The Atlantic Economy during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Organization, Operation, Practice, and Personnel

The Atlantic Economy during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Organization, Operation, Practice, and Personnel. Edited by Peter A. Coclanis. The Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, c. 2005. Pp. xxii, 377. $49.95, ISBN 1-57003-554-7.)

This collection of thirteen essays dealing with various aspects of the Atlantic economy, roughly from 1600 to 1830, is unusual for its scope and coverage. Some of the essays discuss the various Atlantic systems (the Dutch, British, French, and Spanish), while others deal with the organization of commodity markets (Madeira, cloth, tobacco, rice, and indigo). Still other contributions address the niches within the market economy such as the role of Indians, the nature of labor in the African slave trade, and the illicit slave trade to Martinique. All are based on considerable primary research and usefully extend our knowledge of certain key issues.

The essays in this volume originated in a conference called "The Emergence of the Atlantic Economy," which was held at the College of Charleston in October 1999. Peter A. Coclanis, the editor of this collection, provides a brief introduction summarizing the contribution of each...