Hybrid Atlantics: Future Directions for the History of the Atlantic World

Abstract

Fundamental features of the early modern Atlantic -like the slave trade, the rise of experimental science and long-distance commerce, and the proliferation of religious confessions -were transnational in character. This essay surveys recent work in the field, emphasizing emerging scholarship on the hybrid nature of the Atlantic world. Yet for hybridity to work as a useful analytical category, we need to do away with the narrative of "Northwestern Europeanization" as the normative model. We explore how ecology and place, science and medicine, and diasporic or extra-national groups like smugglers, Jews, and slaves helped create an Atlantic that was defined more by its cross-cultural encounters, local contexts, and mixed identities than by the power of European states.

Drugs and early modernity

“…If we accept that the transformation of medical culture and consumption was a key aspect of the emergence of modernity, then it follows that this was inherently a global process, not one sited in Europe alone, or even necessarily guided by European or Western actors. Although scholars have already made cases for an “early modern Atlantic world,”—not to mention an “early modern Africa” and “early modern India”—the history of substances like tobacco, alcoholic spirits, and opium offers a concrete example of a set of goods and practices that truly did move between these very different regional spheres (Richards, 1997; Cañizares‐Esguerra & Breen, 2013).…”

Arroz, protagonismo africano e a transformação ecológica das Américas

“…Estudos ambientais das antigas sociedades de plantation têm incentivado uma perspectiva atlântica transnacional que considera a metrópole e a colônia, regimes laborais, áreas de proveniência de migrantes e fundos de conhecimento cultural que tenham viajado por paisagens marinhas do mundo atlântico. Temas de interconexão, circulação, encontro e intercâmbio têm-se entrelaçado através da recente pesquisa multidisciplinar do mundo atlântico (Cañizares-Esguerra & Breen, 2013).…”

Sometidos a esclavitud: los africanos y sus descendientes en el Caribe Hispano

“…Parto de varias premisas: primero, los circuitos forjados por comerciantes portugueses alrededor del flujo de esclavos, productos primarios y metales entre África, América y Europa constituyeron uno de los ejes fundacionales de la llamada primera globalización (Arrighi y Moore, 2001;Magalhães Godinho, 1974;Mauro, 1960); segundo, los archipiélagos atlánticos -lusos, hispanos y africanos-fungieron como bisagras fundamentales de estos ejes (Bentley Duncan, 1972;Bethencourt, 2012;Lobo Cabrera, 1982y 1985Lobo Cabrera y Torres Santana, 1997;Vieira, 2013;Vila Vilar, 1987); y tercero, la vinculación de las Antillas hispanas y la cuenca caribeña con los circuitos atlánticos portugueses fue significativa (Keith, 1969;Vila Vilar, 2014;Wheat, 2016). De ahí surge el título Emaranhado ("enredado") que tomo del concepto de entangled histories o entangled Atlantics desarrollado por atlanticistas de la academia estadounidense para enfatizar la naturaleza híbrida, compleja y multiétnica de los intercambios atlánticos en este periodo (Boelhower, 2008;Cañizares-Esguerra y Breen, 2013;Games, 2006;Gould, 2007aGould, y 2007bPutnam, 2006). Utilizo el concepto para ilustrar la integración de las Antillas hispanas al Atlántico luso-africano (portugués y africano) durante el periodo del estudio.…”