Atlantic in World History

As Europeans began to move into the Atlantic in the late fifteenth century, first encountering islands and then two continents across the sea, they initiated a process that revolutionized the lives of people everywhere. American foods enriched their diets. Furs, precious metals, dyes, and many other products underwrote new luxury trades, and tobacco became the first consumer craze as the price plummeted with ever-enlarging production.

Karen Ordahl Kupperman is Silver Professor of History at New York University. Her books include The Jamestown Project, Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony, Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America, shich won the American Historical Association's Prize in Atlantic History, and Providence Island, 1630-1641: The Other Puritan Colony, which won the AHA's Beveridge Award for the year's best book in American history.