Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: Few readers of this journal need to be introduced to the concept of "Atlantic history," which over the past few decades has either taken specialists in the early modern field by storm or run roughshod over them, depending on one's point of view.Assiduous scholars have traced the origins and/or antecedents of the concept/approach/perspective known to us today as Atlantic history as far back as the late nineteenth century, but these same scholars and virtually everyone else in the early modern field would agree that the concept really came of age beginning in the 1990s.This being the case, it might be fun as well as illuminating to proceed analogically and apply to Atlantic history the divisions established by Jaques in his famous "seven ages of man" speech in Act ii, Scene 7 of Shakespeare's As You Like It.Once we do, we find that we can state with some confidence that Atlantic history is past its infancy and "whining school-boy" period, and is today in its third (lover) age of life, that is to say, "sighing like furnace."Readers with good memories of their own school-day readings may recall that in Jaques's speech the age informed by love is followed
Author: Peter A. Coclanis
Institution: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W1992079753