Nation and Empire in Northern Atlantic History
- LAST REVIEWED: 08 December 2022
- LAST MODIFIED: 31 July 2019
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0316
- LAST REVIEWED: 08 December 2022
- LAST MODIFIED: 31 July 2019
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0316
Introduction
Nation and empire are intriguing conceptual frameworks for the study of the historical persistence of Atlantic entanglements—especially in the northern hemisphere. The Atlantic might generally be understood to have interlocked the Americas, Africa, and Europe from the beginning of European westward exploration until the official end of both slavery and European imperialism on Northern American soil. But Atlantic ideological battles extended well beyond the 19th century. Today, they are alive and kicking once more. As conceptual frameworks nation and empire organize ideas of belonging, community building, and social cohesion. In addition, they are short-hands for distinct, in fact competing, forms of political and economic hegemony. Since mechanisms of exclusion and seclusion have forged, delimited, and expanded nations as much as empires, this bibliographical essay will focus on studies that draw attention to the commonalities of nation and empire. Within the framework of the (Northern) Atlantic, nations and empires lose their cohesive and exclusivist aura, inviting persistent, if contrastive, comparisons of connective as well as divisive modes of transportation, exchange, and intellectual as well as cultural transformation. The idea of nation evokes several meanings: First used in Anglo-Norman and Middle French to denote birth, lineage, or family, the idea of the nation helped to lay the ground for modern-age ideas of race and biological descent. As a social and cultural concept, the nation organizes communities around questions of kinship, belonging, and culture until today. From the 19th century onward “nation” simultaneously described a political formation established by and for its diverse population. Empire likewise has many layers: etymologically speaking the word is used to speak about extensive territories controlled by a single ruler; politically speaking the term describes a system governed by ideas of supreme sovereignty and extensive subjection or domination; socially speaking it relates practices of command and control. Culturally speaking, empire denotes complex communication among communities with various degrees of authority and power. Scholarly analysis often delineates historical trajectories. From a Eurocentric perspective the New World attracted competing communities of settlers, planters, and traders, rewarding both an unbridled sense of possibility and the ambition to emulate and yet outdo European models. In this ambiguous setting the idea as well as institutional offsprings of empire proliferated long after empire officially ended with the First World War. With the return of empire (and nation) as imaginaries for new forms of coercion and collaboration, future scholarship will need to trace the Atlantic and its history of entanglements well into the 21st century.
General Overviews
Broader treatments of the topic tend to be offered by historians rather than literary and cultural scholars or political scientists. Interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the sociocultural conflicts accompanying the transitions from empire to nation-state and back again are tentatively sketched by Schnurmann 2002. A classic general overview over the capitalist and bourgeois foundation of Atlantic nationalism and imperialism is provided by Hobsbawm 1962 in the author’s focus on nation building and the emergence of the bourgeoisie. Hobsbawm 1975 discusses the underlying market revolution, and Hobsbawm 1987 is the first to suggest that the traditional end of empire might coincide with the rise of a new form of imperialism grounded in the industrial revolution. Historical surveys such as the detailed German language studies in the edited volume Wellenreuther, et al. 2004 tackle the Atlantic as a maritime zone of contact, commerce, competition, and coercion, drawing attention to the fact that imperial and national ideological battles tend to begin as intimate debates about small-scale regional transformations. The essays collected by Lachenicht, et al. 2016 suggest that these debates expand into larger conflicts over Atlantic connections and separations when geopolitical thinking and its collusion of the dynamics of faith and “commercial, dynastic or territorial motives” (p. 181) take effect. Belmessous 2013 draws attention to the assimilationist pressures at the heart of Atlantic empires. The best and also the most thought-provoking placement of the Atlantic dimension and specification of global trends toward both, hegemonic domination as well as national representation, is to be found in Burbank and Cooper 2010.
Belmessous, Saliha. Assimilation and Empire: Uniformity in French and British Colonies, 1541–1954. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579167.001.0001
Focuses on assimilation policies across the French and British empires: that is to say the utopian project of transforming the colonized into Europeans by means of conversion, interracial marriages, law, and education. Belmessous looks at three case studies, one of them being Francization in early modern New France. She argues that assimilation is one of the most important logics that connected the Atlantic to other regions shaped by Western imperialism.
Burbank, Jane, and Frederick Cooper. Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010.
The most comprehensive, theoretically sophisticated, and yet immensely readable volume to date on the historically pervasive impact of imperial formations on social histories around the globe.
Hobsbawm, Eric J. The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962.
This book by the famous British Marxist historian pits the American Revolution against the French Revolution as engines of a social order dominated by the educated and aspiring middle classes. The book’s interest in the rise of the bourgeoisie sets the groundwork for a trilogy on the long 19th century, the century of deathly economic and technological competition of empires and nations along the Atlantic rim.
Hobsbawm, Eric J. The Age of Capital, 1848–1875. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975.
The second volume in the trilogy of narrative history on the long 19th century delineates the enmeshment of capitalism, social upheaval, and the modern nation-state. It shows how the expansive nation-state and its capitalist economic order helped to minimize social protest and stabilize the middle classes whose imperial cultural aspirations thus persisted.
Hobsbawm, Eric J. The Age of Empire, 1875–1914. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987.
A classic in the study of late European imperialism—a period here conceived to begin with the global spread of an institutionalized Western industrial revolution and to end with the First World War. Written for the general reader, the third book of the trilogy focuses on the intersections of capitalism, industrial labor, gender, and democratization, showing how this narrowly defined age of high-profile empire ushers in “the end of the world made by and for the bourgeoisie” (p. 6).
Lachenicht, Susanne, Lauric Henneton, and Yann Lignereux, eds. Special Issue: Spiritual Geopolitics in the Early Modern Imperial Age. Special Issue of Itinerario. The International Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction 40.2 (2016).
The six contributions to this special issue explore the concept of “spiritual geopolitics,” that is, the role of religion in imperial geopolitics. The authors ask whether religion was an enabler of geopolitical change through the investigation of the impact of religious agents in imperial policymaking. The volume adopts a global perspective and covers case studies from Maghreb, South America, the Caribbean, the Philippines, Japan, and Guiana among others.
Schnurmann, Claudia. “Atlantic Trade and Regional Identities: The Creation of Supranational Atlantic Systems in the 17th Century.” In Atlantic History: History of the Atlantic System 1580–1830. Edited by Horst Pietschmann, 179–197. Göttingen, Germany, 2002.
Exemplary essay on the collusion of regional, national, and imperial scales in Atlantic encounters.
Wellenreuther, Hermann, Norbert Finzsch, and Ursula Lehmkuhl, eds. Geschichte Nordamerikas in atlantischer Perspektive von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. Berlin and Münster: LIT-Verlag, 2004–.
This book series delineates the entangled histories of competing Atlantic forms of imperialism and nationalism in North America. Eight monographs have been published in the series to date, covering the time from the beginning of European settlements until the decade after the Cold War.
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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
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- Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Popery
- Argentina
- Army, British
- Arsenals
- Art and Artists
- Atlantic Biographies
- Atlantic Creoles
- Atlantic History and Hemispheric History
- Atlantic Migration
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- Atlantic Trade and the European Economy
- Bacon's Rebellion
- Baltic Sea
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- British Atlantic Architectures
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- Cabato, Giovanni (John Cabot)
- Cannibalism
- Capitalism
- Captain John Smith
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- 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
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- 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
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- 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
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- 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
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- Female Slave Owners
- Feminism
- First Contact and Early Colonization of Brazil
- Fiscality
- Fiscal-Military State
- Food
- Forts, Fortresses, and Fortifications
- France and Empire
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- 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
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- 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
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- Hinterlands of the Atlantic World
- Histories and Historiographies of the Atlantic World
- Honor
- Huguenots
- Hunger and Food Shortages
- Iberian Atlantic World, 1600-1800
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- 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
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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 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