Emergence of the Atlantic World

Following the voyages of Christopher Columbus, the Americas, Europe, and Africa became linked by a series of forces that helped to create an Atlantic World. This world was defined by the connections and experiences of the people who traveled and interacted within it. European kingdoms, beginning with the Spanish and the Portuguese, established colonies in the Americas to gain access to resources and raw materials—among them, gold, silver, sugar, tobacco, cotton, and coffee. In order to harvest and mine these resources, Europeans first attempted to coerce and enslave Native Americans but soon established a transatlantic slave trade that brought captive Africans to work in mines and on plantations in the Americas and the Caribbean. The wide variety of experiences of different peoples and their interactions between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries helped create a diverse Atlantic World, which was understood in multiple ways.