A refreshing counterpoint to the existing literature, The Human Tradition in the Atlantic World helps us understand at the individual level how the Atlantic was shaped. Featuring sixteen men and women who not only crossed the ocean, but traversed imperial, cultural, and linguistic barriers, this collection admirably illustrates the entangled and dynamic nature of the Atlantic world.
Wim Klooster, ... Read moreClark University This collection introduces a vibrant array of individual lives that Atlantic history might have otherwise forgotten. The contributors to this volume have revealed Jewish translators, Indian visionaries, African entrepreneurs, Iroquois emissaries, and revolutionary men (and women) of color that were part of a dazzling, multicultural Atlantic. Scholars and students will be able to follow the intersecting human itineraries of the Atlantic world like never before.
Neil Safier, University of British Columbia; author of Measuring the New World: Enlightenment Science and South America Approaching the interconnected Atlantic world through the experiences of individuals of many different ranks and positions, as these essays do, draws students in and gives them more direct access to the kinds of skills and risk-taking that made that world function.
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, New York University The Human Tradition in the Atlantic World is packed with exemplary lives that can only be appreciated in an Atlantic context. These are not textbook heroes, but rather ordinary people caught in the slipstream of Atlantic history in the Age of Sail. Their stories, so well told here, bring this transformative era to life—they give it flesh and bones.
Kris Lane, College of William & Mary Show Less