Between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, the connections among Africa, the Americas, and Europe transformed world history—through maritime exploration, commercial engagements, human migrations and settlements, political realignments and upheavals, cultural exchanges, and more. This book, the first encyclopedic reference work on Atlantic history, takes an integrated, multicontinental approach that emphasizes the dynamics of change and the perspectives and motivations of the peoples who made it happen. The entries—all specially commissioned for this volume from an international team of leading scholars—synthesize the latest scholarship on central themes, including economics, migration, politics, war, technologies and science, the physical environment, and culture.

Part one features five major essays that trace the changes distinctive to each chronological phase of Atlantic history. Part two includes more than 125 entries on key topics, from the seemingly familiar viewed in unfamiliar and provocative ways (the Seven Years' War, trading companies) to less conventional subjects (family networks, canon law, utopias).

This is an indispensable resource for students, researchers, and scholars in a range of fields, from early American, African, Latin American, and European history to the histories of economics, religion, and science.

• The first encyclopedic reference on Atlantic history
• Features five major essays and more than 125 alphabetical entries
• Provides essential context on major areas of change:
• Economies (for example, the slave trade, marine resources, commodities, specie, trading companies)
• Populations (emigrations, Native American removals, blended communities)
• Politics and law (the law of nations, royal liberties, paramount chiefdoms, independence struggles in Haiti, the Hispanic Americas, the United States, and France)
• Military actions (the African and Napoleonic wars, the Seven Years' War, wars of conquest)
• Technologies and science (cartography, nautical science, geography, healing practices)
• The physical environment (climate and weather, forest resources, agricultural production, food and diets, disease)
• Cultures and communities (captivity narratives, religions and religious practices)
• Includes original contributions from Sven Beckert, Holly Brewer, Peter A. Coclanis, Seymour Drescher, Eliga H. Gould, David S. Jones, Wim Klooster, Mark Peterson, Steven Pincus, Richard Price and Sophia Rosenfeld, and many more
• Contains illustrations, maps, and bibliographies