Question.1688 - Reading Response 1: What is the Caribbean? A+ m: so Please take the time to read this week the following articles: Sydney Mintz,"The Caribbean Region -±," (1974). Ida Ferrer,"Historv. and the Idea of Hisj;!anic Caribbean Studies -±," (2016). Quinn Dauer,Bernard Bail v.n and At l antic Hi storyJ-±_ [2005) Post a response to Week 1readings listed above of at least 300 and no more than 500 words (80% credit): 1.Give a summary of the articles:who? what? when? where? What are the basic ideas? (20%) Give your critical (and personal) reaction to the readings. Which things do you agree with? Which do you disagree with? (20%). Discuss how you see the Caribbean area? How do you think the Caribbean should be studies? Would you include the Guyanas and the coasts of Venezuela, Colomba and CentralAmerica? Mexico? (20%). Do not forget to proofread your post for gramma r,punctuation and verb agreement. Use the spell checker!
Answer Below:
Bailyn was born in Hartford, Connecticut on September 10, 1992. He earned his A.B. at Williams College (1945), M.A. at Harvard University (1947), and Ph.D. at Harvard University (1953). Bailyn has spent his entire professional academic career at Harvard University beginning in 1953 as an assistant professor. Currently, he is the Adams University Professor and James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History, emeritus at Harvard University. Bailyn’s engaging publications have won many awards. The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (1955) examines the interaction between the “meeting house and the counting house.” Bailyn demonstrates how the New England merchants grew and opposed the Puritan oligarchy. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967) received the Pulitzer and Bancroft Prizes in 1968. Bailyn uses the pamphlet literature of the pre-Revolutionary period to demonstrate that the unifying ideology of the Revolution was based on classical comparisons, covenant theology, the Enlightenment, and common law rooted in the context of post Civil War England. In The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (1974), Bailyn, in a balanced assessment of the Massachusetts governor at the time of the Revolution, shows that Hutchinson was a rigid conservative and focuses on the dialog between Europe and America during the Revolution. The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (1986) and Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution (1986) won the Pulitzer Prize in History and the Saloutos Award from the Immigration History Society. The Peopling of British North America is the introduction to a proposed multi-volume project on Atlantic migration of British North America based on a series of lectures given at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In The Peopling of British North America, Bailyn outlines four theories for migration: first, migration of British North America was the result of domestic mobility; second, the colonial world was diverse in economic, social, and environment; third, the two patterns of immigration were driven by a demand for labor (“metropolitan”) or land speculation (“provincial”); fourth, in 1700 American culture was an extension of Europe culture combined with violence. Voyagers to the West combines imperial evidence from the British register of emigrants between 1773 and 1776 with letters, journals, account books and maps to examine the validity of the four themes outline in The Peopling of British North America. To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders is a collection of essays that examines the friction between “pragmatism and idealism” in early American political culture. Bailyn, in two concise and readable essays, chronicles the origins and development of Atlantic history and defines the Atlantic world. Bailyn’s objective is to sketch the framework of Atlantic history and argues that an Atlantic focus can broaden the discussion of Western history. The first essay, “The Idea of Atlantic history” is based on Bailyn’s article published in Itinerario (1996). Atlantic history’s origin is not in Fernand Braudel’s concept of Mediterranean history because Braudel periodizes Mediterranean history into three time periods rather than unifying Mediterranean history. Neither is Atlantic history an expansion of “imperial history” (5). Atlantic history also does not have its origins in the writings about exploration and discovery. By the time of World War II, imperial history and the history of exploration and discovery had matured. Bailyn finds the roots of Atlantic history in two journalists. Walter Lippmann during World War I and Forrest Davis during World War II argued that the United States should intervene in both World Wars because the United States interest lie with the allies in Europe and to protect and preserve “the Atlantic highway” (7). In 1961, the United States organized three groups, The Atlantic Council, the American Committee for the Atlantic Institute, and the American Council on NATO, to encourage discussion about the problems and benefits “of developing a greater Atlantic community” (9). The councils also promoted programs about the Atlantic community in colleges and universities in the United States. However, Bailyn erroneously argues that Atlantic history was not influenced by the political debates and events of the cold war. According to Bailyn, “research in specific subjects...has no other purpose than its own fulfillment...” (30). Bailyn finds the works of Huguette and Pierre Chaunu, Robert R. Palmer, Jacques Godechot, and Charles Verlinden as the first scholarly historical works of Atlantic history. Charles Verlinden in the first volume of his trilingual Journal of World History (1953) defines Atlantic world as a civilization based on ideas, institutions, and an organization model rooted in the common origins in the Mediterranean that proceeded outwards to the Atlantic Ocean, which included western Europe, North and South America, and South Africa. Godechot and Palmer concluded that the Atlantic had in common “idées maîtresses” of “Judeo-Christianity, Roman Law, and Greek reason” (26). However, the Atlantic world diverged after the commonality of the eighteenth century revolutions. Bailyn’s second essay, “On the Contours of Atlantic History” argues that “[Atlantic history] is more than the sum its parts” (60). There are two shortcomings in the historiography that any narrative in Atlantic history must overcome. The first, is the assumption that Atlantic history is the sum of “several national histories and their extensions overseas” (60). The second is the assumption “that formal, legal structures reflect reality” (60). Bailyn asserts that it is not possible to point to any defining specific characteristics that are in all three centuries of Atlantic history. Instead Bailyn defines Atlantic history as “world in motion” (61). Therefore the object of Atlantic history is not abstract but to understand the phases of development or to understand “history as a process” (61). The economy or European migration of the early modern period represents Bailyn’s Atlantic the best. The “polycentric and dynamic” economies of Europe shared common routes in the Atlantic Ocean, which made the ocean a “permeable space” rather than a barrier (83). Atlantic History has many significant weaknesses. Bailyn’s definition of the Atlantic world is largely restricted geographically to British North American or to the United States. There is only cursory treatment of Africa. Bailyn neglects the slave trade in the discussion on migration and only briefly examines slave trade in Africa. Bailyn also ignores a number of seminal works of Atlantic history such as Alfred W. Crosby’s The Columbian Exchange. Bailyn’s Atlantic world also is a one way street from Europe to the United States with the exception of the economy. Atlantic History fails to mention that things such as ideas, diseases, plants, animals, and foods traveled from the Americas to Europe. Bailyn also neglects integrating Latin America into the Atlantic world. For example, Bailyn focuses on Quaker migration to Pennsylvania, while superficially analyzing European migration to Latin America or African migration to the Caribbean. Bailyn analysis of the Atlantic revolutions is superficial and leaves readers with the stereotypical image of Latin America as a backward region doomed by its Spanish heritage. Bailyn also fails to include the Haitian Revolution in his Atlantic World. Finally, the Atlantic world and its history did not end at the Age of Revolution. People, ideas, diseases, and trade continued to flow between Europe, Africa, North, and South America as Daniel T. Rogers demonstrates in Atlantic Crossings along with many other scholars. The reviews of Atlantic History were mixed. Some scholars found Bailyn’s work to be readable and an excellent synthesis at tracing and defining the subfield of Atlantic history. However, the majority of scholars critique Bailyn for his narrow British North American perspective of Atlantic history. Philip E. Steinberg, observes that the book is very readable but he would not recommend it non-historians or historians who are not familiar with the sub-discipline of Atlantic history because Bailyn does not fully contextualize and explain the “debates and contradictions that have shaped the field.” Bailyn also fails to address the “critiques from within Atlantic history.” Trevor Burnard, professor at the University of Sussex, states that the word “Atlantic” is over used and needs definition. Therefore, Burnard praises Bailyn for bringing “order out of chaos” and giving “clear definition” of Atlantic History. Richard W. Vaudry, a professor at The King’s University College in Edmonton, Alberta, thought that Bailyn “seems in danger of losing his subject”. Vaudry also critiques Bailyn for not clearly defining the Atlantic world as either a single world or as a “mutli-layered” and “highly textured” worlds. Alison Games, a professor of history at Georgetown University, critiques Bailyn’s geographical framework of the Atlantic because he neglects Africa. Ian K. Steele’s, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, ten page scathing critique concludes by stating that “Atlantic History lacks the depth, breadth, and balance of scholarship we have come to expect from Bailyn, but it explains why his approach is making Atlantic history more attractive to Americans.” Bailyn’s attempt to define the Atlantic fails and ultimately is the national history of the United States or the imperial history of Britain. Perhaps Bailyn should look to Latin Americanist Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra’s impressive work How to Write the History of the New World as a model to move beyond national boundaries and Anglo, French, Portuguese, Dutch, or Spanish empires. Recently, Eliga H. Gould proposed the idea of “entangled histories” which uses comparative history to demonstrate for example that the Spanish empire had a significant influence on the British Empire. Finally, Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra argues that Atlantic history must move beyond national histories and examine the Atlantic world not at its margins but at its core. The constant struggle for Atlantic history is to break away from national boundaries. The question of what is Atlantic history or if there really is an Atlantic World is still left for debate after Bailyn’s Atlantic History. Quinn DauerMore Articles From History
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