The Atlantic Connection ─ A History of the Atlantic World, 1450-1900

The Atlantic Connection takes up the major themes of Atlantic history focusing on the interconnections of the Atlantic world from 1450-1900. During this period, ships, goods, diseases, human beings and ideas flowed across the ocean, tying together the Atlantic basin in a complex web of relationships. The book is divided into four main sections: Explorations, Colonization and Conquest, The Movement of People and Ideas, and The Age of Ideology. Across these sections the The Atlantic Connection is set out in a broadly chronological way, but also considers key cultural themes such as gender, social developments, the economy, and ideologies as well as:

The role of the Atlantic in ensuring European dominance

The creation of a set of societies with new cultural norms and philosophical ideals that continued to evolve and to transform not only the Atlantic, but the rest of the world; in other words, the importance of the Atlantic in shaping modernity

The contestation over rights and justice that emerged from the Atlantic world, which likewise continues to exist as a significant issue in today’s world – as well as some of the solutions to these issues.

The book is also bound together by an essential microhistorical argument that which is important in understanding why Atlantic history took the shape that it did and answering the key question; if European dominance of the Atlantic was not the result of their technological prowess, then how did it come about? Anna Suranyi argues that this occurred partly as a result of Western European geographical orientation toward the ocean, which allowed Western Europeans to take advantage of both Ottoman innovation and their increasing navigational expertise. Once the initial contact had been made, the wealth as well as the cultural challenge emanating from Atlantic helped spur on European developments including the Protestant Reformation, Commercial Revolution, Scientific Revolution, and eventually the Enlightenment, as well as fostering the growth of new societies in the Atlantic, while eventually undermining African development. Together these developments paved the way for European Atlantic supremacy.

Anna Suranyi is Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities at Endicott College. Her publications includeThe Genius of the English Nation: Travel Writing and National Identity in Early Modern England (2008).