In a sweeping account, Atlantic Wars explores how warfare shaped the experiences of the peoples living in the watershed of the Atlantic Ocean between the late Middle Ages and the Age of Revolution. At the beginning of that period, combat within Europe secured for the early colonial powers the resources and political stability they needed to venture across the sea. By the early nineteenth century, descendants of the Europeans had achieved military supremacy on land but revolutionaries had challenged the norms of Atlantic warfare.
Nearly everywhere they went, imperial soldiers, missionaries, colonial settlers, and traveling merchants sought local allies, and consequently they often incorporated themselves into African and indigenous North and South American diplomatic, military, and commercial networks. The newcomers and the peoples they encountered struggled to understand each other, find common interests, and exploit the opportunities that arose with the expansion of transatlantic commerce. Conflicts arose as a consequence of ongoing cultural misunderstandings and differing conceptions of justice and the appropriate use of force. In many theaters of combat profits could be made by exploiting political instability. Indigenous and colonial communities felt vulnerable in these circumstances, and many believed that they had to engage in aggressive military action--or, at a minimum, issue dramatic threats--in order to survive. Examining the contours of European dominance, this work emphasizes its contingent
nature and geographical limitations, the persistence of conflict and its inescapable impact on non-combatants' lives.
Addressing warfare at sea, warfare on land, and transatlantic warfare, Atlantic Wars covers the Atlantic world from the Vikings in the north, through the North American coastline and Caribbean, to South America and Africa. By incorporating the British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Africans, and indigenous Americans into one synthetic work, Geoffrey Plank underscores how the formative experience of combat brought together widely separated people in a common history.
Industry Reviews
"This is an exceptional book in many ways. It is superbly researched and beautifully written, as well as movingly reflective of Geoffrey Plank's humane values. Its topic is extremely challenging: the relationships among Europeans and between them and the Indigenous peoples living along and near the shores of the Atlantic Ocean between about 1450 and 1820.... Despite its disturbing subject, this book is a pleasure to read. Plank is particularly good at using
anecdotes and short sketches of common people to add human interest. Indigenous people are not simple, passive victims; they often offer surprisingly effective resistance to European intruders....[A]
magnificent contribution to Atlantic history, which I enthusiastically recommend both to professional historians and to general readers." -- Jonathan R. Dull, Journal of American History
"Focused on a multitude of actors, this wide-ranging analysis of warfare in the early modern Atlantic world skillfully weds the exploration of warfare with a broad, easy-to-read synthesis... With its broad approach, subject matter, interesting examples, and clear and precise language, Atlantic Wars would be useful for novice readers just being introduced to this conceptual space, and for experts who work on military history and/or the Atlantic world.
Summing Up: Highly recommended" -- CHOICE
"This is not your grandfather's military history. Geoffrey Plank captures the cacophony of unplanned sea raiding, opportunistic violence, and indigenous military maneuvers that make Atlantic warfare so deeply fascinating." -- Lauren Benton, Vanderbilt University
"At once comprehensive and nuanced, Atlantic Wars demonstrates how pervasive violence was in the Atlantic world. Warfare afloat and ashore was so important for its construction, its functioning, and its transformation in the age of revolutions that this book reads like a full-scale Atlantic history." -- Wim Klooster, author of The Dutch Moment: War, Trade, and Settlement in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World
"A fascinating, innovative, and wide-ranging overview of how war and warfare shaped the Atlantic world. Plank folds in all the playersDLIndians, Africans, and EuropeansDLand puts them in lively interaction with the geography and changing technologies of their worlds. He rightly reminds us that much of this history was driven by violence, violence that sought to control people, places, products, and more. Highly recommended." -- Wayne E. Lee, author of
Barbarians and Brothers: Anglo-American Warfare, 1500-1865
"Geoffrey Plank's Atlantic Wars offers an impressively wide-ranging synthesis and comparison of European, African, and indigenous American experiences of warfare, violence, and military culture over a period of four centuries. Perceptively highlighting patterns in the ways that communities all around the Atlantic basin experienced and responded to episodes of raiding, slaving, colonialism, or trans-imperial conflict, Plank carefully reminds us of the
limits of European imperial power-and of early modern European military and naval technologies-as they evolved in broader Atlantic contexts." -- David Wheat, author of Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean,
1570-1640
