HIST 350 - Sugar, Alcohol, Slaves: A Commodity History of the Atlantic World (W)

3 Credit(s)

This course examines the history of commodities in the Atlantic world, and the Atlantic world itself, by evaluating how goods such as sugar, fish, alcohol, rice, and silver shaped intercultural and transregional exchanges. It covers the period of Atlantic exploration and colonization that lasted from roughly 1450 to 1850. By incorporating case studies from the Portuguese, Spanish, English, French, and Dutch empires, as well as several African and Amerindian cultures, this class seeks to both compare unique examples and understand the Atlantic world as a diverse and entangled space of material and intellectual exchange. Students gain a familiarity with written sources, and special emphasis is placed on interpreting material culture in order to expand the historical record (and whose histories can be recovered from it).