As we mark the 50th anniversary of Richard S. Dunn’s path-breaking book Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713, we wish to draw attention to the myriad ways Dunn’s work influenced subsequent scholars in the field, including many Early American Studies authors. Dunn’s pioneering social history on the English West Indies not only depicted the rise of a powerful white planter class,…
As the effects of climate change loom ever larger in our present and future, casting an eye back through time to view how early modern and early American peoples interacted with the natural world can be fruitful. Indeed, ever since historian William Cronon published his path breaking work, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, in 1983, scholars have been examining how Indigenous, African, and…
Early Americans were intrinsically linked to global networks of commerce, information exchange, and migration that extended around the Atlantic world–including Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and Central and South America–and to the Pacific Rim and Asia. Events or circumstances in one location, or on one continent, shaped and were shaped by those in others. The articles in this resource guide were chosen for keywords related to transatlantic cultures, and African and…
