Spanish Atlantic World
- LAST MODIFIED: 22 August 2023
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0394
- LAST MODIFIED: 22 August 2023
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0394
Introduction
The Spanish Atlantic world cannot be understood as identical to the Spanish Empire or the Hispanic monarchy but is something that encompasses and transcends them at once. Considered in its horizontal dimension rather than its vertical one, this world does not reflect the territory of the Spanish monarchy since it puts in relation regions and areas—from Europe to Africa and the Americas—that did not belong formally to the empire. Furthermore, it is not a world made only of Spanish people, i.e., people born on the Spanish territories, but also of foreigners, people coming from other countries or empires. Their role in the conquest of the New World under the patronage of the Spanish Crown has been widely underlined by historiography; still their economic, political, and cultural activities in the Spanish Atlantic world did not end with the conquest but they continued in the following centuries. This space was indeed characterized by multiple transnational networks (German miners, engineers of Italian origin, and the capital of the Genoese, among others) that contributed considerably to its survival and efficiency in the long run. Another important characteristic of the Spanish Atlantic world is that it was not built on a vertical and bipolar relation of metropolis-colonies, but on a high level of provincial autonomy, to the extent that some scholars have talked about polycentrism in this particular aspect. Not only these autonomous areas shared linkages and complementarities which did not necessarily pivot on the metropolitan center, but sometimes they maintained strong ties with regions belonging to other empires. As some scholars have argued, all Atlantics are hybrid since they are the product of multiple “entangled histories”; consequently, no place in the Atlantic world contains a past that can be said to belong neatly and exclusively to one or another empire. Finally, and most essentially, it is a space that was shaped between the 16th and the 19th centuries by circulations of people, commodities, technologies, ideas, and information. Even though most works on the Atlantic Spanish world center on its maturity and decline, certain characteristics of this world had emerged since the 16th century. Following these assumptions, the entries of this bibliography, after having identified some key places and routes of the Spanish Atlantic, are not based on chronological or spatial divisions, but on what most characterized the Atlantic space in the early modern period, circulations and entanglements. This can help the reader look at the Spanish Atlantic world in a broader perspective, not limited to a formal and imperial-centered approach. At the same time, many of these concepts are strictly interrelated and in one section of this article we can find entries that are related also to other sections. However, the inclusion in a certain section agrees with the main focus of the works listed there.
General Overview
The political, economic, and social processes produced by the Columbian encounter in the Spanish Atlantic world have been studied in detail, especially with regard to navigation, trade, politics, and their impact on the formation of the early modern world. The emphasis on economics and politics is explained by Atlantic studies’ links to post–World War II conceptualizations of broader regional approaches to present and past geopolitical concerns. Economic and political historians helped forge a field that looked to the past for clues about the implications of the movement of people and objects throughout the Atlantic basin. By the 1980s, the geopolitical impulse of those initial inquiries gave way to a broader focus on social and cultural phenomena. Although much research in this arena still focuses on the impact of Europe on the Americas, recent work, such as Elliott 2006 and Cañizares-Esguerra 2018, has explored the rich possibilities for understanding the flow of ideas and culture throughout the Atlantic. These works have demolished the idea of an essential backwardness of the Spanish Empire, showing different trends of development through time and space and drawing attention to a circum-Atlantic community which consists of continuously fluctuating relationships along both an east-west and a north-south axis. While the works more focused on economic issues tend to identify a specific Spanish Atlantic (Martínez Shaw and Oliva Melgar 2005, Stein and Stein 2009), the other comprehensive studies on the subject do not sever the Spanish Atlantic from the Portuguese one (Adelman 2006, Cardim, et al. 2012, Gruzinski 2004, Yún Casalilla 2019). The reasons for this “iberianization” of the Atlantic is to be found not only in the period of the union of the two monarchies between 1580 and 1640, but also in the multiple entanglements between the two empires—both in the peninsula and in the New World—from the 16th to the early 19th century. A good part of these general works on the Spanish Atlantic focus on the late colonial period, when the Atlantic dimension of the Spanish world attained its apex, not only for the intense circulation of goods, ideas, and people in this period but also for the consequences produced by wars and inter-imperial conflicts. The age of the Atlantic revolutions represents from this point of view the moment in which the entanglements, circulations, and connections between the Spanish world and the other spaces became more evident, as shown by Thibaud Clément, et al. 2013. Although some connections between Spain and its former colonies in America survived after independence in the 1820s, the Spanish Atlantic ceased to exist in the early 19th century (except for Cuba and Puerto Rico), when most circulations and entanglements were radically reconfigured.
Adelman, Jeremy. Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.
This book aims at a broad interpretative account of the dissolution of the Iberian empires, conveyed through a long, close analysis of colonial relationships between Spain and Portugal and their Atlantic territories in South America. By taking as field for analysis a sector of the Iberian Atlantic that crossed imperial boundaries, Adelman helps to clarify what is similar and different in the crises of Portugal and Spain, and in the states that emerged from their imperial disintegration.
Andrien, Kenneth. “The Spanish Attantic.” In Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal. Edited by Jack P. Greene and Philip D. Morgan, 55–79. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
This chapter describes the main characteristics of the Spanish Atlantic system, emphasizing the its interconnections with global, regional, and local processes. It is organized chronologically and structured in three section: the beginning, the maturity, the reform and dissolution.
Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge, ed. Entangled Empires: The Anglo-Iberian Atlantic, 1500–1830. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018.
This collection emphasizes the importance of understanding connections, both intellectual and practical, between the English and Iberian imperial projects. Contributors argue that these empires were interconnected from the very outset in their production and sharing of knowledge as well as in their economic activities. African slaves, Amerindians, converso traders, smugglers, missionaries, diplomats, settlers, soldiers, and pirates crossed geographical, linguistic, and political boundaries and co-created not only local but also imperial histories.
Cardim, Pedro, Tamar Herzog, José Javier Ruíz Ibáñez, and Gaetano Sabatini, eds. Polycentric Monarchies. How Did Early Modern Spain and Portugal Achieve and Maintain a Global Hegemony. Brighton, UK, and Oregon: Sussex Academic Press, 2012.
Divided into three parts—“Spaces of Integration,” “Spaces of Circulation,” and “External Projections”—this collection of essays proposes a new conceptual framework for understanding the unity of the Spanish and Portuguese empires in the early modern period. At issue is the fundamental question of the mechanisms that permitted the Iberians to maintain globe-spanning empires for several centuries, in spite of the centrifugal forces of tradition and identity.
Elliott, John H. Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2006.
Through an impressive work of synthesis, Elliott demonstrates the changing patterns of the British and Spanish Atlantics, focusing both on their resemblances and differences. Although both expanded through institutionalized brutality, the encounter with silver mines and large settled indigenous populations allowed the Spanish crown to have the resources to develop dense lay and clerical bureaucracies. In the British Atlantic, on the other hand, the Crown lacked the resources to impose religious and political will, thus creating a more decentralized system.
Gruzinski, Serge. Les quatre parties du monde. Histoire d’une mondialisation. Paris: La Martinière, 2004.
This book analyzes the Iberian world during the union of the two crowns of the Iberian Peninsula (1580–1640). It clearly shows that the cultural coherence of this first global empire, made of the Spanish and Portuguese possessions in America, Africa, and Asia, was obtained through the circulation of information, knowledge, and people. The analysis is also attentive to the dynamics of domination, miscegenation, and resistance that these processes entailed.
Kuethe, Allan J., and Kenneth J. Andrien. The Spanish Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century: War and the Bourbon Reforms, 1713–1796. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Using a chronological approach and different case studies, the authors develop an account of how the Spanish Crown struggled to reform its empire. Set in an Atlantic context, the book analyzes the different political conflicts in which Spain was engaged during the 18th century and how these helped to shape the reformist policies that the Bourbon kings and their ministers tried to put into effect in America.
Martínez Shaw, Carlos, and José María Oliva Melgar, eds. El sistema atlántico español (siglos XVII-XIX). Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2005.
This collections advocates for the existence of a specific Spanish Atlantic, shaped by the Iberian influence. The structure and the functioning of this system is analyzed from an economic, political, and cultural perspective, even though most contributors insist on the economic dimension of the Spanish Atlantic world and Spain as its epicenter.
Stein, Barbara H., and Stanley J. Stein. Edge of Crisis: War and Trade in the Spanish Atlantic, 1789–1808. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.
DOI: 10.1353/book.3370
This book is the last volume of a trilogy that documents the rise and fall of the Spanish Empire. This latest volume deals with the last twenty years before the implosion of the Spanish Empire began in the mainland colonies as a direct reaction to the invasion of the metropolis through Napoleon’s armies in 1808. The Steins describe the structural forces that led to the ultimate disintegration of the empire and identify them in the Spanish dependency on silver.
Thibaud Clément, Gabriel Entin, Alejandro Gomez, and Federica Morelli, eds. La dimension atlantique des révolutions hispano-américaines. Paris: Les Perséides, 2013.
This collection approaches the questions of the origins, character, and consequences of Spanish American independence from an Atlantic perspective. The essays, six in French, six in English, and eight in Spanish, examine facets of the non-Anglophone Atlantic world across the long phase of global change inaugurated in the 18th century.
Yún Casalilla, Bartolomé. Iberian World Empires and the Globalization of Europe, 1415–1668. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
DOI: 10.1007/978-981-13-0833-8
This book analyzes the role that the two Iberian monarchies played in the globalization of the early modern period. Embracing a comparative and transnational approach, the author provides fine detail about the social, political, and economic evolution of these empires over time, giving a key role to the noble and commercial elites.
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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
- 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
- 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 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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 Atlantic World
- 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
- The Spanish Caribbean
- 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