The Atlantic World by D'Maris Coffman, Adrian Leonard and William O'Reilly (editors)

(Routledge), 2014
704pp., £150 hard, ISBN978-0-415-46704-9

As the meeting point between Europe, colonial America, and Africa, the history of the Atlantic world is a constantly shifting arena, but one which has been a focus of huge and vibrant debate for many years. In over thirty chapters, all written by experts in the field, The Atlantic World takes up these debates and gathers together key, original scholarship to provide an authoritative survey of this increasingly popular area of world history.

The book takes a thematic approach to topics including exploration, migration and cultural encounters. In its introductory essay, the editors valuably define the field laying the framework for the rest of the book. In the first chapters, scholars examine the interactions between groups which converged in the Atlantic world, such as slaves, European migrants and Native Americans. The volume then considers questions such as finance, money and commerce in the Atlantic world, as well as warfare, government and religion. The collection closes with chapters examining how ideas circulated across and around the Atlantic and beyond. It presents the Atlantic as a shared space in which commodities and ideas were exchanged and traded, and examines the impact that these exchanges had on both people and places. This volume is lavishly illustrated with paintings, drawings and maps and provides invaluable reading for all students and scholars of this broad sweep of world history. I hope that, like many of the volumes in this series, a paperback edition will follow.