The fact that books assessing the state of Atlantic history are being written probably means that this field can no longer be considered trendy, much less edgy or outré. Indeed, given its huge popularity among historians, particularly younger ones, in recent years, Atlantic history is now an (if not the) official establishment approach, an approach deemed sufficiently mature and orderly—even well behaved—to be allowed to sit with the interpretive grown ups, as it were. Now sitting with the grown ups is not necessarily a bad thing—given the most likely alternative—but in contemplating this change in status, I can’t help but to recall Gertrude Stein’s famous quip about the establishment of the Museum of Modern Art: “Either you’re a museum or you’re modern.” You can’t be both, in other words.
Fads fade, trends have a shelf life—“that’s so yesterday,” as our students might say—but becoming part of the interpretive establishment, like the signal museum status emits, also comes at a cost. Over the past decade or two, Atlantic history has insinuated itself into the very depths of the discipline. For better or worse, or, more accurately, for better and worse.
Why, one might ask? What is it about Atlantic history that has made it so appealing? For one thing, the relative capaciousness of the approach represents a significant improvement, ceteris paribus, over narrower, national or proto-national alternatives. Second, the approach has proved attractive and enticing to some absolutely first-rate historians, which has had what economists would call a powerful “signaling effect” on others in the profession. Indeed, I’d be the first to admit that it’s hard to improve on a roster led by sluggers such as Jack P. Greene and Bernard Bailyn.
And cultural capital helps, too. Through a variety of powerful institutional mechanisms—the Hopkins program in Atlantic History, Culture and Society, Harvard’s International Seminar in the History of the Atlantic World, 1500–1825, and Leiden University’s Institute for the History of European Expansion (IGEER), to name three of the most obvious and important—scores of bright young scholars over the years have been exposed to, dazzled by, and initiated into Atlantic history. As these scholars (and other like-minded ones) have risen in the discipline, they have come to constitute a powerful cohort moving together, a cohort operating from many of the same Atlanticist premises and assumptions, if not always with the same perspectives, ideologies, and, dare I say, worldviews. Rather like an impala passing through the body of an African python. Very impressive (if a bit difficult to swallow).
What are these people talking about when they wax on about the history of the Atlantic world(s)? What does the concept “Atlantic world” mean? Most, if not all Atlanticists would probably agree with Bailyn’s simple and direct proposition, put forth in the journal Itinerario in 1996, that during the “early modern” period (c. 1500–1800 CE) Western Europe, West Africa, and the Americas were sufficiently integrated in many ways as to lend themselves to treatment as a single unit: The Atlantic World.1 To be sure, such scholars might disagree amongst themselves over what material and/or ideational concerns to include in such treatment, over just how unitary said treatment perforce needs to be, over the power dynamics within and historical consequences of the unit in question, and over the degree to which this unit was hermetic or subject to breach. But, by and large, members of the “Atlantic community” could live with this conceptual scheme. In truth, under its broad shelter, they have lived very well indeed.
So what’s my beef with Atlantic history? Simply stated, in my view the levels of explanatory power and analytical acuity possible via the Atlantic history stratagem are beguiling, but ultimately limiting, because the stratagem artificially limits the field of vision of its devotees, often leaving them with their eyes wide shut to processes, developments, and conditions of central importance to understanding their “little corner of the world,” speaking figuratively. Or to put it another way, Bobby Darin’s way, we need to move “beyond the sea.” Certainly that sea, but maybe others as well.
Of course, seas and oceans are very much in these days. We have Atlantic historians, and historians of the Indian Ocean “world.” We’ve long known about Braudel, but there are new generations of scholars touting la méditerannée as organizing conceit. The Black Sea has its people, as do the Great Lakes (both those in East Africa and those in the U.S. Midwest). Others are studying the “world” of the North Sea, and there are Pacific basinites and rimmers galore.2 Other scholars are even beginning to chant the mantra “ocean’s connect, ocean’s connect.” 3 The problem with this mantra and other repetitive sacred formulae, including Atlantic history, is that such repetition has what economists call opportunity costs, that is to say, the costs foregone by not pursuing the best available alternative. And it is to that alternative that we now shall turn.
In a critique of Atlantic history, or, more properly, the “Atlanticist perspective,” published in the Journal of World History in 2002, I made a four-part case against the approach, arguing that the perspective:
… however enriching, is constricting interpretively and somewhat misspecified analytically, a halfway historiographical covenant as it were, nothing more, nothing less. By fixing our historical gaze so firmly toward the West, the approach may, anachronistically, give too much weight to the Atlantic Rim, separate Northwest Europe too sharply both from other parts of Europe and from Eurasia as a whole, accord too much primacy to America in explaining Europe’s transoceanic trade patterns, and economically speaking, misrepresent through overstatement the place of Europe in the order of things.4
Where do I stand today? Hopefully, a bit better informed, and, thus, a bit more nuanced and sophisticated in my critique. But I must admit that work done in the intervening years hasn’t persuaded me to move at all toward the Atlantic camp.
Take my 2002 point about the Atlanticists’ fixation toward the West. Now, admittedly, I probably should have used a different preposition here—on rather than toward—as important works such as Daniel Richter’s Facing East from Indian Country clearly demonstrate.5 But the obsession with the Atlantic world qua unit continues to impede our understanding of the degree to which this unit drew its life blood from—and hemorrhaged into—others. Virtually everywhere one looks in the “Atlantic World” in the “early modern” period, one finds other worlds impinging on and often shaping developments. I’m not necessarily talking about the origins of many European and African foodstuffs—this isn’t a game of “gotcha,” after all—although even a cursory look at a work such as Andrew M. Watson’s Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World is enough to give pause to even the most ardent Occidentalists.6 The problems resulting from a fixation on origins—“the idol of origins,” as March Bloch famously put it—were laid out long ago.7 So for the record I’m not calling for us to focus here on the manner in which wind from the East, as it were, affected “Western” social developments well before the early modern period: for that we can look to that famous scholarly double-play combination Hodgson to Bernal to Hobson.8 What I do ask here is that we think about the close connections of “East” and “West” during the heyday of the “Atlantic World,” for once we do we find that during this particular period, pace Mr. Kipling, ever the twain shall meet.
Sometimes the connections are rendered visible in a manner analogous to that known in art as pentimento—where an earlier painting shows through another painting or at least parts thereof—as historian of China Robert B. Marks has recently pointed out.9 For example, does the small peninsula at the westernmost tip of the Eurasian landmass become Western Europe as we came to know it in the early modern period without the Black Death (which spread from Asia) and the collapse of the Mongol Empire? For these factors were arguably necessary (though clearly insufficient) in shaping, indeed, perhaps even permitting the region’s impressive fifteenth-century advance. And not to put too fine a point on it, if we would explain Western Europe’s rise beginning in that century, particularly its tentative external expansion, can we realistically do so without taking full account of the huge role of Islamic, Indian, and Chinese knowledge, particularly in the realms of science, mathematics, engineering, and technology? For starters, can we talk about paper, printing, measuring devices, the equine horse collar, the Indic stirrup, gunpowder, weaponry (including rudimentary missiles, rockets, grenades, bombards, and cannons), the compass, and the lateen sail? Then, of course, there is the number zero, first developed in India sometime during the Gupta period (320–550 CE), and, while we’re at it, the arch and vault from Indian Buddhist architecture as well!10
Now I’m certainly not claiming that Europe contributed nothing of technological note over the ages: I’ve read my Landes and know all about eyeglasses, and even people such as Joseph Needham and Donald Lach would admit that the vast majority of the technologies transferred appeared in the West before the sixteenth century.11 Moreover, I know enough about technology not to deprecate the creativity involved in successful technological transfer. Think for a moment what Europeans did with printing, gunpowder/weaponry, and the stirrup (not to mention with the arch and vault!), and, later, with another “Asian” technology: the cotton gin.12 All I’m saying is that we can’t understand the rise of Western Europe and, withal, the Atlantic World by severing these developments from developments in the rest of Europe, the rest of Eurasia, or, more, accurately, Afro-Eurasia. Indeed, according to historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Westerners can for some purposes be viewed as “the dregs of Eurasian history, and the salient they inhabit … the sump into which Eurasian history has drained.”13 If the Atlantic World was a world Europeans, Africans and Americans “made together,” they made it together with peoples without.14
Then there are various questions relating to mentalité, personnel, and behavior. That is to say, can one readily, accurately, or legitimately draw hard-and-fast distinctions between voyages and voyagers to the West and voyages and voyagers to the East? Obviously, there are important distinctions to be made here, but said distinctions need greater interrogation and qualification than they are often given. This appears particularly true early in the early modern period when it seems anachronistic even to attempt to distinguish between discrete “Atlantic” and “non-Atlantic” or “extra-Atlantic” thrusters, particularly since most “thrusters,” Atlantic or otherwise, were certainly searching for the “East.” As time passed, distinctions became more clear-cut—no successful colonies of “settlement” were established in the “East” by Europeans in the early modern period—but, this said, at the broadest level, economic gain was paramount among most voyagers East and West throughout the period in question, and, more so, among those organized collectivities of Europeans (public, public/private, or private) that sponsored and financed them.15 Take the Lords Proprietors of Carolina. The eight men to whom Charles II granted the Carolina Charter in 1663 were nothing if not worldly, involved over the course of their lives in financial ventures, adventures, and misadventures stretching from the Indian Ocean to West Africa to the West Indies to Hudson’s Bay. In addition to investments in Tangier, the Northwest Passage, and the Royal Africa Company. Whatever, wherever their economic behavior seemed to direct them!16
Still, right now we don’t know nearly enough to speak with much precision or calibration in a comparative sense about mentalité, personnel, and behavior among those that ventured east and those that set out west. Or even about the numbers involved. Although the number of Europeans who migrated to Asia in the “early modern” period was far greater than many realize—some estimates run as high as 375,000 for Dutch migrants alone in the seventeenth century (with another 100,000 from “Britain”)—we are only now beginning to appreciate the importance of contextualizing Atlantic developments by linking them to European expansionary initiatives elsewhere in the world during the period 1500–1800 CE.17 We could begin by paying more attention, in studying the “Age of Discovery,” to matters relating to who, what, where, when, why, how, and “how many.” Just one tantalizing example in this regard: According to quantitative data put together by Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke, the value of English and Dutch imports from Asia in the middle of the eighteenth century—whatever the number of English and Dutch residents there—was greater than the value of English and Dutch imports from the Americas at that time.18
A cautionary note at this point before we all set sail, though: in casting our eyes outward, we must take care not to bid bon voyage to Europe itself. In taking the Atlantic World bit—ok, the global bit, too—it is easy to lose sight of the fact that though developments in Western Europe, West Africa, the Americas, and Asia were dramatic in the early modern period, there was still a lot going on, economically and otherwise, in other parts of Europe, too. Intra-European trade, for example, was massive (if not particularly exciting) during the period, to which the barge traffic on the Rhine and the traffic through the Danish Sound (among other indicators) amply attests. Proto-industrialization in central Europe. The so-called second serfdom further east. Trade in la méditerranée still going strong. And whereas roughly six thousand Scots ventured to the Americas in the seventeenth century somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 Scots migrated to the Polish crown lands.19 In other words, it is important always to keep in mind that all of the action hadn’t left town. That said, all aboard!
Now that we’re on blue water, let me come right out and say it: It is well nigh impossible somehow to hive off the Atlantic “unit” from a bigger unit: the world. This is especially true when speaking of matters material, particularly biological and economic concerns. We’ve already mentioned the Black Death, for example, to which we can add other disease scourges entering the “West” from the “East.” Indeed, what we in the West refer to as the late medieval/early modern period can be broadly bracketed by two pandemics—bubonic plague (1347–1350) and cholera (1832)—arriving from Asia.
In matters economic, it defies logic to proceed under the assumption that the Atlantic World was a discrete economic unit when roughly 75 percent of one of its most important (and certainly celebrated) economic resources, American silver, ended up in China over the course of the early modern period (and when the Spanish real functioned as the international trading currency over much of Asia).20 When the African slave trade ran largely on textiles—“long cloths,” “Guinea cloths,” allijars, salemporis, etc.—from India and cowry shells from the Maldives. And speaking of Indian textiles, how does a dyed-in-the-wool Atlanticist explain the appeal of Indian “calicoes” which dominated the English textiles market (as well as the appeal of Indian “guinea cloth” in the West Indies and British North America) in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries?21 What about the equally dominant position in Europe during this same period of silk imports from the “East?” And, of course, what about the fabled spice trade—pepper, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, mace—drugs and “apothecary,” ceramics, porcelain, coffee, tea, and, later in the period, various other articles of chinoiserie?22
The international trade in rice provides yet another powerful case in point. Most of the world’s rice, of course, has always been grown and eaten in Asia, and most trading in rice has been intra-Asian. Prior to the sixteenth century, most of the rice that was traded in the West—not that much, actually—came from India and the Middle East, but between roughly the middle of the sixteenth century and the middle of the nineteenth century demand in the West was met largely by Western suppliers, first from northwestern Italy and Spain, but, beginning in the eighteenth century, from American suppliers in South Carolina, Georgia, and Brazil as well. By the end of the eighteenth century, rice was becoming commodified in the West, and once transport costs had declined sufficiently as to allow cheap rice from South Asia and, later, Southeast Asia to penetrate Western markets, Western suppliers were increasingly eased out of the most lucrative parts of the rice-export trade. Political economist David MacPherson noted the commodification of rice in the West and the shift—at that time, only at the margin—toward Asian suppliers as early as 1795, pointing out that rice was the first “necessary” sent in significant quantities to the West from Asia, all previous trade consisting of articles and products “rather of ornament and luxury than of use.” 23 By the 1860s Asian rice had inundated the West, and Western suppliers had been knocked out of all of the main markets in the Atlantic world by cheap rice from Bengal, Java, Lower Burma, Siam, and Cochinchina.24
But what about the early modern period itself? Cannot that period at least be considered a cut-and-dried, case-closed “Western” phase of the Western rice trade? Well, yes and no. When considering that period, it is important to keep in mind that rice was a crop of Asian origin produced via technology developed to a considerable extent in Asia by a labor force, the American portion of which was acquired in West Africa in exchange in large part for South Asian goods and products (cowries and textiles, most notably).25 Even here, then, lots of hemorrhaging from the Atlantic, lots of mixing, blending, blurring of “East” and “West.”
In addition to articles of trade, what about traders themselves? We all know about the famous European companies in Asia—the Portuguese East India Company, the English East India Company, and the V.O.C.—as well as the English Levant Company, the Compagnie des Indes Orientales (among other French companies), the Swedish East India Company, the Ostend Company, a Danish company, and others emanating from Prussia, Russia, and Spain. Islamic Turks, Levantine Jews, and Armenians also traded throughout Europe (and sometimes in West Africa, too) during the period in question, and various indigenous middlemen—brokers, bankers, and the like (known in South Asia as banions, shroffs, dubashes, etc.)—worked closely with Europeans in Asia as well.26 While we’re on the subject of trade, it should be noted that “East” and “West” shared many of the same commercial institutions and mechanisms—commenda contracts, bills of exchange, debt instruments, trade associations, spot markets, etc.—and worked out viable ways of doing business (or “cross-cultural exchange,” as Curtin puts it) together.27 Just to be snide, let me add as an aside that in his famous early account, Suma Oriental, written between 1512–1515, the Portuguese apothecary/accountant/traveler Tomé Pires stated (in at least one version of his famous account) that the merchants of Cambay in western India were better at commerce than were the Italians themselves! 28 So there.
Pushing ahead—Eastward Ho, one might say—how can one consider the Atlantic World a discrete unit after 1571, the Manila Galleon, and all that?29 Unless, that is to say, one is prepared to redefine China as an Atlantic power, a project which Gavin Menzies has been trying to promote, mercifully with little success to date.30 And if the Atlantic and the non-Atlantic worlds are so distinct, why did the treaties ending the nearly incessant warfare among European powers in the early modern period—Breda, Ryswick, Utrecht, Aix-la-Chapelle, Paris, etc.—typically contain important provisions relating to Asia?31 Invoking the last of these, the Peace of Paris, brings to mind another important matter: the Indian dimensions of the French and Indian War. I think it not merely plausible, but reasonable to argue that in the long run the French surrender at Pondicherry in January 1761—effectively removing the French as a presence in India—may have been one of the most significant results of that whole conflict. It certainly helped to facilitate the creation of the “Second British Empire,” although I must admit that I don’t see the need for, much less value in dividing said empire into phases I and II. In this regard—I’m on a roll now—Britain’s opening up of the Philippines’ trade during the Seven Years’ War and the collapse of the V.O.C.’s trade monopoly on Java as a result of Asian military action during the “American” Revolution helped to usher in profound changes in Asian trade patterns, changes which were later reinforced by Stamford Raffles, who was Lord Minto’s secretary when Minto seized Java in the name of Britain in 1811. After the seizure of Java, Raffles was named Lieutenant-Governor by Minto, and became the key person in charge there between 1811 and 1816, during which period he put into place a number of liberal reforms (by the way, Raffles was born on a ship off of the coast of Jamaica, and, in fall 2005, when I began working on this piece on Atlantic history, I was holding the Raffles Professorship in Southeast Asian history at the National University of Singapore, which further underscores my overarching point).32 And for yet another powerful “coincidence”: Lord Charles Cornwallis of Yorktown fame, after passing Go(a!), rebounded nicely in India, where as Governor General and Commander in Chief between 1786 and 1793, he earned an estimable reputation as a reform-minded administrator. After returning to England, he was later Viceroy of Ireland, and one of the negotiators of the Treaty of Amiens, before being reappointed Governor General of India in 1805. He died in India on October 5 of that same year.33
Thus far I’ve been making the case in this chapter that the so-called Atlantic World should not be treated as a discrete unit during the period 1500–1800 CE. Northwestern European political entities were expanding outward during this period, creating global empires in the process. At the same time, other “Old World” empires were expanding all across and around the Eurasian landmass: Russia, the Ottomans, Safavid Iran, Mughal India, and China. In some areas these empires butted up against one another, which led to conflict. At the same time, however, these empires (or at least parties located therein) traded peacefully with one another, at times directly, at other times through intermediaries. Indeed, stepping back a bit, one finds that the so-called early modern period was one of those intermittent historical eras of relatively open trade across and around the Eurasian landmass. As Philip Curtin among others has pointed out, one such period occurred “in the Han-Parthian-Roman period in the early Christian era,” and another during what might be called the Tang-Abbassid period during the seventh and eighth centuries34 Yet another such period occurred during the height of Mongol power between c. 1250–1350 CE—the period of Janet Abu-Lughod’s first “world system”—and, then again, as Europe expanded outward by sea to link up with what K.N. Chaudhuri referred to as the “emporia trade” of Asia in the period after 1500.35
Speaking of these emporia reminds me (again, as a bit of an aside): the final point in my aforementioned 2002 critique of Atlantic history qua field related to the tendency by proponents to overestimate the place of Europe in things during the period 1500–1800 CE. At that time, I invoked the work of a variety of scholars, most notably, those associated with the so-called California School, to make the case that “Asia” was economically far more dynamic, wealthy, and vibrant during the early modern period than many writers had previously believed, with the most advanced regions in Asia—the lower Yangzi delta, most notably—by many standards on par with, if not ahead of the most advanced regions in northwestern Europe during much of this period.36 Although the California School cannot yet claim total victory here—indeed, I myself don’t completely buy into parts of its argument, particularly that part purporting to explain the reasons for Asia’s relative fall and Europe’s relative rise c. 1750–1800—even the most ardent Eurocentrics in the house, assessing the state of the debate in 2008, would concede that scholars associated with the California School have demonstrated pretty conclusively that whatever differentials in wealth and living standards existed between Asia and Europe in the early modern period were probably trivial.37
On the face of it, it seems implausible to link Northwestern Europe’s external expansion, Eurasian empires, and relatively open trade. Relatively open trade? During the age of mercantilism? Again, we’re talking big picture here, and, with this in mind, it makes sense to invoke Abu-Lughod again. The conceptual schema she lays out in Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350 with reference to the Mongol period is suggestive for later ones as well, including the early modern period. According to Abu-Lughod the (loosely integrated) thirteenth-century world system was comprised of eight interacting and partially overlapping “trade circuits” encompassing much of Europe, the Middle East, north and northeast Africa, and Asia. In some ways her circuits resemble Venn diagrams, depicting, as they do, a series of historical (trade) sets, which have some, but not all, elements in common. The common areas might be considered (trade) intersections, but the entire series can be spanned without any breaks. According to Abu-Lughod, this system, for a variety of reasons, gradually broke down after about 1350—others argue that the breakdown she sees may be overstated—but it may repay our time to think a bit about how a similar, but much more extensive system of circuits was reconstituted in the period from 1450 to 1800 CE or thereabouts.38
This system, though not yet quite global, was for the first time approaching true “world-system” status in a literal sense by the end of this period. By 1800, the entire world, again, for the first time, had pretty much been incorporated into the mental maps—the metageographies, as it were—of navigators and intellectuals alike, and trade orbits were becoming increasingly far-flung.39 In the middle of this period, say 1650 or 1700, one finds modifications of, and extensions to the circuits found by Abu-Lughod several hundred years’ earlier, but much of her system is still recognizable. The most notable change, of course, is a new circuit encompassing the “Atlantic World” we know and love—with a trans-Pacific extension in Manila, the principal importance of which was to link American silver to China, and, thereby, to Chinese goods. Another major change was what might be called the Vasco da Gama circuit linking Western Europe and West Africa to “extended” Indian Ocean emporia (all the way to Japan and Formosa) via the Cape of Good Hope. Although Asianists (particularly those associated with the California School) reject the notion that this circuit revolutionized Asian trade—not for them Panikkar’s implicitly Eurocentric notion of an “epoch of Vasco da Gama”—it was nonetheless important in creating new links and relationships.40
There are other smaller changes in Abu-Lughod’s system. The Mediterranean circuit extends further west and south. The North Sea world has emerged as a circuit. The Eurasian overland circuit is qualitatively different (and now facilitated largely by Armenian traders). The Arabian Sea/Northeast Africa-Red Sea circuits incorporate more of East Africa. The Asian circuits are larger, and several new circuits have emerged in Africa: the trans-Saharan circuit, and a variety of smaller circuits linking up coastal areas in Africa with the interior. Speaking of Africa, it is important to recognize that sub-Saharan Africa by this time can be said to have three “coasts: the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, and the Sahara itself, with traders and trade centers operating on the “coastlines” of all three. And, finally, a continental circuit or two may have encompassed broad parts of the Americas.41
The upshot of all of this circuitry was a historically rapid increase in world trade during the early modern period. As Kevin H. O’Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson among others make clear, world trade grew significantly faster than did world population in this period, testimony to the relative openness—in a functional sense at least—of the “system.”42 The “system.” I’ve used “system” and “world-system” quite a bit in the last few paragraphs, but, for the record, let me stress that I’m not pushing a full-blown, reified “world-system” in a Wallersteinian sense. I’m not at all about cores, semi-peripheries, peripheries, and external arenas, let alone about Frankian satellites and metropoli.43 All I’m trying to convey in the discussion above is that it is possible to distinguish certain broadly patterned trade routes and trade relationships in the period 1500–1800 CE, and, if one is so inclined (and I am), one can legitimately refer to them as circuits, orbits, etc., that were related to one another in different ways and to varying degrees.
To say here that I am not calling for a Wallersteinian form of “world-systems” analysis is not meant to disparage either Wallerstein or the many scholars in the historical social sciences, particularly historical sociology who still operate within this framework. In fact, I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for approaches—various Marxist and neo-Marxist approaches, for example—with a predilection or “preferential option” for seeing things as inter-related, as parts of a greater whole. If I can’t buy into the Wallersteinian framework, it’s not because it’s completely unhelpful as a heuristic, but because I prefer in this case an alternative framework drawn from the literature on the “articulation of productive modes.” This literature can be rather abstruse at times (to put it mildly), but, employed cautiously and metaphorically, it can help us, I believe, to understand and interpret the relationship in the early modern period between the Atlantic and the World.
To put things in brutally simple and somewhat stylized form: to Marxists, a mode of production refers to the relationship between the producers of some economic output, on the one hand, and the owners of the means of production, on the other. In classical Marxism, modes of production are seen as following one another in successive stages from various pre-capitalist “modes”—primitive communalism, slavery, feudalism—to capitalism, and, in time (and with a leap of faith) to socialism. The European founders of Marxism generally wrote as though world history would unfold more or less as it did in Europe, with areas everywhere proceeding in time through the various productive modes in the same linear sequence, indeed, in the same linear manner as had Europe. To be sure, Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Hilferding, Bukharin, Lenin, and other so-called classical Marxists were sensitive to complexities arising from so-called transitions between discrete modes, but the basic sequence of the scheme outlined above was not seriously questioned.44
Over the past two generations, however, many neo-Marxists, particularly those focusing on what used to be called the Third World, found this basic scheme unsatisfactory. They found that the theoretical options available to them in categorizing the economies of developing countries that were in close contact with fully capitalist economies—those options being pre-capitalist, transitional, or fully capitalist—did not adequately explain the “facts on the ground.” More specifically, these writers—and here I’m lumping together scholars with somewhat diverse views such as Giovanni Arrighi and P.P. Rey, and, to some extent, Colin Leys as well—believed that different production modes often existed simultaneously, without necessarily being part of any linear “transition” to capitalism, and without necessarily being in contradiction.45 Rather, such modes interacted or articulated with one another in different ways and with varying consequences. In most cases, though, these writers saw one or another pre-capitalist form—whether slavery or some type of indigenous tributary mode or kin-based mode—being harnessed in such a way to as to subsidize, underpin, and support capitalist actors and sectors in the exploitation and expropriation process in one or another part of the Third World. This linkage cum subsidization/support process—seen as an unequal and asymmetrical one—became widely known in the literature as the articulation of production modes.46
So how does this literature help us in understanding the Atlantic/World? In my view, the key lies in the concept of articulation, for in the early modern period the unitary “Atlantic World” clearly articulated with other circuits and orbits around the globe. And this articulation process—what might be called the spatial articulation of trade circuits, or, speaking more broadly, exchange circuits—manifested itself in different ways and with varying consequences, all of which in principle at least are worthy of study in their own right. In this scheme, the Indian Ocean trade, the Manila Galleon, the Silk Road—not to mention the exchange circuits of the Mediterranean, Africa, central and eastern Europe, and the North Sea—are all conjoined in appropriate ways to goings on in and along the Atlantic Basin per se. If we adopted this approach, of course, we would need, among other things, to modify David Armitage’s useful trichotomy by adding to the concepts Circum-Atlantic, Trans-Atlantic, and Cis-Atlantic history the concept of, let’s call it Conjuncto-Atlantic history.47
In so doing, we could link up with other questions and other historiographies to offer a broader, richer, amplified view of Atlantic dynamics. What, for example, were the differential effects of the spatial articulation of trade circuits on the various actors and entities involved therein? Did such effects change over time? If so, how? Were the dominant areas in the Atlantic World, particularly those in northwest Europe, supported and subsidized by the process of articulation—as might be presumed—or were matters more complicated? Or, perhaps in some cases such as East Asia (or at least the lower Yangzi) even reversed? Obviously, answering such questions goes beyond the scope of this chapter. In any case, we still lack the empirical evidence regarding some of these circuits to speak with much confidence about the articulation process(es) in which they were involved. Nonetheless, I for one am convinced that this is the direction in which Atlanticists—at least some Atlanticists—need to move. For whatever the answers to the above questions, they would be based, properly in my view, on the linkage of processes occurring in the Atlantic with those of the Atlantic (even if extra-Atlantic in a strict geographical sense). In other words, Manila, Canton, the Moluccas, Malacca, Calicut, Surat, Kashgar, Samarkand, the Maldives, Mocha, and Cairo—as well as Venice, Danzig, and Cologne—were all implicated in the making of Atlantic history rather than worlds apart.
Almost all attention thus far has been on matters material, particularly on matters economic. The inter-related circuits mentioned above refer specifically to trade, too, but such circuits are to a greater or lesser degree applicable to other types of exchanges—biological, technological, and scientific exchanges, most obviously, but extending to the philosophical/religious realm as well. The spread of Islam from its birthplace on the Arabian peninsula to other parts of Afro-Eurasia during the early modern period, and the (more modest) spread of Catholicism to (parts of) the Philippines, to cite two famous examples. Jerry Bentley’s impressive study Old World Encounters documents many other examples of such transfers and exchanges in the philosophical/religious realm.48 Although many social theorists over the years have made the case that certain religious traditions are more conducive to economic growth than are others—Weber, Tawney and all that—I don’t want to go there, at least not here. What I would like to do in the remainder of this chapter, however, is briefly to discuss some exciting work in economic theory that sheds light on the way in which broad exchanges arising from the spatial articulation of trade circuits during the early modern period might have played a significant role in facilitating sustained economic growth both in the Atlantic World and elsewhere. And this is just one example, I believe, of the potential explanatory power of a more expansive and more relational approach to analyzing the Atlantic World.
Whereas I’ve drawn in the section above from several critical traditions in economics, at the end of the day I return, by no means begrudgingly, to the standard bourgeois economic mold. In so doing, we find that over the past twenty years or so economic growth theory has been transformed. Without getting into the intricacies of the transformation—essentially a shift away from Robert Solow’s model emphasizing labor and capital accumulation and technical progress to “new growth theory” models associated with economists such as Nobelist Robert Lucas, Gene Grossman and Elhanan Helpman, and Luis Rivera-Batiz and Paul M. Romer—I shall call attention to some important work done by Rivera-Batiz and Romer that is relevant to our discussion.
In a hugely influential 1991 paper entitled “Economic Integration and Endogenous Growth” (and in subsequent extensions), Rivera-Batiz and Romer developed a so-called endogenous model of technological change—Solow had assumed the importance of technological change without ever adequately explaining how such change came about—that focused on economic integration as the key.49 Developments that break down economic isolation and facilitate economic integration are particularly important to their model, not primarily in the Ricardian or neo-Ricardian sense of integration perforce bringing into play efficiency-enhancing factors relating to comparative advantage, but because with integration, particularly the integration of diverse areas and peoples from advanced societies, comes not merely flows of new goods but, more importantly, of new ideas. And the trade-induced flow of new ideas—which flow, according to Rivera-Bariz and Romer, is heavily influenced by institutions and public policy—is crucial to the cross-border (or even cross-civilizational) diffusion of new technology and thus often to technological progress and, to the fortunate, the endogenization and institutionalization of economic growth. Although Rivera-Bariz and Romer are laying out a general framework here, it is important—and, for our purposes most revealing—to note that in their now classic 1991 QJE paper they cite the exchange of ideas via the Silk Road as an example par excellence of the trade-induced concatenation of cross-cultural knowledge bases that is at the heart of their theory of integration and endogenous growth.50 An effect of the spatial articulation of trade circuits, in other words.
What I have tried to do here is to stretch and open up the concept of Atlantic history a bit. The approach associated with the concept is arguably the most exciting development to have coursed through early-American-history circles in the last generation. It has helped to link up or at least to begin an ongoing conversation among scholars working on hitherto largely independent fields, and it has enriched our understanding of the complex, intricately imbricated relationship among various and sundry parts of Western Europe, West Africa, and the Americas during the early modern period. This has unintentionally led to the relative neglect of other important approaches—the hemispheric history approach that Jack Greene among others has recently been calling for, for example—and, even more seriously from my perspective, it has had the perverse effect of separating, if not isolating the Atlantic “unit” from all other “units” in the early modern period.51 The global links and connections to which I have called attention here should be seen as an earnest attempt to convince Atlanticists to move “a little beyond,” as the transcendentalists might put it, and to broaden their canvas, thereby justifying the use of a slash between the words “Atlantic” and “World.” 52
This chapter is based largely on an earlier piece, “Atlantic World or Atlantic/World?” William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser., 63 (October 2006): 725–742. The author would like to thank the WMQ for permission to use materials published in that journal.
1. Bailyn, “The Idea of Atlantic History,” Itinerario 20 (1996): 19–44. Note my use of quotation marks around the term “early modern” in the text. This complicated term is not readily, much less seamlessly transferable beyond the West.
2. In this regard it is interesting to note that Routledge began a “Seas in History” series a few years’ back.
3. Martin W. Lewis and Kären E. Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997); Wigen, “Introduction,” American Historical Review 111 (June 2006): 717–721.
4. Coclanis, Drang Nach Osten: Bernard Bailyn, the World-Island and the Idea of Atlantic History, “Journal of World History 13 (Spring 2002): 169–182, especially p. 176. Also see Coclanis “Atlantic World or Atlantic/World?” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd sep., 63 (2006): 725–742.
5. Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).
6. Andrew M. Watson, Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World: The Diffusion of Crops and Farming Techniques, 700–1100 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
7. On the “idol of origins,” see Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, trans. Peter Putnam (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1954), pp. 29–35.
8. Marshall G.S. Hodgson, Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam, and World History, ed. Edmund Burke III (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, 3 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987–2006); John M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
9. Robert B. Marks, The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), pp. 7–8.
10. For informed discussions of the Eastern roots of these and other technologies and innovations, see in particular Joseph S. Needham’s ongoing Science and Civilisation in China series (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954-), esp. Vol. I, and Donald F. Lach’s Asia in the Making of Europe series (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965-), Vol. I, Book I.
11. David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are so Rich and Some are so Poor (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998). Also see Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, Vol. I, Book I, pp. 81–84.
12. On the Asian—Indian and Chinese in particular—role in the development of the cotton gin, see Angela Lakwete, Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), pp. 5–8, 11–16 esp.
13. Fernández-Armesto, Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), p. 121.
14. The phrase “made together” is drawn from Mechal Sobel, The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in Eighteenth-Century Virginia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987).
15. Coclanis, “ReOrienting Atlantic History: The Global Dimensions of the ‘Western’ Rice Trade,” in The Atlantic in Global History, 1500–2000, eds. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Erik R. Seeman (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson/Prentice-Hall, 2006), pp. 111–127.
16. See Coclanis, “ReOrienting Atlantic History.” Also see Coclanis, “Global Perspectives on the Early Economic History of South Carolina,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 106 (April-July 2005) 130–146.
17. See Coclanis, “Drang Nach Osten,” p. 176. Note that Bailyn goes with a lower estimate in Atlantic History: Concepts and Contours (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 134, note 44.
18. Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke, “Commodity Price Integration, 1500–2000,” in Globalization in Historical Perspective, eds. Michael D. Bordo, Alan M. Taylor, and Jeffrey G. Williamson, National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 13–62, esp. pp. 19–21.
19. Waldemar Kowalski, “The Placement of Urbanised Scots in the Polish Crown Lands during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Scottish Communities Abroad in the Early Modern Period, ed. Alexia Grosjean and Steve Murdoch (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2005), pp. 53–103, esp. pp. 63–64.
20. Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez, “Spanish Profitability in the Pacific: The Philippines in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Pacific Centuries: Pacific and Pacific Rim History Since the Sixteenth Century, eds., Dennis O. Flynn, Lionel Frost, and A.J.H. Latham (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), pp. 23–37; Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 139–149; Marks, The Origins of the Modern World, pp. 79–82; K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 97, 215–216.
21. Coclanis, “ReOrienting Atlantic History”; Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation, pp. 18–19, 82, 97; Prasannan Parthasarathi, “Rethinking Wages and Competitiveness in the Eighteenth Century: Britain and South India,” Past and Present 158 (February 1998): 79–109; Marks, The Origins of the Modern World, pp. 96–101. On the role of cowry shells in the slave trade, also see Jan S. Hogendorn and Marion Johnson, The Shell Money of the Slave Trade (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Frank Perlin, “Money-Use in Late Precolonial South Asia and the World Trade in Currency Media,” in Perlin, ‘The Invisible City’: Monetary, Administrative and Popular Infrastructures in Asia and Europe, 1500–1900 (Aldershot, Hampshire, Great Britain: VARIORUM/Ashgate, 1993), pp. 141–149.
22. See, for example, Holden Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600–1800 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976), pp. 230–263 esp.; Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation, pp. 63–97, 182–202; Philip D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 136–157; Arun Das Gupta, “The Maritime Trade of Indonesia: 1500–1800,” in India and the Indian Ocean, 1500–1800, eds. Ashin Das Gupta and M.N. Pearson (Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 240–275; Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680, 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988–1993), Vol. Two, pp. 1–43 esp. Also see, Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, Vol. I, Book One, pp. 91–142; Vol. II, Book I, p. 55.
23. David MacPherson, Annals of Commerce, Manufactures, Fisheries, and Navigation …, 4 vols. (London: Printed for Nichols and Son, 1805), 4: 362.
24. Coclanis, “Southeast Asia’s Incorporation into the World Rice Market: A Revisionist View,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 24 (September 1993): 251–267; Coclanis, “Distant Thunder: The Creation of a World Market in Rice and the Transformations It Wrought,” American Historical Review 98 (October 1993): 1050–1078; Coclanis, “ReOrienting Atlantic History.”
25. Coclanis, “Distant Thunder”; Coclanis, “ReOrienting Atlantic History.”
26. See, for example, Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History, pp. 136–206; Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean, pp. 63–118, 182–228; Frederic Mauro, “Merchant Communities, 1350–1750,” in The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350–1750, ed. James D. Tracy (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 255–286.
27. See the works cited in note 26 above.
28. Tomé Pires, Suma Oriental … 1512–1515, trans. Armando Cortesao, The Hakluyt Society, Second Series, no. 89 (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1944), pp. 41–42.
29. See Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez, “Born with a ‘Silver Spoon’: The Origin of World Trade in 1571,” Journal of World History 6 (Fall 1995): 201–221; Flynn and Giráldez, “Cycles of Silver: Global Economic Unity through the Mid-Eighteenth Century,” Journal of World History 13 (Fall 2002): 391–427; Peter A. Coclanis, “Pacific Overtures: The Spanish Lake and the Global Economy, 1500–1800,” Common-Place 5 (January 2005).
30. On the purported Chinese discovery of America, see Gavin Menzies, 1421: The Year China Discovered America (New York: William Morrow, 2003).
31. Coclanis, “ReOrienting Atlantic History.”
32. Coclanis, “Drang Nach Osten,” p. 179–18; Anthony Reid, “A New Phase of Commercial Expansion in Southeast Asia, 1760–1850,” in The Last Stand of Asian Autonomies: Responses to Modernity in the Diverse States of Southeast Asia and Korea, 1750–1900, ed. Anthony Reid (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), pp. 57–81. On the surrender of Pondicherry by the French, see Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), pp. 417–419. For the basic chronology of Raffles’ life, see Dictionary of National Biography, 16: 604–608.
33. See Dictionary of National Biography, 4: 1159–1166.
34. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History, pp. 90–108, esp. p. 105; Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean, pp. 34–62; Kenneth McPherson, The Indian Ocean: A History of People and the Sea (Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 76–136; Milo Kearney, The Indian Ocean in World History (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 31–76.
35. Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Kearney, The Indian Ocean in World History, pp. 77–102; Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean, pp. 98–136 esp.; Peter A. Coclanis, Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle: Globalization in Southeast Asia over la Longue Durée (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2006), pp. 26–34.
36. Scholars associated with the “California School” include, among others, Kenneth Pomeranz, R. Bin Wong, James Z. Lee, and Robert B. Marks, as well as “honorary” alumni such as Andre Gunder Frank and James M. Blaut.
37. Coclanis, “Drang Nach Osten,” pp. 180–181.
38. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony, pp. 3–40 esp. For a visual representation of the eight circuits, see p. 34, Figure 1. On the persistence of parts of her “world system,” see Frank, ReOrient, pp. 128–130, and my argument in this piece.
39. David Armitage, “Is There a Pre-History of Globalization?” in Comparison and History: Europe in Cross-National Perspective, eds. Deborah Cohen and Maura O’Connor (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 165–176, esp. pp. 169–170.
40. K.M. Panikkar, Asia and Western Dominance; A Survey of the Vasco da Gama Epoch of Asian History, 1498–1945 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1953).
41. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History, pp. 26–28. On the contours of the trans-Saharan trade, see Ralph A. Austen, “Marginalization, Stagnation, and Growth: The Trans-Saharan Caravan Trade in the Era of European Expansion, 1500–1900,” in The Rise of Merchant Empires, pp. 311–350. The likelihood of such continental circuits seems apparent in light of the work of Alan Taylor and others. For an introduction to the “continental” approach, see Taylor, American Colonies, Penguin History of the United States (New York: Penguin, 2001), and the essays by Andrés Reséndez, Elizabeth A. Fenn, James F. Brooks, and Taylor in the section “Continental Possessions” in the Journal of the Early Republic 24 (Summer 2004): 159–188. Also see Paul W. Mapp, “Atlantic History from Imperial, Continental, and Pacific Perspectives,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 53 (October 2006): 713–724.
42. Kevin H. O’Rourke and Jeffrey G. Williamson, “After Columbus: Explaining Europe’s Overseas Trade Boom 1500–1800,” Journal of Economic History 62 (June 2002): 417–456, esp. Table 1, pp. 419–421. Also see Findlay and. O’Rourke, “Commodity Market Integration, 1500–2000.”
43. See Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, 3 vols. thus far (New York: (New York: Academic Press, 1974–1989); Andre Gunder Frank, World Accumulation, 1492–1789 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978).
44. On so-called classical Marxism—works by Marxists writing around the time of the Second International (1889–1914)—see, for example, Anthony Brewer, Marxist Theories of Imperialism: A Critical Survey, 2d ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 25–72, 88–135.
45. See Giovanni Arrighi and John S. Saul, Essays on the Political Economy of Africa (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973); Arrighi, The Geometry of Imperialism: The Limits of Hobson’s Paradigm, trans. Patrick Camiller (London: New Left Books, 1978); P.P. Rey, Colonialisme, néo-colonialisme et transition au capitalisme (Paris: Maspero, 1971); Rey, Les alliances de classes (Paris: Maspero, 1973); Colin Leys, “Capital Accumulation, Class Formation and Dependency—The Significance of the Kenyan Case,” The Socialist Register, 1978, eds. Ralph Miliband and John Savile (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978), pp. 241–266. For a more recent formulation of Leys’ position, see Leys, “African Capitalists and Development: Theoretical Questions,” in African Capitalists in African Development, eds. Bruce J. Berman and Colin Leys (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1994), pp. 11–38.
46. See Brewer, Marxist Theories of Imperialism, pp. 225–259.
47. David Armitage, “Three Concepts of Atlantic History,” in The British Atlantic World, eds. David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick, The British Atlantic World (Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 11–27.
48. Jerry H. Bentley, Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). On such encounters during the period between 1500 and 1800, see Geoffrey C. Gunn, First Globalization: The Eurasian Exchange, 1500–1800 (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).
49. Luis A. Rivera-Batiz and Paul M. Romer, “Economic Integration and Endogenous Growth,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 106 (May 1991): 531–555.
50. Rivera-Batiz and Romer, “International Trade with Endogenous Technological Change,” European Economic Review 35 (May 1991): 971–1004; Rivera-Batiz and Romer, “The Origins of Endogenous Growth,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 8 (Winter 1994): 3–22; Rivera-Batiz and Romer, “Economic Integration and Endogenous Growth: An Addendum,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 109 (February 1994): 307–308. On the reference to the Silk Road, see the 1991 QJE paper cited in note 49, pp. 546–547. For an excellent, empirically-based discussion of the role of the Silk Road in promoting endogenous economic growth, see Debin Ma, “The Great Silk Exchange: How the World was Connected and Developed,” in Pacific Centuries, eds. Flynn, Frost, and Latham, pp. 38–69.
51. Jack P. Greene, “Comparing Early Modern American Worlds: Some Reflections on the Promise of a Hemispheric Perspective,” History Compass 1 (2003) [online]. Also see Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, “Some Caveats about the ‘Atlantic’ Paradigm,” History Compass 1 (2003) [online]; Fernández-Armesto, The Americas: A Hemispheric History (New York: The Modern Library, 2005).
52. See Charles Capper, “A Little Beyond: The Problem of the Transcendentalist Movement in American History,” Journal of American History 85 (September 1998): 502–539.