1 - The birth of an Atlantic world

Summary

The shape of the Atlantic zone

The European navigations of the fifteenth century in the Atlantic opened up a new and virtually unprecedented chapter in human history. Not only did European sailors provide direct ocean routes to areas that had been in contact with Europe through more expensive and difficult overland routes (such as West Africa and East Asia), but the ships reached areas that had had no previous sustained and reciprocal contact with the outside world. Of course, this was obviously true of the American continents, and historians have rightly focused their attention on this immense new world in their discussions of the period. But it was not just the Americans who came into outside contact, for virtually the entire region of west central Africa, south of modern Cameroon, was also without outside contacts, in spite of the fact that it was geographically a part of the landmass whose eastern and western parts had long-standing connections to the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. Thus, in addition to easing and intensifying relations between various parts of the Old World (which in this case also included West Africa), the European navigations opened up connections between the Old World and two new worlds – the two sections of the American continent and the western part of central Africa.

The French historian Pierre Chaunu has argued that perhaps the most significant consequence of European navigation was what he calls “disenclavement” – the ending of isolation for some areas and the increase in inter societal contacts in most areas.