Atlantic Wars

"Atlantic Wars explores how warfare shaped human experience around the Atlantic from the late Middle Ages until the nineteenth century. Military concerns and initiatives drove the development of technologies like ships, port facilities, fortresses and roads that made crossing the ocean possible and reshaped the landscape on widely separated coasts. Forced migrations made land available for colonization, and the transportation of war captives provided labour in the colonies. Some wars spread to engulf widely scattered places, and even small-scale, localised conflicts had effects beyond the combat zone. Wars in Africa had consequences in the colonies where captives were sold. Europeans and their descendants held the upper hand in combat on the ocean, but in the early modern period they never dominated warfare in Africa or the Americas. New ways of fighting developed as diverse groups fought alongside as well as against each other. In the Age of Revolution enslaved Africans, indigenous Americans and colonists in various places rejected cross-cultural alliances and the prevailing pattern of Atlantic warfare. New military ethics were developed with important implications for the governance of the European empires, the security of the new American nation-states, the legal status of indigenous peoples, the future of slavery and the development of Atlantic economy. The pervasive influence of warfare on life around the ocean becomes apparent only by examining the Atlantic world as a whole. "--

Today's copyright wars can seem unprecedented. Sparked by the digital revolution that has made copyright—and its violation—a part of everyday life, fights over intellectual property have pitted creators, Hollywood, and governments against consumers, pirates, Silicon Valley, and open-access advocates. But while the digital generation can be forgiven for thinking the dispute between, for example, the publishing industry and Google is completely new, the copyright wars in fact stretch back three centuries—and their history is essential to understanding today’s battles. The Copyright Wars—the first major trans-Atlantic history of copyright from its origins to today—tells this important story. Peter Baldwin explains why the copyright wars have always been driven by a fundamental tension. Should copyright assure authors and rights holders lasting claims, much like conventional property rights, as in Continental Europe? Or should copyright be primarily concerned with giving consumers cheap and easy access to a shared culture, as in Britain and America? The Copyright Wars describes how the Continental approach triumphed, dramatically increasing the claims of rights holders. The book also tells the widely forgotten story of how America went from being a leading copyright opponent and pirate in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to become the world’s intellectual property policeman in the late twentieth. As it became a net cultural exporter and its content industries saw their advantage in the Continental ideology of strong authors’ rights, the United States reversed position on copyright, weakening its commitment to the ideal of universal enlightenment—a history that reveals that today’s open-access advocates are heirs of a venerable American tradition. Compelling and wide-ranging, The Copyright Wars is indispensable for understanding a crucial economic, cultural, and political conflict that has reignited in our own time.

Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500-1800 investigates the impact of warfare on the history of Africa in the period of the slave trade and the founding of empires. It includes the discussion of: : * the relationship between war and the slave trade * the role of Europeans in promoting African wars and supplying African armies * the influence of climatic and ecological factors on warfare patterns and dynamics * the impact of social organization and military technology, including the gunpowder revolution * case studies of warfare in Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Benin and West Central Africa

"Atlantic Wars explores how warfare shaped human experience around the Atlantic from the late Middle Ages until the nineteenth century. Military concerns and initiatives drove the development of technologies like ships, port facilities, fortresses and roads that made crossing the ocean possible and reshaped the landscape on widely separated coasts. Forced migrations made land available for colonization, and the transportation of war captives provided labour in the colonies. Some wars spread to engulf widely scattered places, and even small-scale, localised conflicts had effects beyond the combat zone. Wars in Africa had consequences in the colonies where captives were sold. Europeans and their descendants held the upper hand in combat on the ocean, but in the early modern period they never dominated warfare in Africa or the Americas. New ways of fighting developed as diverse groups fought alongside as well as against each other. In the Age of Revolution enslaved Africans, indigenous Americans and colonists in various places rejected cross-cultural alliances and the prevailing pattern of Atlantic warfare. New military ethics were developed with important implications for the governance of the European empires, the security of the new American nation-states, the legal status of indigenous peoples, the future of slavery and the development of Atlantic economy. The pervasive influence of warfare on life around the ocean becomes apparent only by examining the Atlantic world as a whole. "--

Nearly thirty years ago W.S. MacNutt published the first general history of the Atlantic provinces before Confederation. An outstanding scholarly achievement, that history inspired much of the enormous growth of research and writing on Atlantic Canada in the succeeding decades. Now a new effort is required, to convey the state of our knowledge in the 1990s. Many of the themes important to today's historians, notably those relating to social class, gender, and ethnicity, have been fully developed only since 1970. Important advances have been made in our understanding of regional economic developments and their implications for social, cultural, and political life. This book is intended to fill the need for an up-to-date overview of emerging regional themes and issues. Each of the sixteen chapters, written by a distinguished scholar, covers a specific chronological period and has been carefully integrated into the whole. The history begins with the evolution of Native cultures and the impact of the arrival of Europeans on those cultures, and continues to the formation of Confederation. The goal has been to provide a synthesis that not only incorporates the most recent scholarship but is accessible to the general reader. The book re-assesses many old themes from a new perspective, and seeks to broaden the focus of regional history to include those groups whom the traditional historiography ignored or marginalized.

The history of America's conflict with the piratical states of the Mediterranean runs through the presidencies of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison; the adoption of the Constitution; the Quasi-War with France and the War of 1812; the construction of a full-time professional navy; and, most important, the nation's haltering steps toward commercial independence. Frank Lambert's genius is to see in the Barbary Wars the ideal means of capturing the new nation's shaky emergence in the complex context of the Atlantic world. Depicting a time when Britain ruled the seas and France most of Europe, The Barbary Wars proves America's earliest conflict with the Arabic world was always a struggle for economic advantage rather than any clash of cultures or religions.

A vivid and long overdue account of one of the great untold Canadian military stories: Sydney's importance as a major convoy port, a base in the hunt for German submarines, and an industrial centre producing critically important coal and steel.

This volume examines the impact of the wars in the Atlantic world between 1770 and 1830, focusing both on the military, economic, political, social and cultural demobilization that occurred immediately at their end, and their long-term legacy and memory.