The Atlantic World

4 credits · Undergraduate

This course explores the history of the four continents on the Atlantic rim—Europe, Africa, North and South America—and their increasing interconnectedness in the wake of Columbus’s voyage in 1492. It takes the Atlantic Ocean and its peripheries as a common zone of interaction, where peoples, cultures, ideas, goods, foodstuffs, and pathogens came into contact from diverse regions. The course begins with a portrait of Amerindian, African, and European civilizations c. 1400 and ends with an overview of the protracted struggles for decolonization and emancipation from slavery in the 19th-century Americas. Throughout these five centuries of profound transformation, we will study conflict and encounter between the region’s many diverse peoples.