Aurélia Aubert
Atlantic History and Beyond (EUH 5934)
Dr Harland-Jacobs
February 6, 2012
Alison Games
Alison Games started her career in history studying early America. However, she now focuses
on migrants, as vehicules of ideas and the central driving force of empires. To her, as she wrote in her
introduction to Migration and the Origins of the Atlantic World, “Migration secured, created, and
ultimately defined the English Atlantic world.” 1
Games is therefore interested in movements, but she does not take for granted “the static
nature of relocation” and turn migrants into “settlers” and “colonists” as previous historians did.2
She examines how people sometimes moved freely from one culture to another and thus uses
historiographies of other regions.3 In The Wed Of Empire published in 2008, she examines the lives
of “cultural brokers” from Europe to America and Asia. Doing so, she escapes the frame of imperial
ideology when she examines the British early colonial endeavor and explores the practical conditions
in colonies that surpassed any type of ideology. Games’ research and writing method seems to be
that of a zoom lens, zooming in and out to get the full picture of a situation. She often focuses on
narrow elements, such as individuals, and expands her focus in a 2nd stage as she “delineate[s] both
the varieties of colonial societies and the common processes by which they were formed.”
4
In a
sense, Games practices social history and micro-history on a large scale to recreate this web of the
1
Games, Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World, (Harvard University Press, 1999).
12.
2
In "Atlantic History: Definition, Challenges, and Opportunities," she mentions Peter Laslett's The World We
Have Lost, (1965) as an example of British history assuming that migrants settled once arrived in North
America. The American Historical Review, Vol. 111, No. 3 (June, 2006): 741-757. p 753.
3
Still in “Altantic History: Definition, Challenges, and Opportunities,” she explains that these migrants moving
between cultures are referred to as “cultural brokers.” They played important roles in “mediating the moments
when mutually incomprehensible societies conflicted or engaged in any number of ways.” p. 752.
4
Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World, 10.
1
Atlantic world, identify these convergences, she is fascinated by.5 Thus, as she focuses on a short
period of time and individual stories in Migration, she examines a wide geographical area. She adds
to the traditional thirteen colonies the Caribbean and borderlands where Britain contested the
authority of France and Spain.
According to Armitage’s concepts, Games therefore practices Circum-Atlantic history.
Actually, at Georgetown, where she has been teaching since 1995, Games leads classes in global
history. To her, Atlantic history is a “slice of world history.”6 It is “a way of looking at global and
regional processes within a contained unit.”7 Games therefore strongly advocates interdisciplinary
approaches. Archeology, anthropology, art history, demography, economic history, environmental
history, material culture, literature, are all fields that Atlantic historians can benefit from.8 “Fortunate
to work within one of academie’s most integrative disciplines,” she argues, “historians would be
foolish to limit themselves to a single methodology instead of trying whatever works best to make
sense of the problem under study.” She further encourages us to “take all sorts of books off our
libraries, to dip into new journals, to sample unfamiliar disciplines, to talk to colleagues in other
departments, and to enjoy […] discovering what we can see more clearly or entirely differently as a
result.”9 Thus, Games deplores that historians studying the Atlantic often do it from a vantage point;
from one national or imperial historiographic tradition. “They [historians] bring the historiographic
conventions of a number of subfields to Atlantic history, thus reinforcing the heterogeneity of the
field itself.”10 The way that students are trained, that departments are organized and hiring takes
place sadly prevents historians to be specialized in Atlantic history.
5
The notion “web” seems to be central to her perception of the Atlantic world. Her second monograph was
indeed entitled The Web of Empire and migrants, to her, formed the “chaotic kaleidoscope of movements” at
the center of the Atlantic (“Altantic History: Definition, Challenges, and Opportunities,” p. 756).
6
"Atlantic History: Definition, Challenges, and Opportunities", p. 748.
7
Ibid.
8
"Atlantic History and Interdisciplinary Approaches," The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 65, No. 1. (January,
2008): 167-170. p. 169.
9
Ibid., p. 170.
10
"From the Editor", OAH Magazine of History, Vol. 18, No. 3 (April, 2004): 3-7. p. 4.
2
Games also criticizes the predominance of a few vantage points in Atlantic historiography as
it sacrifices regions that are left very little room in the literature. “Atlantic history,” she argues, “may
deal with European dominion but it should not be Eurocentric” or americanocentric.11 Indeed, while
she argues for a wide-encompassing Atlantic history, Games is perfectly aware of the complexity and
variety of the Atlantic space. It is impossible to talk about an “Atlantic” style of interaction, or a single
“Atlantic” culture, or even, as Pieter Emmer has argued, an Atlantic “system.”12 As a result, she
recurrently deplores the lack of Atlantic studies on Africa. Despite the labors of Africanists for some
forty years, little is known on the lived experiences of African captives who were, with three times as
many migrants as Europeans over the same period, “the dominant human face of Atlantic history for
over two centuries, and the cultural hearth for much of the Americas and the Caribbean.”13 Thus, to
Games, “the most urgent and immediate challenge is to restore Africa to the Atlantic.”14 However,
this conviction involved her in a “professional disagreement” with her former professor Bernard
Bailyn when she reviewed his Atlantic history: Concepts and Contours. By granting little interpretative
weight to Africa in his study, Games implied that Bailyn sadly contributed to historical imperialism.
Both historians then retorted to each other via notes to the review editor.15
Alison Games is part of a younger generation of historians who emerged in the 1990s and
continue asserting Atlantic history as a field. 16 She has indeed written several articles to define it and
with Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World, some have argued that she took the
succession of Bernard Bailyn and his Voyagers to the West published in 1986. Indeed, his book
examined the peopling of America between 1773 and 1776, while Games' monograph turns the clock
11
"Atlantic History: Definition, Challenges, and Opportunities," p 750.
Ibid., p. 751 and Pieter Emmer, “The Myth of Early Globalization: The Atlantic Economy, 1500–1800,”
European Review, Vol. 11, No. 1 (2003): pp. 37–47.
13
Review on Bernard Bailyn's Atlantic History: Concepts and Contours (Harvard University Press, 2005) in The
American Historical Review, Vol. 111, No. 3 (June, 2006), 951.
14
"Atlantic History: Definition, Challenges, and Opportunities," p. 754.
15
See her original review in The American Historical Review, Vol. 111, No. 2 (April 2006), pp. 434-435 and their
exchange in No. 3 (June, 2006), p 951.
16
The Harvard University’s International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World under the direction of
Bernard Bailyn had a central role in bolstering this new generation of historians. See
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~atlantic/ to access the seminar website.
12
3
back a century and a half by focusing on 1635. It is maybe following the natural order that she defied
her elder.
“Writing Atlantic history requires considerable optimism, fearlessness, and the conviction that a leap
into the ocean will not end tragically in a wrecked heap in the Bermuda triangle, but rather will land
you safely in a new, unexpected, and stimulating place. Jump in. The water’s great.” ("Atlantic
History: Definition, Challenges, and Opportunities," p. 757)
Education:
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Ph.D. (1992) University of Pennsylvania, History
A.B. (1985) Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, History
Positions:
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Dorothy M. Brown Distinguished Professor of History; Acting Director of Doctoral
Studies, Director of the Institute for Global History, at Georgetown (since 1995)
Grinnell College, Iowa (1992-1995)
Publications:
Books:
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Witchcraft in Early North America, (Rowman and Littlefield, 2010).
The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560-1660, (Oxford
University Press, 2008).
With Douglas R. Egerton, Kris Lane, and Donald R. Wright. The Atlantic World: A History,
1400-1888, (Harlan Davidson, 2007).
Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World, (Harvard University Press, 1999).
(This was her Ph D dissertation)
Articles in journals:
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
"Anglo-Dutch Connections and Overseas Enterprises: A Global Perspective on Lion Gardiner’s
World" Early American Studies 9.2 (2011): 435-461.
"Atlantic History and Interdisciplinary Approaches" The William and Mary Quarterly 65
(2008): 165-168.
4
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"Atlantic History and Interdisciplinary Approaches" Early American Literature 43.1 (2008):
187-190.
"England’s Global Transition and the Cosmopolitans Who Made It Possible" Shakespeare
Studies 35 (2007): 24-31.
"Beyond the Atlantic: English Globetrotters and Transoceanic Connections" The William and
Mary Quarterly 63.4 (2006): 675-692.
"Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities" American Historical Review
111.3 (2006): 741-757.
"Atlantic Constraints and Global Opportunities" History Compass 1 (2003).
"Whose Atlantic History?" International Journal of Maritime History 13 (2001): 198-203.
"The Accidental Empire" Reviews in American History 28 (2000): 1-10.
"Teaching Atlantic History" Itinerario 23 (1999): 162-171.
"“The Sanctuarye of our Rebell Negroes”: The Atlantic Context of Local Resistance on
Providence Island, 1630-1641" Slavery and Abolition 19 (1998): 1-21.
"The English Atlantic World: A View from London" Pennsylvania History 64 (1997): 46-72.
"History without Borders: Teaching American History in an Atlantic Context" Indiana
Magazine of History 41 (1995): 159-178.
"Survival Strategies in Early Bermuda and Barbados" Revista/Review Interamericana 22
(1992): 55-71.
Articles in books:
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"The Atlantic Framework of Seventeenth-Century Colonization" The Caribbean: An Illustrated
History. Ed. Palmié, Stephen, and Francisco Scarano. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2011: 191-204
"Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities" Teaching American History in a
Global Context. Ed. Carl Guarneri and James Davis. London: M.E. Sharpe, 2008: 43-51
"Migrations and Frontiers" The Atlantic World 1450-2000. Ed. Toyin Falola and Kevin D.
Roberts. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008: 48-65
"Conclusion: The World of 1607" The World of 1607: Special Exhibition. Ed. . Williamsburg,
VA: Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, 2008: 249-255
"Adaptation and Survival" Major Problems in Atlantic History. Ed. Alison Games and Adam
Rothman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007: 176-182
"The Atlantic Ocean" Europe 1450-1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World. Ed.
Jonathan Dewald. New York: Charles Scribner’s Son, 2004.
"Migration" The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800. Ed. David Armitage and Michael Braddick.
London: Palgrave, 2002: 31-50
"Opportunity and Mobility in Early Barbados" The Lesser Antilles in the Age of European
Expansion. Ed. Robert L. Paquette and Stanley L. Engerman. Gainesville: University Press of
Florida, 1996: 165-181
Edited books:

With Adam Rothman, ed. Major Problems in Atlantic History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
2007.
Other:
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"Showtime in Washington," Perspectives 45, no. 8 (November 2007): 28-29.
Guest editor, The OAH Magazine of History, special issue on the Atlantic World, 18, no. 3
(April, 2004).
5
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"Oceans, Migrants, and the Character of Empires: English Colonial Schemes in the
Seventeenth Century," online at The History Cooperative, 2003.
6