Making Sense of Atlantic World Histories: A British Perspective

Abstract

This essay explores how historians have come to move beyond national histories with transnational approaches. For early American historians this has involved consideration of how the Atlantic world connected and affected societies in early modern Europe, Africa, and the Americas. The essay argues that there was not one but rather many different Atlantic worlds, shaped by the position, experiences, and perspective of each individual. Using the example of three Africans who found themselves in late-eighteenth-century Scotland, the essay illustrates how these different Atlantics – not just African, North American and European, but also religion, economic, and ideological – can be traced and unraveled in individual lives.

Keywords

• 18th century
• slavery
• religion
• exceptionalism
• Atlantic
• Scotland