Want to know what books Bernard Bailyn recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Bernard Bailyn's favorite book recommendations of all time.
1
Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500-1830
Bernard Bailyn, Patricia L. Denault, Stephen D. Behrendt, Linda Heywood, John Thornton, David Hancock, Wim Klooster, J. Gabriel Martínez-Serna, Rosalind Beiler, Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Neil Safier, Londa Schiebinger, Beatriz Dávilo, Emma Rothschild, Mark Allen Peterson | 3.94
Bernard BailynIt is an effort to show the underlying structures that unite parts of the Atlantic world, and the intellectual currents that run through all of it. It’s by various historians, and some of the essays are unique, imaginative, and revealing of what unified the Atlantic region below the surface. (Source)
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2
David Armitage, Michael Braddick | 4.21
This text was the first edited collection on the burgeoning history of the early modern Atlantic world and has had a huge impact on the many fields of Atlantic Studies. This second edition features two new essays on science and global history respectively, as well as a revised Introduction and updated guides to further reading. more This text was the first edited collection on the burgeoning history of the early modern Atlantic world and has had a huge impact on the many fields of Atlantic Studies. This second edition features two new essays on science and global history respectively, as well as a revised Introduction and updated guides to further reading. less Bernard BailynThis is a collection of essays on the British Atlantic world in itself. It goes into excellent detail on many themes. (Source)
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3
David Eltis, David Richardson, David W. Blight, David Brion Davis | 4.51
Between 1501 and 1867, the transatlantic slave trade claimed an estimated 12.5 million Africans and involved almost every country with an Atlantic coastline. In this extraordinary book, two leading historians have created the first comprehensive, up-to-date atlas on this 350-year history of kidnapping and coercion. It features nearly 200 maps, especially created for the volume, that explore every detail of the African slave traffic to the New World. The atlas is based on an online database (www.slavevoyages.org) with... more Between 1501 and 1867, the transatlantic slave trade claimed an estimated 12.5 million Africans and involved almost every country with an Atlantic coastline. In this extraordinary book, two leading historians have created the first comprehensive, up-to-date atlas on this 350-year history of kidnapping and coercion. It features nearly 200 maps, especially created for the volume, that explore every detail of the African slave traffic to the New World. The atlas is based on an online database (www.slavevoyages.org) with records on nearly 35,000 slaving voyages—roughly 80 percent of all such voyages ever made. Using maps, David Eltis and David Richardson show which nations participated in the slave trade, where the ships involved were outfitted, where the captives boarded ship, and where they were landed in the Americas, as well as the experience of the transatlantic voyage and the geographic dimensions of the eventual abolition of the traffic. Accompanying the maps are illustrations and contemporary literary selections, including poems, letters, and diary entries, intended to enhance readers’ understanding of the human story underlying the trade from its inception to its end.
This groundbreaking work provides the fullest possible picture of the extent and inhumanity of one of the largest forced migrations in history. less Bernard BailynThis book encapsulates a huge amount of scholarship on the slave trade and slavery. The writing on slavery and the slave trade is so immense that it’s almost impossible to grasp it as a whole. David Eltis’s book is actually far more than an atlas – it is a compendium of all of the massive studies of slavery that have been made, many of them by Eltis himself, presented as maps, charts, and the... (Source)
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4
This epic history compares the empires built by Spain and Britain in the Americas, from Columbus’s arrival in the New World to the end of Spanish colonial rule in the early nineteenth century. J.H. Elliott, one of the most distinguished and versatile historians working today, offers us history on a grand scale, contrasting the worlds built by Britain and by Spain on the ruins of the civilizations they encountered and destroyed in North and South America.
Elliott identifies and explains both the similarities and differences in the two empires’ processes of colonization, the... more This epic history compares the empires built by Spain and Britain in the Americas, from Columbus’s arrival in the New World to the end of Spanish colonial rule in the early nineteenth century. J.H. Elliott, one of the most distinguished and versatile historians working today, offers us history on a grand scale, contrasting the worlds built by Britain and by Spain on the ruins of the civilizations they encountered and destroyed in North and South America.
Elliott identifies and explains both the similarities and differences in the two empires’ processes of colonization, the character of their colonial societies, their distinctive styles of imperial government, and the independence movements mounted against them. Based on wide reading in the history of the two great Atlantic civilizations, the book sets the Spanish and British colonial empires in the context of their own times and offers us insights into aspects of this dual history that still influence the Americas. less Bernard BailynThis is a comparative study of the British and Spanish colonial world from 1500 until the end of this 300-year era. John Elliott is a brilliant historian of Spain, and here he turns to New Spain and to the Spanish Atlantic world, comparing it to the British world on major elements. Some parts of it show the congruence between the two, the parallel way they developed. Other parts show the... (Source)
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5
Atlantic history is a newly and rapidly developing field of historical study. Bringing together elements of early modern European, African, and American history--their common, comparative, and interactive aspects--Atlantic history embraces essentials of Western civilization, from the first contacts of Europe with the Western Hemisphere to the independence movements and the globalizing industrial revolution. In these probing essays, Bernard Bailyn explores the origins of the subject, its rapid development, and its impact on historical study.
He first considers Atlantic history as a... more Atlantic history is a newly and rapidly developing field of historical study. Bringing together elements of early modern European, African, and American history--their common, comparative, and interactive aspects--Atlantic history embraces essentials of Western civilization, from the first contacts of Europe with the Western Hemisphere to the independence movements and the globalizing industrial revolution. In these probing essays, Bernard Bailyn explores the origins of the subject, its rapid development, and its impact on historical study.
He first considers Atlantic history as a subject of historical inquiry--how it evolved as a product of both the pressures of post-World War II politics and the internal forces of scholarship itself. He then outlines major themes in the subject over the three centuries following the European discoveries. The vast contribution of the African people to all regions of the West, the westward migration of Europeans, pan-Atlantic commerce and its role in developing economies, racial and ethnic relations, the spread of Enlightenment ideas--all are Atlantic phenomena.
In examining both the historiographical and historical dimensions of this developing subject, Bailyn illuminates the dynamics of history as a discipline. less Bernard BailynThere are two essays in the book. In the first, I describe the external circumstances, political and cultural, that shaped the historical awareness of the Atlantic world as a subject in itself. The circumstances just before, during and after World War II had a great influence on historians’ thinking about the Atlantic as a region, as did the increased exchanges of scholars among different regions... (Source)
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