10 - Making Colonies and Empires in North America and the Greater Caribbean

Summary

To situate colonies and empires in North America in a global context requires dismantling over a century of historiographic conventions that privilege the nation, the colony, and even the local community over broader perspectives. Historians have begun to erode these anachronistic and often artificial divisions through the study of Atlantic history, but even that field of inquiry cannot necessarily take us to a perspective on North America in the world. Indeed, Atlantic history frequently replicates various features of old colonial histories because many practitioners focus on single colonies and on the western Atlantic.