro- and microeconomic issues and incorporating market connections with Africa and North America.
Matson, Cathy, ed. The Economy of Early America: Historical Perspectives and New Directions. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006.
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Incorporating some essays that ponder the state of economic history in the Atlantic world and others that focus on early American case studies, this volume is a wide-ranging survey of the market economy in the British Atlantic world in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
McCusker, John J., and Russell R. Menard. The Economy of British America, 1607–1789. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.
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Although much scholarship about markets has appeared since this book was published, this volume remains an invaluable resource for historians who want to understand the macroeconomic narrative of early British America and the Atlantic world. It has many useful charts and tables, as well as analysis of the regional economies.
Ogilvie, Sheilagh. Institutions and European Trade: Merchants and Guilds, 1000–1800. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511974410Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Ogilvie’s new institutional history provides a broad survey of the European economy and the political economic infrastructures that shaped it. Because the author concentrates on merchants, the book incorporates much useful analysis of the main actors in the creation of the Atlantic world’s markets.
Thornton, John. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World. 2d ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
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A general overview of the processes by which Africa became part of the Atlantic economic system. Concentrates principally on the economic systems and processes that resulted in the slave trade, weighing the roles of Europeans and Africans in their creation.
Tomlins, Christopher. Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580–1865. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511778575Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
This is a highly complex book, but one of its major contributions is a longue durée look at labor markets in the British Atlantic world. Tomlins traces the legal and institutional structures of labor systems as they were remade in the British colonies, arguing for the ultimate elusiveness of any kind of free labor.
Wrightson, Keith. Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain, 1470–1750. London: Penguin, 2000.
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A survey of economic life in England centered mostly in the 16th and 17th centuries that provides an excellent foundation for understanding the growth of market economies in Europe. Essential reading for historians who want to grasp the degree to which Atlantic expansion affected the market.
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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
- 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
- Brazil
- Brazil and Africa
- 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
- 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 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, 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
- 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
- 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
- Markets in the Atlantic World
- Maroons and Marronage
- Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World
- 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
- 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
- Piracy
- Plantations in the Atlantic World
- Plants
- 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
- 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, 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 Atlantic Creole A...
- South Carolina
- Sovereignty and the Law
- Spain, Early Modern
- Spanish America After Independence, 1825-1900
- Spanish American Port Cities
- Spanish Colonization to 1650
- Subjecthood in the Atlantic World
- Sugar in the Atlantic World
- Technology, Inventing, and Patenting
- Textiles in the Atlantic World
- Texts, Printing, and the Book
- The American West
- The French Lesser Antilles
- The Fur Trade
- Theater
- Time(scapes) in the Atlantic World
- Tobacco
- Toleration in the Atlantic World
- Transatlantic Political Economy
- 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
- Wine
- Witchcraft in the Atlantic World
- Women and the Law
- Women Prophets