The Global Atlantic

1400 to 1900

Christoph Strobel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317525516
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia mondiale

The Global Atlantic provides a concise, lively overview of the complex and diverse history of the greater Atlantic region from 1400 to 1900. During this period, the lands around the Atlantic basin – Europe, Africa, and the Americas – became deeply interconnected in networks of trade, cultural exchange, and geopolitics that reshaped these regions and the world beyond. In this accessible and engaging text, Christoph Strobel integrates the Atlantic into world history, showing that the Atlantic oceanic system was always interlinked with the rest of globe.

From the Mediterranean origins of slave-worked sugar plantations to the Chinese demand for silver from American mines, The Global Atlantic discusses key examples of these connections with clarity, enabling students to understand how existing ideas and incentives shaped the emerging Global Atlantic, and how these Atlantic systems in turn created the world we live in today.

Part I
Trans-Regional Interactions before 1492 and the Roots of the Global Atlantic

The trans-regional interactions of Europe, Africa, and the Americas before 1492 would, at least in part, influence the patterns and processes that would shape the history of the Global Atlantic. Even before Christopher Columbus’ now famous voyage marked the beginning of sustained contact between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas, these regions were part of far-reaching, long-distance exchange networks. The pre-modern histories of these areas provide a partial glimpse into the motivations and the mechanisms of how European, African, and Native American interactions created cross-cultural and economic exchanges that transcended regional borders to form active global networks.

1
“Old World” Long-Distance Exchange in Europe, Africa, and the Americas

Until 1492, the Atlantic Ocean largely divided the Western Hemisphere from Afro-Eurasia. Although some Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans had learned to navigate certain segments of this vast ocean system, Atlantic wind patterns and currents provided challenging barriers that proved difficult to overcome. Thus, prior to the 1400s, Europe’s and West Africa’s long-distance commerce was not focused on the Atlantic coast, but rather on the Mediterranean World and Asia. Much of pre-modern Afro-Eurasia was tied into a sophisticated system of interaction, which created connections that influenced, at least in part, European and West African consumption habits, cultures, and practices. It was part of the larger dispersion of commodities, ideas, technologies, and beliefs that shaped the cross-cultural encounters throughout the Afro-Eurasian landmass, or what some historian have called the “Old World.”¹

Meanwhile, in the Western Hemisphere, despite their geographic isolation from a global perspective, the indigenous peoples of the Americas did not live in isolation. Like the peoples of Afro-Eurasia, Native Americans were tied into far-reaching and sophisticated trans-regional exchange networks, which influenced Native American material culture, consumption, and daily lives. Native Americans, in a sense, like the peoples of Afro-Eurasia, lived in their own, vast, “Old World,” which was shaped by cross-cultural encounters.²

Europe and Old World Exchange

When considering Atlantic exploration, historians have long emphasized the role of the people of the Iberian Peninsula, a region of Europe that contains the modern nation-states of Spain and Portugal today. Portugal, as well as the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, the founding states of Spain in the sixteenth century, sponsored several journeys, which would eventually aid in the gradual creation of an Atlantic World starting in the latter half of the fifteenth century. Yet, the Iberians were not the only Europeans who ventured into the western ocean. From the eighth to the eleventh centuries, the Vikings, or Norse as they are also called, made significant headway in their exploration and colonization of the northern Atlantic region. As with the later Iberians, the Vikings’ motivations to go out in the Atlantic were spurred, at least in part, by the lure of trade with worlds to the east and south.

The Northern Global Atlantic World of the Vikings

Scant historic records suggest that the Vikings may have been the first among the Europeans to make significant headway into the Atlantic. Their journeys of exploration brought them all the way to Iceland, Greenland, and eventually Newfoundland. Norse efforts were aided in this endeavor by the easterly flow of the Greenland current off the western coast of Norway. Easier access to this natural phenomenon, and the presence of several islands along the way, might have provided the Vikings with much more favorable conditions for ocean exploration, especially compared to other Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans.

Despite their importance to this narrative, these Atlantic voyages were only a part of a much larger process of Viking exploration and colonization that began some time before AD 800. Using their Scandinavian homeland as a base, various and vast expeditions led the Norse into today’s Russia, the Eurasian interior toward the Arab World and the Byzantine Empire, as well as to the modern British Isles, Ireland, northern France, and the Mediterranean. Aided by their relatively small, open ships with square sails, the Norse frequently sailed in extremely dangerous conditions, through bad weather, storms, rough sea, and drift-ice. River systems were often used as maritime extensions to get into the European and Asian interior. At times, the Vikings portaged boats and cargo from one river system to the next or carried their belongings and vessels across shallow or hard-to-travel parts of rivers.

It is important to underscore, however, that the Vikings’ efforts were not homogenous or centrally organized. Rather, Vikings came from communities all over Scandinavia and set out independently on their missions, usually led by high-ranking local men, for various reasons. Because of their northerly geographic location and the varied Scandinavian topography, there was only limited access to farm and pastoral land. As a result, food scarcity made overpopulation a continuous issue in many Norse communities and encouraged expansion. The Vikings also went out in search of adventure and booty, which they obtained through raiding. Whatever their motivations, the Norse were more than just raiders, and through their voyages they established sophisticated and far-flung trading networks.

During the so-called “Age of the Vikings,” at its peak from the late ninth to the twelfth centuries, the Norse began to establish a far-flung, informal system of settlements and states, a network that had a North Global Atlantic reach. Viking colonization stretched all the way to the Western Hemisphere, where a short-lived settlement in L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland was established in the early 1000s, almost 500 years before Christopher Columbus’ voyage to the Caribbean.³ Already much earlier, by the eighth century, the Vikings began to extend their sphere of influence and settlements into the forest frontiers of modern-day Russia. The participants of this eastern branch of Norse expansion, which likely originated from modern-day Sweden, are often referred to in the historic record as the “Rus.” This term might have given us the modern name of the nation-state of Russia. Rus merchants created a sustained trading system that lasted several centuries that reached as far as Baghdad and Byzantium. Thus, between the 900s to the 1100s, the Vikings were able to create a tenuous, fluid, and heavily decentralized trade network that connected Eurasia with the Western Hemisphere.

Much of what we know about the Rus comes from archeological evidence and various Arab, Byzantine, and Frankish sources. But even from the scant record it is clear that the eastern frontier of the Norse’s Global Atlantic was extremely active. Beginning in the mid-750s, Vikings began to move into the Russian forest zone. This expansion was accompanied by violent raiding, trading, tribute seeking, and colonization.

The Rus’ advance into Eurasia was a complicated and fluid process that made use of an extensive network of river routes. The Vikings initially gained a foothold in the region by way of the Baltic Sea through the Gulf of Finland. They traveled across lakes and rivers by water and portage, and eventually connected via the Volga River all the way to the Caspian Sea. This route provided them with access to the Arab world and the Muslim metropolis of Baghdad. In later years, the Vikings also used the Dnieper River to access the Black Sea, a way that connected them to the Byzantine Empire and Constantinople. While they did trade directly with the Arabs or Byzantines at times, the Rus were often forced to exchange goods through border-states such as the Khazar and Bulgar states, who, at times, blocked the Vikings’ access to southerly trade, but who also became producers of several commodities that the Norse desired. The Rus traded slaves (usually people of Slavic, Baltic, and Finno-Ugrain backgrounds), fur, honey, artic animal skin and teeth, walrus ivory, amber, as well as Frankish swords. In return they obtained silver coins, ceramics, jewelry, furniture, aromatics, silk, and tapestries, the remains of which are found today in unearthed Viking graves.

The encounter with the worlds to the east and the south significantly and relatively rapidly transformed the Viking societies of the Rus. The most significant point of cultural contact was with the Byzantine Empire. While Norse raids were reported in the Caspian as well the Black Sea, the Byzantine navy, with their effective tactical skills and their infamous, and somewhat mysterious, liquid fire bombs known as “Greek Fire,” was the first sophisticated sea power that the Vikings confronted. Conflict between the two cultures was, however, only one component of Byzantine–Rus relations. Byzantium and several of the Rus states had an active commercial exchange, they created and signed treaties, and, eventually, some Norse served as mercenaries in the military forces of the Byzantine Empire. These more peaceful encounters between the Rus and the Byzantine capital of Constantinople helped to establish a lasting cultural link between the two regions. In only a few generations, the Rus elite blended with the local Slavic majority population over which they had ruled, and by the mid-1000s, they had transformed into Slavic Christian Orthodox rulers. These old trade links laid the groundwork for the later nation of Russia’s eventual widespread adoption of Orthodox Christianity, the Cyrillic alphabet, art, and government structure. The evidence of this relationship, some scholars argue, can be seen by the way Scandinavian names became Slavic. For instance, Helge turned to Oleg, Helga to Olga, Yngvar to Igor, and Valdemar to Vladimir.⁴

The Vikings’ western most significant efforts at colonization in Greenland and North America are linked to the figure of Erik the Red and his family. In the late 900s, Erik became an outlaw for murder in Norway and was banished from that part of Scandinavia. He and his followers resettled in northwestern Iceland, where he again ran in trouble with the law for manslaughter. Banishment from several communities spurred Erik to sail north to explore the coast of Greenland. There, Erik eventually came across several fjords in the western part of the largely arctic island, which he deemed suitable for settlement. Some Norse sagas suggest that he named the island “Greenland” because he believed this name would more likely attract settlers to follow him there from “Iceland.” In 985, it is told, Erik made the difficult voyage from Iceland to Greenland with twenty-five ships to begin his new colony. After a brutal voyage, however, some ships sank and others turned back; only fourteen landed safely.⁵ Despite the tremendous distance to Iceland, and especially the Scandinavian homeland of the Vikings, over time, several sizeable settlements would emerge in Greenland. Still, the overall Norse population never rose to more than 4,000.

Due to a shortage of land for pasture and for farming, as well as due to a lack of timber and iron, the Norse colonies on Greenland had to be tied to the Vikings’ commercial exchange networks in order to survive. Hunters from the settlements went on excursions to obtain walrus ivory and skin, seal skin, high thick quality furs, blubber and downs. These Arctic products would fetch a high price in the trade system of the Vikings’ North Global Atlantic and were widely distributed and traded.⁶

The need for timber and other resources was likely the cause for more southwardly explorations along the North American Atlantic coast. In around 1000, according to the Nordic sagas, Leif Erikson, Erik the Red’s son, was the first leader to set up a more permanent camp in Newfoundland. It had a promising beginning as the Norse would call this place “Vinland” and described the location as rich in timber, game, salmon, and berries. Furthermore, and unlike later Viking settlers, Leif and his crew did not seem to encounter any Native Americans during their relatively short stay. Leif had intended to return to Vinland, yet, his father’s death necessitated him to run affairs in Greenland. It would come to Leif Erikson’s brother, Thorvald Erikson, to continue the Vinland project in 1004. Thorvald and his crew arrived in Newfoundland in the fall and spent the winter in the settlement established by Leif. When Thorvald and his men encountered a party of nine Native Americans, presumably Beothuk or Micmac, during an exploratory expedition, the Vikings killed eight of them. The lone survivor, however, came back with reinforcements, and during the retaliatory attack, Thorvald was mortally wounded. Without a leader, the mission was quickly abandoned.⁷ Five years later Thorfinn Karlsefni, who had married Thorvald’s widow, became the leader of another Vinland expedition. After an extremely difficult winter, Native Americans appeared on the scene again. This time, however, the two groups traded peacefully. Nevertheless, during one of their later encounters, a Norse killed a Native American and the result was once more an extremely violent confrontation between the two groups. Fear of further native attacks became the likely cause for Karlsefni to abandon the colony in the spring of 1012. The last of the North American Viking colonies in Newfoundland also ended as a result of violence. This time, however, it was a blood feud between the Icelandic and Greenlandic Norse factions that caused the final effort at permanent settlement to fold in 1013.

While the idea of long-term colonization in the region was abandoned, Vikings are believed to have returned to the North American shores into the 1300s. There they continued to fish, harvest timber, search for valuable goods, and trade with Native Americans. Furthermore, by the fifteenth century evidence suggests that other Europeans, such as the intrepid Basque fishermen of the Northern Iberian Peninsula, took advantage of the rich fishing grounds off the coast of Newfoundland. They would spend their summers fishing at sea, and processing the fish on land, before returning home across the Atlantic once more.

While the colonization of Vinland was abandoned, the wealth of the North American shore and the colony in Greenland remained tied into a commercial system that traded luxury goods to Europe and Asia lasting into the fourteenth century. At that time, the Hanseatic League, a commercial and military alliance of merchant guilds from various city-states, towns, and small states in the North and Baltic Sea, began to dominate and restructure trade in the region. This led to a quick decline of the Vikings’ extended North Global Atlantic World. Even more important to the limits of the Norse presence in Greenland, and as an extension, the Americas, was climate change. A cooling of global climate during the Little Ice Age made an already harsh climate harsher still. Marginal agriculture and pastoralism, already strained due to the northerly climate and soil erosion, became next to impossible. Moreover, the growing threat from the Inuit made Norse survival in Greenland impossible.⁸

In a limited way, the Viking experience from the 800s to the 1100s underscores and provides a test case for the Europeans’ motivations and goals in pursuing a Global Atlantic. It was, at least in part, the exposure to eastern and southern trade that was spurred by the desire for trade goods, as well as the access to potential raw materials that could be used in trade, which aided and fueled the process of Viking expansion and colonization—not only in the Atlantic, but also in other areas of the world. The Norse’s North Global Atlantic pattern would become even more apparent with several other European states in the period between 1400 and 1800.

Out of the East: Europe and the Old World Long-Distance Trade Networks

Just like the Vikings in Scandinavia to the north, other parts of Europe further to the south were part of extensive long-distance exchange systems before 1492. A variety of European states, cities, and merchants from Christian Europe actively sought trading opportunities with their Muslim neighbors in the southern and eastern portions of ...