Empires of the Atlantic world

Yale University Press

2006

xx, 546 p., [32] p. of pl.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [413]-516) and index.

9780300123999

Contents Introduction: Worlds overseas. Intrusion and empire. Hernán Cortés and Christopher Newton ; Motives and methods. Occupying American space. Symbolic occupation ; Physical occupation ; Peopling the land. Confronting American peoples. A mosaic of peoples ; Christianity and civility ; Coexistence and segregation. Exploring American resources. Plunder and 'improvement' ; Labor supply ; Transatlantic economies. Crown and colonists. The framework of empire ; Authority and resistance. The ordering of society. Hierarchy and control ; Social antagonism and emerging elites. America as sacred space. God's providential design ; The church and society ; A plurality of creeds. Empire and identity. Transatlantic communities ; Creole communities ; Cultural communities. Societies on the move. Expanding populations ; Moving frontiers ; Slave and free. War and reform. The Seven Years War and imperial defence ; The drive for reform ; Redefining imperial relationships. Empires in crisis. Ideas in ferment ; A community divided ; A crisis contained. A new world in the making. The search for legitimacy ; The end of empire ; The emancipation of America ; Contrasting experiences.

This epic history compares the empires built by Spain and Britain in the Americas, from Columbus' arrival in the New World to the end of Spanish colonial rule in the early nineteenth century. J. H. Elliott, one of the most distinguished and versatile historians working today, offers us history on a grand scale, contrasting the worlds built by Britain and by Spain on the ruins of the civilizations they encountered and destroyed in North and South America. Elliott identifies and explains both the similarities and differences in the two empires' processes of colonization, the character of their colonial societies, their distinctive styles of imperial government, and the independence movements mounted against them. Based on wide reading in the history of the two great Atlantic civilizations, the book sets the Spanish and British colonial empires in the context of their own times and offers us insights into aspects of this dual history that still influence the Americas.

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