The Atlantic World, 1450-2000

The Atlantic World, 1450-2000. Edited by Toyin Falola and Kevin D. Roberts. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. xv + 385 pp. Tables, maps, bibliography, notes, index. Cloth, $65.00; paper, $24.95. ISBN: cloth, 978-0-253-34970-5; paper, 978-0-253-21943-5.

Reviewed by Mariana P. Candido

This collection of fifteen essays was organized by Toyin Falola and Kevin Roberts. Falola, a prolific Africanist, is the author of several books on African history, and Kevin Roberts is a specialist in the history of the American South. In their introduction, the editors note that they reject the customary definition of the Atlantic world as one dominated by Europeans or synonymous with colonial British America, pointing out that "Africans, Amerindians, Creoles of the New Worlds, poor Europeans, and women of all groups were active participants in the creation and shaping of the Atlantic world" (p. x). Rather than a study of political elites, this book emphasizes the role of the masses, including African slaves. It is more than the "world slaveholders made." The authors of every chapter, by emphasizing the participation of common people and showing how "subaltern peoples [became] central figures in the Atlantic drama" (p. xi), show their commitment to Falola and Roberts's approach.

In the first of four sections, entitled "Nations and Migrations," Patricia Pearson writes about Africa, Europe, and the Americas before "the formation of the Atlantic world" (p. 3), that is, before 1450. She prepares the way for subsequent contributors by describing how trade brought people together and dispersed cultures. Timothy Grady compares the ways in which Europeans arrived in Africa and the Americas. Whereas, in the Americas, a small group of Spaniards controlled the political structures, European power in Africa was limited to control of small trading ports. Relying on secondary sources, Grady shows that "the Atlantic world evolved from the 14th to the beginning of the 17th centuries to tie these three regions together economically, politically and socially in such a way that their histories could no longer be considered individually but only as a single entity" (p. 47). In this section's final chapter, one of the few to consider the role of women in the Atlantic world, Alison Games adheres closely to the editors' theme of heterogeneity in the New World. Exploring the lives of three individuals, Games surveys the various circumstances that drove people to cross the Atlantic in search of freedom.

The theme of the second section, "Empires and Slavery," is the role of institutions in the formation of European empires across the Atlantic. In a fascinating study, Douglas Chambers argues for a new theoretical debate on the Black Atlantic. Ken Aslakson describes geographic mobility of black and white free women in St. Domingue and New Orleans during the revolutionary age. In his chapter on the eighteenthcentury slave trade, Timothy Bucker discusses some of the stereotypes that were applied to the use of African slave labor in the Americas. He explores how the development of sugar plantations promoted capitalism and the expansion of the slave trade and fueled the debates over abolition. Michael Guasco and Aribidesi Usman look at the establishment of slavery and the African presence in the New World.

In the third section, "Independence and Abolition," David Cahill and Joel E. Tishken survey independence movements in Brazil and Africa. Although he refers to the influence of the Portuguese priest Manoel Ribeiro da Rocha in anriabolitionist thought, the focus of Maurice Jackson's chapter on abolition is North America. Four chapters look at globalization and its discontents. Notable among these is a good study by Carol Anderson of the cold war as an Atlantic phenomenon. E. G. Iweriebor and Amanda Warnock expand on Cahill and Tishken's study, emphasizing the Atlantic links of Caribbean nationalism and stressing the significance of pan- Africanism. Maxim Matusevich offers an interesting discussion of the cold war and the role of international financial institutions in an Atlantic world affected by globalization.

The authors in the final section, "Repair or Repay?" which is concerned with the present-day Atlantic world, consider poverty, inequality, and economic reforms. One chapter traces the historical roots of the debate on reparation; another assesses antiglobalization movements.

A book of this scope covering a wide landscape and a long period of time cannot be without shortcomings. While criticizing the view that Atlantic history is synonymous with histories of the British Empire or British America, the essays, with their close attention to the North Atlantic world, end by adopting the very perspective that they condemn. West Central Africa and its inhabitants hardly figure in this book (with the exception of Anderson's chapter, which devotes a few pages to U.S. involvement in the Angolan civil war). Since recent studies show that most people who crossed the Atlantic left from West Central Africa, a more thorough analysis ofthat region is required. Other topics, such as the role of enslaved women in the economy, receive only brief mention and deserve more attention, as do the regions south of the equator.

However, this caveat does not detract from the book's value. By linking contemporary problems to historical events, The Atlantic World offers a useful survey of Atlantic history. The essays shed light on the activities of common people, who, while they "may not have used the terms Atlantic worlds or Black Atlantic," nonetheless behaved in "ways . . . [that] indicate[d] a strong connection among Atlantic people" (p. xii). Some of the essays indicate that subsequent researchers should begin to view the Atlantic as a unit, one where people and ideas migrated between its shores. By its close scrutiny of the roots of globalization and recognition of the importance of common people in the construction of history, this study is sure to attract the interest of students of the Atlantic world.

[Author Affiliation]

Mariana P. Candido is assistant professor of history at Princeton University. She is the author of several articles on slavery and slave trade, including "Merchants and the business of the slave trade in Benguela, 1750-1850," African Economic History (2007). Her book, Fronteras de la Esclavizaci�n: Esclavitud, Comercio e Identidad en Benguela, 17801850, will be published by El Colegio de Mexico Press in 2009.