Atlantic world — Bunk History

Great Smoky Mountains, North Carolina.

"If America Doesn't Become America": Outlander and the American Revolution

"Outlander" challenges the myth of American exceptionalism at the root of much U.S. popular culture.

by Michelle Orihel via Age of Revolutions on July 3, 2023

Yellow house where George Washington stayed while in Barbados.

George Washington in Barbados?

How the Caribbean colony contributed to America's fight for independence.

by Erica Johnson Edwards via Age of Revolutions on January 30, 2023

Le Marron Incconu, a statue of an enslaved man with a conch shell, dedicated to the abolishment of slavery.

Slave Rebellions and Mutinies Shaped the Age of Revolution

Several recent books offer a more complete, bottom-up picture of the role sailors and Black political actors played in making the Atlantic world.

by Steven Hahn via Boston Review on April 22, 2021

Painting of a couple kissing under a broomstick

Broomstick Weddings and the History of the Atlantic World

From Kentucky to Wales and all across the Atlantic, the enslaved and downtrodden got married – by leaping over a broom. Why?

by Tyler D. Parry via Aeon on December 14, 2020

A Motley Crew for our Times?

A conversation with historian Marcus Rediker about multiracial mobs, history from below and the memory of struggle.

by Marcus Rediker, Martina Tazzioli via Radical Philosophy on May 1, 2020

Aerial view of Saint Helena Island.

“A Hot Dinner and a Bloody Supper”: St. Helena's Christmas Rebellions of 1783 and 1811

On this tiny British outpost, conditions of isolation and alcholism mixed with the era's revolutionary fervor to inspire a number of revolts.

by Felix Schürmann via Age of Revolutions on December 17, 2018

Revolution and Repression: A Framework for African American History

Running through all of historian Gerald Horne's books are the twin themes of revolution and repression.

by Brandon R. Byrd via Black Perspectives on August 21, 2018

The Fallacy of 1619

Rethinking the history of Africans in early America.

by Michael Guasco via Black Perspectives on September 4, 2017

Why Haiti Should be at the Centre of the Age of Revolution

Haiti, not the US or France, was where the assertion of human rights reached its climax in the Age of Revolution.

by Laurent Dubois via Aeon on November 7, 2016

Map of West Florida.

From Subjects To Citizens

The West Florida revolt in the Age of Revolutions.

by Colin Mathison via Age of Revolutions on July 8, 2024

Carbinari seal of a woman holding a liberty cap.

Lady Liberty in Restoration Italy? Crime, Counterfeit, and Carbonari Revolutionary Politics

Following Napoleon’s fall, international secret societies emerged promoting dissent from absolutist forms of power and sharing ideologies and iconographies.

by Giuseppe Perelli via Age of Revolutions on June 3, 2024

Africa, the Center of History

A new book works to counteract the “symphony of erasure” that has obscured and denied Africa’s contributions to the contemporary world.

by Adom Getachew via New York Review of Books on July 27, 2023

Lithograph sketch of a large manor surrounded by trees

"They Were Added to the List of Unfortunates": French Caribbean Refugees in Philadelphia

On the mobility controls faced by refugees, and who had the right to remain in American cities and states in the Early Republic.

by Megan Maruschke via Age of Revolutions on June 5, 2023

An ad for a runaway slave in the Virginia Gazette, describing Thomas Greenwich, an "East-India Indian."

“Of the East India Breed …”

The first South Asians in British North America.

by Brinda Charry via HNN on May 7, 2023

A roll of cotton thread in the shape of an eye.

Slavery and the Guardian: The Ties That Bind Us

There is an illusion at the centre of British history that conceals the role of slavery in building the nation. Here’s how I fell for it.

by David Olusoga via The Guardian on March 28, 2023

Print of Noah Webster and his dictionary by Root & Tinker, 1886.

The Case For Calling the Language "American"

This demonym will allow other Englishers to be recognized for their own locales.

by Ilan Stavans via HNN on February 12, 2023

Cover page of "Cotton Mather's Spanish Lessons." Beige cover with a small red image of a tonsured monastic scribe with a book in front of him, evidentally engaged in scholarship.

Structures of Belonging and Nonbelonging

A Spanish-language pamphlet by Cotton Mather explodes the Black-versus-white binary that dominates most discussions of race in our time.

by Joseph Rezek via Los Angeles Review of Books on February 1, 2023

Indigenous people brought to Spain by Hernán Cortés play the game patolli.

The Indigenous Americans Who Visited Europe

A new book reverses the narrative of the Age of Discovery, which has long evoked the ambitions of Europeans looking to the Americas rather than vice versa.

by Karin Wulf via Smithsonian on January 26, 2023

Sculpture of Olaudah Equiano, the Queen’s House, London

Olaudah Equiano’s Transnational Insights

A brief look into Equiano's life reveals that many Black figures were considerably more transnational in their movements and critiques than commonly assumed.

by Taylor Prescott via Black Perspectives on November 10, 2022

The cover of "Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History."

An “Imperial Bridge” Between Britain and the North American Colonies

How British protestantism connected colonies and empire until the rupture of the American Revolution.

by Joseph M. Adelman, Katherine Carté via Uncommon Sense on September 7, 2022

Daniel Mytens' painting of George Calvert, the First Lord Baltimore (1578-1632). (Collection of the Enoch Pratt Free Library / Baltimore, Maryland).

The English Origins of American Toleration

Can the origins of American religious freedom be traced to the religious and political history of England and its empire?

by Scott Douglas Gerber via Law & Liberty on June 15, 2022

Painting of a ship in stormy waters, Thomas Buttersworth, A Topsail Schooner in a Heavy Swell

Insurance For (and Against) the Empire

Marine insurance itself was a business that flourished during periods of war and uncertainty. It had a complex relationship with the British state.

by Hannah Farber via Commonplace on April 5, 2022

Cracked wall.

The Danger of a Single Origin Story

The 1619 Project and contested foundings.

by Emily Sclafani via Perspectives on History on February 9, 2022

Watercolor and pen illustration of Eric Williams.

Eric Williams and the Tangled History of Capitalism and Slavery

This historian and politician helped transform how several generations understood 18th- and 19th-century history.

by Gerald Horne via The Nation on October 5, 2021

Why the History of the Vast Early America Matters Today

There is no American history without the histories of Indigenous and enslaved peoples. And this past has consequences today.

by Karin Wulf via Aeon on July 15, 2021

Map of Nova Scotia

Imagining Nova Scotia: The Limits of an Eighteenth-Century Imperial Fantasy

Colonial planners saw Nova Scotia as a blank space ripe for transformation.

by Alexandra L. Montgomery via Journal of the History of Ideas Blog on July 12, 2021

Estebanico

Black America’s Neglected Origin Stories

The history of Blackness on this continent is longer and more varied than the version I was taught in school.

by Annette Gordon-Reed via The Atlantic on May 4, 2021

Lady Liberty bust in a park.

The Entwined History of Freedom and Racism

Liberty for some has always entailed a lack of liberty for many others.

by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò via The Nation on May 3, 2021

Decolonize Hipsters

The history of hipsters is a not-so-secret history of race in the Atlantic world.

by Grégory Pierrot via Guernica on April 20, 2021

Arabian silver coin from Yemen in 1693, found in Rhode Island

Arabian Coins Found in U.S. May Unlock 17th-Century Pirate Mystery

The discovery may explain the escape of Captain Henry Every after his murderous raid on an Indian emperor’s ship.

via The Guardian on April 1, 2021

brought to you by

© Bunk History