Hinterlands of the Atlantic World
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 March 2018
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 March 2018
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0290
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 March 2018
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 March 2018
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0290
Introduction
Hinterlands are more often than not understood as tributary regions, the backcountry or Umland (“land around”) of a port, town or city, or the periphery of a larger region. However, hinterland—or backcountry as an alternative term—is a relational concept: hinterland (or backcountry) from whose perspective, for whom and whose activities? For quite a few decades, Atlantic history has focused on those world regions, empires, and agents that seemed more obviously than others involved in the “making” of the Atlantic world: the Portuguese, Spanish, British, French, and Dutch (formal and informal) empires, regions on the Atlantic Ocean rim, port cities, trans-Atlantic slavery and migrations at large, or Atlantic revolutions. However, to understand the early modern Atlantic world, it is vital to look beyond places and regions bordering or “forming” the Atlantic: for the last decade or so scholars of early American, African, European, and Atlantic history have therefore started to emphasize how much—from an Atlantic history perspective—hinterlands were vital for the exchange of knowledge, belief systems, goods and people, the making of overseas empires and colonization, Atlantic and/or global markets. At the same time the critique of Atlantic history warns against turning the histories of those peoples and regions not immediately adjoining the Atlantic geopolitically, economically, or culturally less relevant. Atlantic history, not the least through its historical and ideological origins, might—as some scholars of Africa, Europe and the Americas have argued—contributes to just another hierarchy of more and less important or “civilized” cultures and societies: the Atlantic empires and their metropolises would be treated as centers of interest and meaning, all other regions would become peripheries, backcountries, or hinterlands. So far, the critique of Atlantic history, its seeming hierarchies, has been particularly pronounced with regard to the histories of Africa and the Americas, less so with regard to Europe and Asia. In other words, from a critical hinterland perspective the Atlantic world is only one world region that has always to be understood in relation with other equally important areas.
General Overviews
How large is the “Atlantic world”? How do we define “hinterland,” “backcountry,” “frontier,” “metropolises,” or “peripheries”? A number of studies have started to form and inquire into these terms and concepts with regard to the Atlantic world. White 1991 coined the concept of “middle ground” for the Great Lakes regions where American Indian and European people—“forming” the Atlantic world—also met. Ellis and Eßer 2006 asks for a more in-depth analysis of the construction of imperial and national boundaries, centers and peripheries, as does Adelman and Aron 1999 for North America, and Barr and Countryman 2014, and Daniels and Kennedy 2002 in a comparative Atlantic empires perspective. MacLeod 2008 introduces the concept of “near” and “far” Atlantics while Puglisi 1998 discusses trends in backcountry studies. Lachenicht 2014 and Morgan 2014 reflect on the terms hinterland and backcountry in an Atlantic history perspective, taking into account more recent developments in the field.
Adelman, Jeremy, and Stephen Aron. “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples in Between in North American History.” American Historical Review 104.3 (1999): 814–841.
DOI: 10.2307/2650990
Excellent essay reflecting on the relationship of concepts and spaces such as “borderland” and “frontier,” while looking into the historical process of the making of US-American borders.
Barr, Juliana, and Edward Countryman, eds. Contested Spaces of Early America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2014.
Unites essays on backcountries or hinterlands in a New Spain, New France, and New England perspective, drawing on Indian-European contested space or contact zones.
Daniels, Christine, and Michael V. Kennedy, eds. Negotiated Empires: Centers and Peripheries in the New World, 1500–1820. New York and London: Routledge, 2002.
This edited volume looks at the relations between centers and peripheries, the frontier and the metropolis in a Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and British imperial perspective.
Ellis, Steven G., and Raingard Eßer, eds. Frontiers and the Writing of History, 1500–1850. Hannover, Germany: Wehrhahn, 2006.
While this collection of essays only includes a few studies on the “frontier” in the Atlantic world, it makes evident how much the frontier represents an imperial and national construct historians need to question and analyze.
Lachenicht, Susanne. “Europeans Engaging the Atlantic. Knowledge and Trade, 1500–1800. An Introduction.” In Europeans Engaging the Atlantic. Knowledge and Trade, 1500–1800. Edited by Susanne Lachenicht, 7–21. Frankfurt and New York: Campus Verlag, 2014.
While the collection of essays focuses on European hinterlands with regard to knowledge and trade in the Atlantic world, the introduction critically reflects the concept of hinterland and backcountry in Atlantic history.
MacLeod, Murdo. Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History, 1520–1720. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008.
MacLeod’s Spanish Central America, first published in 1973, is no theoretical reflection on concepts and terms. However, it introduces the concept of the “near” and “far” Atlantics which has become a received concept in Atlantic history.
Morgan, Philip D. “A Comment.” In Europeans Engaging the Atlantic: Knowledge and Trade. Edited by Susanne Lachenicht, 151–160. Frankfurt and New York: Campus Verlag, 2014.
Discussing “hinterland” and a growing interest in Atlantic history in so-called hinterlands and backcountries in a holistic perspective.
Puglisi, Michael J. “Muddied Waters: A Discussion of Current Interdisciplinary Backcountry Studies.” In The Southern Colonial Backcountry: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Frontier Communities. Edited by David Colin Crass, Steven D. Smith, Martha A. Zierden, and Richard D. Brooks, 36–55. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998.
Discusses some of the important trends in and the success of interdisciplinary backcountry studies as they became popular in the 1990s.
White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republic in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
White’s analysis of American Indian, French, and British relations in the Great Lakes region introduces an important concept, that of the middle ground. The study makes evident how much people and a region that have been perceived as a periphery or a hinterland of the Atlantic world became crucial for Native American and (entangled) Atlantic histories.
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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