‘Atlantic Wars:

Oxford University Press

Atlantic Wars is the first work to comprehensively explore how warfare shaped human experience around the Atlantic from the late Middle Ages until the nineteenth century. It examines how armed conflict affected how and where people lived, who they associated with, how they structured their societies, and whether they survived.

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.

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.

About the author

Geoffrey Plank is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia.