Movements of People in the Atlantic World, 1450–1850

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
William O'Reilly
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
West African ◽  
The West ◽  
Demographic Composition ◽  
South Central ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
European Colonialism ◽  
Indentured Servants

The movement of people in the Atlantic world in the period 1450–1850 is a story of categorisation, organisation, and exploitation of labour in a time of global transformation. More than 25 million people were transported from east to west, to be planted in South, Central and North America, the Caribbean, the Atlantic islands, and the West African littoral. The fruits of this seed labour came irrevocably to transform the demographic composition of the Americas and Africa, and to a lesser extent Europe. Some migrants were slaves, or unfree white colonists, notably convicts and prisoners, or indentured servants whose liberties were severely limited. Religion and language, as well as flora and fauna, travelled with the first colonists; one accident of Spanish and general European colonialism was the environmental and ecological transformation of the Americas. This article also looks at migration in the Atlantic world in relation to Africans, Spain, Portugal, Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, and France.

The Northern European Atlantic World

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wim Klooster
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
New World ◽  
West African ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Northern European ◽  
The Caribbean

Confronted with the establishment of Portugal and Spain as the hegemonic Atlantic powers, northern Europe — France, England, and the Netherlands — initially tried to obtain African and American riches by raiding and trading. Successful colonisation of the New World had to wait until the early seventeenth century, and settlements remained small until the 1640s. By then, northern Europe held sway in various parts of North America, the Caribbean, and Brazil, and had captured Portugal's main West African trading station. As raiders, traders, and settlers, they had formed relations with native Africans and Americans, who had often enabled them to survive. But prejudice against their new neighbours intensified. This article looks at the northern European Atlantic world, focusing on privateers, merchants, and fishermen as well as informal intermediaries.

English in the West Indies, or the West Indies in English?

1964 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 312-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Dillard
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
North America ◽  
West Indies ◽  
New World ◽  
West African ◽  
The Other ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Sea Islands ◽  
The West ◽  
The Caribbean

The English of the West Indies, like the other languages of the area, shows many resemblances to the language patterns of Negroes in other parts of the New World. There have been many controversies over this matter, with many linguists, especially dialect geographers, inclined to deny West African influence upon anything inside continental North America except for Gullah(Georgia and South Carolina sea islands) and the French Creole of Louisiana. Others, like Lorenzo Turner, who conclusively disproved the widely held belief that Gullah was an amalgam of archaic features from the British Isles,have substantiated the thesis of the anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits that the culture, including the language, of Negroes from Suriname to Michigan retains many traces of African patterns. And, since the recent death of the Haitian philologist Jules Faine, no one has seriously denied resemblances among the Caribbean dialects.

Lexical Conflation as a Basis for Relexification

1989 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alain Kihm
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
West African ◽  
The West ◽  
African Languages ◽  
The Caribbean

Substratal influences as an explanation for creolization (and language change generally) often fail to convince for one major reason, namely that, in most cases, the possible substratum for a given creole language is now separated from the site where creolization took place by a wide historical and geographical gap. This, for example, is the case of the West African languages vis-à-vis the Caribbean Creoles.

Religion

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Gardina Pestana
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Central Area ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
South Portugal

Religion shaped the early modern Atlantic world in many ways. Although Iberian expansion began before the Protestant Reformation, Europe soon divided between Protestant and Catholic, and this division created a context for European understandings of the purpose of expansion. With permission from the pope to evangelize outside the Old World, the Spanish and the Portuguese split the extra-European world between them; Spain was responsible for most of the Americas (excluding only the area that would become Brazil), while Portugal took Brazil and Africa (as well as Asia). Soon representatives of each kingdom were at work, conquering, colonizing, and evangelizing. Protestantism, although it arrived late in the contest for colonies and trade in this New World, was central to Spanish understanding of its work; evangelizing the native peoples of the Americas would add additional souls to the church, making up for those who had been lost to the Protestant Reformation. When Protestants finally became involved in colonizing the Americas and trading with Africa, they similarly understood their role as combating the reach and influence of their Catholic rivals. If in 1600 the European presence outside of Europe was overwhelmingly Catholic, by 1700 a map of the spread of Christianity showed varied results. Spain controlled the central area of the Americas, including much of South America and the Caribbean, all of Central America, and all the southern area of North America (from Florida and New Mexico south). Portugal had Brazil, while Catholic France held Quebec to the north and selected islands in the Caribbean. The Protestant presence was predominantly British, and included eastern North America between Quebec and Florida as well as some islands in the Caribbean. The Protestant Dutch also held island colonies and a South American outpost. West Africa and West Central Africa hosted trading forts controlled by most of these European powers, from which were shipped slaves as well as trade goods. The religious rivalries of early modern Europe had been effectively exported. Every faith represented along the shores of the Atlantic prior to contact would participate in the intermixing that occurred afterward. The history of religion in the Atlantic world therefore explores the variety of traditions within that world and the effects of the circulation, transplantation, and encounter of these various faiths.

For a Comprehensive History of the Atlantic World or Histories Connected In and Beyond the Atlantic World?

2012 ◽  
Vol 67 (02) ◽  
pp. 279-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cécile Vidal
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Atlantic History ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Atlantic Studies ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
European Colonialism ◽  
Comprehensive History

This article deals with the field of Atlantic history, which first rose to prominence in North America in the early 1990s. Based on a critical review of two recently published books that reflect this “new” historiographical current, it presents the various debates dividing the Atlanticist community, including the different ways of conceptualizing the Atlantic world, practicing Atlantic history, and envisioning the future of Atlantic studies. It argues that the Atlantic world should remain a simple historical framework instead of becoming the main object of investigation. The goal is thus to write a situated history that, while taking into account all historical actors, focuses on the redefinition and renegotiation of power relationships among individuals, groups, and socio-political formations in this interconnected world born out of European colonialism and imperialism.

Further Additions to Materials for West African History in the Archives of Belgium and Holland by Patricia Carson

1969 ◽  
Vol 12 (01) ◽  
pp. 81-89
Author(s):  
H. M. Feinberg
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
West African ◽  
African History ◽  
Guinea Coast ◽  
The West ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
The Hague ◽  
State Archives

This article is a supplement to a previous article on the same subject published in the African Studies Bulletin. Before I list further citations omitted from Materials for West African History in the Archives of Belgium and Holland, I will discuss, in some detail, the nature of the archival material deposited in the Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague. I will attempt to enhance the brief discussions of Miss Carson while avoiding repetition of statements which seem clear and/or are adequately discussed in her book. The General State Archives, The Hague, includes two major collections of interest to the West African historian: the Archives of the West India Companies and the Archives of the Netherlands Settlements on the Guinea Coast. Initially, one must realize that most of the seventeenth-century papers of both collections have been lost or destroyed, and that as a consequence there are many gaps among the existing manuscripts. For example, volume 81 (1658-1709) of the Archives of the Netherlands Settlements on the Guinea Coast includes only manuscripts for the following times: December 25, 1658-June 12, 1660; August, 1693; and October 12-December 31, 1709. Also, most of the seventeenth-century material is written in script, whereas the eighteenth-century manuscripts, with some exceptions, are in more conventional hand-writings.

Some social and phenomenological characteristics of psychotic immigrants

1981 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Littlewood ◽  
Maurice Lipsedge
Keyword(s):  
Retrospective Study ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Married Women ◽  
West African ◽  
High Rate ◽  
Psychiatric Unit ◽  
The West ◽  
The Caribbean

SynopsisVarious studies have shown: (i) increased rates of psychoses in immigrants to Britain, and a particularly high rate of schizophrenia in the West Indian- and West African-born; and (ii) a greater proportion of atypical psychoses in immigrants. A retrospective study of psychotic inpatients from a London psychiatric unit demonstrated increased rates of schizophrenia in patients from the Caribbean and West Africa. These patients included a high proportion of those with paranoid and religious phenomenology, those with frequent changes of diagnosis, formal admissions, and married women. The West Indian-born had been in Britain for nearly 10 years before first seeing a psychiatrist and, if they had an illness with religious symptomatology, were likely to have been in hospital for only 3 weeks. Rates of schizophrenia without paranoid phenomenology were similar in each ethnic group. It is suggested that the increase in the diagnosis of schizophrenia in the West Indian- born, and possibly in the West African-born, may be due in part to the occurrence of acute psychotic reactions which are diagnosed as schizophrenia.

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