Networks for Migration and Mobility (Atlantic History)

Introduction

Two themes are at the center of this bibliography: networks and mobility. Together they constitute the thread connecting the diverse selections cited in this article. A “network” is defined as an interconnected system that facilitates mobility and is composed of nodes, hubs, and linkages. Nodes are a network’s most basic members; they can be human beings, commodities, ideas, etc. Linkages are the relationships that connect the nodes. A concentration of nodes and linkages constitutes a hub. This bibliography considers an extensive number of networks that facilitated the movement of a wide range of members. Chronologically, the networks covered here were built and operated across the early modern and modern periods, although the 18th century emerges as a chronological focal point. Geographically, these networks operated across the Atlantic basin, not only within the “national Atlantics” of the Iberian, British, French, and Dutch zones but also at the intersections of these worlds. As will become evident, networks fostered transnational movements in ways that were difficult, if not impossible, for the nation-states and empires that comprised the Atlantic world. “Mobility” is also broadly defined, referring to both the movement of members across space and to social mobility. The networks examined here range in their levels of formality. Some were created by discrete, identifiable institutions, such as a church or a fraternity; others were less formal but nonetheless highly effective in facilitating mobility. The following sections include key works that examine imperial, communication, commercial, diasporic, migratory, fraternal, religious, and scientific networks. Taken together, these networks formed the matrix of connections and movements that brought the Atlantic world into being and made it a thriving zone of exchange and interchange for more than four centuries. The networks examined here shared many functional similarities—the importance of letter writing in lubricating network mechanisms, the role of self-organization in a network’s ability to expand and adapt, and the limitations on network functionality imposed by both internal and external forces. Also discussed in the following sections are the historical manifestations of Atlantic networks and the concept’s utility as a methodological and theoretical model. Many of the scholars cited in this article have used networks to pursue two challenging objectives: first, determining and examining the complex ways in which the local and the global intersect, and, second, striking an appropriate balance between interpretations that emphasize structural forces and those that focus on human agency.

General Overviews

Rarely does one come across a work in Atlantic history (whether or not it is explicitly conceptualized as an Atlantic project) that does not deploy the term “network.” Indeed, the mobility of people, goods, capital, ideas, and ideologies around and through the Atlantic basin and the networks that facilitated such movements are fundamental to the concept of Atlantic history itself. One of the first works to put forth the notion of a networked Atlantic is Gilroy 1993. More recently, several historians, including Bailyn 2005, Games 2006, and Bailyn and Denault 2009 identify networks as a major unifying theme of Atlantic history. Other historians explore the historiographical significance of Atlantic networks. Bailyn 2005 traces the origins of Atlantic history, as a practice, to the economic, political, and academic networks of the post–World War II world, whereas Armitage and Braddick 2009 describes Atlantic networks as providing a meaningful context for the practice of transnational, comparative history. Still others promote the methodological benefits of a networks-based approach and social network analysis. Cooper 2001 presents a thoughtful reflection on the relationship among networks, structures, and discourses. Hancock 2007 and Perl-Rosenthal and Haefeli 2012 offer sophisticated arguments in favor of systematically deploying the concept of networks to probe Atlantic history.

Armitage, David, and Michael J. Braddick, eds. The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800. 2d ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
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Seminal collection of essays in Atlantic history. Networks are central to the editors’ conceptualization of the Atlantic world and the practice of Atlantic history. Networks “provide a meaningful context for comparative history: it is not an arbitrary creation of historical scholarship but corresponds to real networks of social, political, and economic connection in the past” (p. 3).
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Bailyn, Bernard. Atlantic History: Concept and Contours. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
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Part 1 traces how historians in the post–World War II period began uncovering the economic and political networks of the Atlantic region and, in the process, gave shape to the nascent practice of Atlantic history. Part 2 presents the major themes in the history of the Atlantic world, using networks in the discussion of commerce, religious communities (e.g., the “elaborate transdynastic and transterritorial” networks of Protestants [p. 100]), and creoles.
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Bailyn, Bernard, and Patricia L. Denault, eds. Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500–1800. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.
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Edited collection of essays on a broad range of topics including the impact of the ecology on the slave trade, interimperial smuggling, the Atlantic lives of individuals, and the circulation of ideas. Networks figure centrally in chapters by David J. Hancock (chapter 3), J. Gabriel Martínez-Serna (chapter 5), Rosalind J. Beiler (chapter 6), and Mark A. Peterson (chapter 10), as well as in the Introduction, in which Bailyn reflects on the major themes of Atlantic history, including commercial networks, religious networks, and networks of scientific exchange.
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Cooper, Frederick. “Networks, Moral Discourse, and History.” In Intervention and Transnationalism in Africa: Global-Local Networks of Power. Edited by Thomas M. Callaghy, Ronald Kassimir, and Robert Latham, 23–46. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511558788.003Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Exploration of the relationship among structures, networks, and discourses to determine how attitudes toward slavery, colonialism, and apartheid changed over time. Includes a helpful reflection on networks and a definition of networks as “organizations which stress voluntary and reciprocal patterns of communication and exchange, which if not necessarily ‘horizontal’ are not fully controlled by vertical systems of authority” (p. 24).
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Games, Alison. “Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities.” American Historical Review 111.3 (2006): 741–757.
DOI: 10.1086/ahr.111.3.741Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Wide-ranging historiographical assessment. After reviewing the challenges and shortcomings of Atlantic history, Games identifies the study of mobility (of people, commodities, ideas, etc.) as the field’s primary opportunity. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
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Although not fully theorized, the idea of the network features prominently in Gilroy’s conceptualization of the Black Atlantic. Explores how networks of people and news connected blacks throughout the Atlantic basin. Cultural artifacts, such as Martin R. Delany’s novel Blake (Boston: Beacon, 1970), also “locate the Black Atlantic world in a webbed network, between the local and the global” (p. 29).
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Hancock, David. “Combining Success and Failure: Scottish Networks in the Atlantic Wine Trade.” In Irish and Scottish Mercantile Networks in Europe and Overseas in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Edited by David Dickson, Jan Parmentier, and Jane H. Ohlmeyer, 5–37. Ghent, Belgium: Academia, 2007.
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One of the few historical studies that deploys the concept of the network in a reflective and critical way (includes a useful section on the etymology of “network” and contemporary understandings of “correspondent” and “connection”). Notable for its attention to the failures as well as successes of networks in order to arrive at a richer understanding of early modern markets.
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Perl-Rosenthal, Nathan, and Evan Haefeli. “Transnational Connections: Special Issue Introduction.” In Special Issue: Anglo-Dutch Revolutions. Edited by Nathan Perl-Rosenthal and Evan Haefeli. Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 10.2 (Spring 2012): 227–238.
DOI: 10.1353/eam.2012.0010Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Sophisticated deployment of networks as “a conceptual ground and unifying thread for writing transnational history” (p. 229). Analyzes various Atlantic networks in terms of their shape (large or small; dense or thin), the nature of their nodes, the quality of their linkages, and the effect of “noise” (friction that impeded the flow of nodes across linkages). Available online by subscription.
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Journals

Although no journals are specifically devoted to Atlantic networks for migrations and mobility, the topics and themes covered here are treated in several journals, especially those that cross geographical and disciplinary boundaries. The journal William and Mary Quarterly originally was devoted to the study of Virginia, then branched into other areas of colonial American history, and is now the premier journal of colonial American/Atlantic history. Hispanic American Historical Review focuses on Latin American history but in recent years has published explicitly Atlanticist articles, especially on migration. Both the Journal of World History and the Journal of Global History feature macrolevel, cross-cultural, and often comparative scholarship, whereas Itinerario provides a forum for scholars working on European expansion. Atlantic Studies, the only self-consciously Atlantic journal, has published numerous articles on the themes of migrations and networks since its inception in 2004.

Atlantic Studies: Literary, Cultural and Historical Perspectives. 2004–.
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Interdisciplinary journal of the Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas (MESEA), published quarterly by Routledge. Decenters nationalist historiographies and literatures. Publishes Atlantic-focused studies by historians, literary scholars, cultural theorists, and others.
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Hispanic American Historical Review. 1918–.
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Historical journal published quarterly by Duke University Press in cooperation with the Conference on Latin American History and the American Historical Association. Publishes wider-ranging work covering all aspects of Latin American history, including studies of the Iberian Atlantic world.
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Itinerario: International Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction. 1977–.
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Primarily historical journal published by Cambridge University Press. Provides a forum for scholars of European expansion who adopt a global, international perspective. Affiliated with the Leiden Institute of Area Studies (LIAS) and the Forum on European Expansion and Global Interaction (FEEGI).
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Journal of Global History. 2006–.
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A Cambridge University Press journal published twice per year since 2006. Publishes peer-reviewed articles on globalization and global change over time. Encourages international, interregional, and interdisciplinary work.
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Journal of World History. 1990–.
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A historical journal published quarterly by the University of Hawai‘i Press. Seeks scholarship undertaken from a global, cross-cultural point of view, including research on Atlantic history as it relates to world history.
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William and Mary Quarterly. 1944–.
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A quarterly historical journal published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. Covers colonial North American, Atlantic world, and Spanish American borderlands history between the 15th and early 19th centuries. First published in 1892 as the William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Papers.
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Imperial Networks

All of the networks examined here developed within and/or across the European empires of the early modern and modern worlds. Russell-Wood 1992 explores the global networks established by Portuguese merchants, civil servants, migrants, and churchmen in the early modern period. Recent work on the British Empire (Lester 2006, Potter 2007, Magee and Thompson 2010) demonstrates historians’ embrace of the concept of the network to move beyond the dichotomy of metropole and colony. Glaisyer 2004 and Hatfield 2004 explicitly and successfully bridge imperial and Atlantic history. Hamilton 2005 shows how the Scots took full advantage of transatlantic networks to advance their careers and fortunes in the colonies of the British Caribbean. Jourdan 2012 uses the actor-network theory to track the movements and activities of three individuals in the revolutionary North Atlantic.

Glaisyer, Natasha. “Networking: Trade and Exchange in the Eighteenth-Century British Empire.” Historical Journal 47.2 (2004): 451–476.
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X04003759Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Advocates employing the concept of networks to bring the histories of 18th-century Britain and its empire together. Draws mainly on the secondary literature concerning the history of science and economic history, as well as Atlantic history, to demonstrate the mobility of ideas and goods and thus the interrelatedness of the metropole and colonies. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Hamilton, Douglas J. Scotland, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic World, 1750–1820. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2005.
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Demonstrates the operation of Scottish networks throughout the Caribbean, which were instrumental in the Scots’ achieving success in a wide range of imperial endeavors. Argues that the networks were based on “Scottish clannishness” but that these networks were not limited to Scots. Includes a helpful discussion about how various historians have used the idea of networks.
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Hatfield, April Lee. Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.
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Situates 17th-century Virginia within intercolonial, transatlantic, and international contexts. Relies extensively on the concept of networks in discussions of colonists’ commercial and religious lives. Also explores networks of mobility and communication.
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Jourdan, Annie. “A Tale of Three Patriots in a Revolutionary World: Théophile Cazenove, Jacques-Pierre Brissot, and Joel Barlow (1788–1811).” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 10.2 (Spring 2012): 360–381.
DOI: 10.1353/eam.2012.0008Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Uses actor-network theory (ANT) (as developed by Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, and John Law) to examine three men involved in land speculation and revolutionary politics in the Revolutionary era. Demonstrates multiple characteristics of Atlantic networks, including their variety, mobility, and uncertainty. Available online by subscription.
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Lester, Alan. “Imperial Circuits and Networks: Geographies of the British Empire.” History Compass 4.1 (January 2006): 124–141.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2005.00189.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Argues that the concept of the network allows the “histories of Britain and its colonies to be conceived more fluidly and reciprocally related” (p. 124). Networks, webs, and circuits are “very fruitful if one wants to consider metropole and colony, or colony and colony, within the same analytical frame, and without necessarily privileging either one” (pp. 133–134).
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Magee, Gary B., and Andrew S. Thompson. Empire and Globalisation: Networks of People, Goods and Capital in the British World, c. 1850–1914. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
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Although focused on the modern British Empire, this work usefully conceptualizes the relationship among networks, empires, and the mobility of people, goods, and capital. See especially the discussion on imperial networks in chapter 1 (pp. 22–45).
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Potter, Simon J. “Webs, Networks, and Systems: Globalization and the Mass Media in the Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century British Empire.” Journal of British Studies 46.3 (2007): 621–646.
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Fruitfully critiques the utility of “networked conceptions.” Argues that although a focus on networks and webs is enlightening for some periods, scholars who deploy the concept often “neglect[ed] to explore or acknowledge the limitations of those structures” (p. 622). Proposes “systemic connections” as an alternative to “networked conceptions.” Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Russell-Wood, A. J. R. A World on the Move: The Portuguese in Africa, Asia and America, 1415–1808. Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1992.
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Movement of vessels, people, goods, flora and fauna, and ideas is the central theme of this exploration of the early modern Portuguese empire. Global in scope but with significant attention to the Atlantic world throughout. See chapter 3, “Flux and Reflux of People,” pp. 58–122, for an overview of Portuguese migration and a discussion of the mobility of civil servants, religious men, and merchants.
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Communication Networks

Regardless of how they function and what movements they facilitate, all networks are based on communications. Given this fact, it is curious that so few historians, especially those of the Iberian Atlantic, have turned their attention to determining exactly how and with what speed people across the Atlantic world communicated with one another. Steele 1986 offers a pioneering analysis of the pace and patterns of communications in the English Atlantic. Banks 2002 explores the efforts of the French imperial state to assert its authority via inadequate communication networks. Cressy 1987 and O’Brien 1986 examine the epistolary networks connecting 17th-century England and New England and 18th-century evangelicals, respectively. Contributors to Strom, et al. 2009, especially D. F. Durnbaugh and Alexander Pyrges, analyze the communication networks of Pietists. Scott 1986 provides an innovative study of the long-distance communication networks of slaves, who communicated information across vast distances despite their restricted access to resources and technologies. Such communication networks were especially instrumental in spreading news and ideas in the age of revolutions, as illustrated by Gaspar and Geggus 1997.

Banks, Kenneth J. Chasing Empire across the Sea: Communications and the State in the French Atlantic, 1713–1763. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002.
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Assesses the role of communications (broadly defined) in the building and post-1763 dismantling of the French Atlantic empire. A study of the constraints on state power and royal authority. Deploys networks in his discussion of relations between patrons and clients and those between the state and merchants. One of the few studies to pay attention to the actual physical networks of roads and rivers that made communication possible.
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Cressy, David. Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
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An early exemplar of Atlantic history in which a primary goal was to “repatriate” early American history. Analyzes 17th-century correspondence between England and New England. Discerns a transatlantic community of interest “sustained by migration, return migration, trade, kinship, inheritance, money, and messages” (p. 8).
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Gaspar, David Barry, and David Patrick Geggus, eds. A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
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Pioneering edited volume that describes and illustrates the interconnectedness of the circum-Caribbean region. News spread throughout the region via “networks of trade and mobility of the free and enslaved populations” (p. viii), resulting in connections that “clearly transcend national, linguistic, and geographic boundaries” (p. viii). Drawing on Scott 1986, Kimberly S. Hanger examines communication networks operating in Louisiana (chapter 7).
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O’Brien, Susan. “A Transatlantic Community of Saints: The Great Awakening and the First Evangelical Network, 1735–1755.” American Historical Review 91.4 (1986): 811–832.
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Places the Great Awakening in its broad Atlantic context by exploring networks of communication connecting ministers and congregations on opposite sides of the ocean. News, practices, and a “transatlantic evangelical consciousness” were spread via these networks of correspondence and published revival newsletters. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Scott, Julius S. “The Common Wind: Currents of Afro-American Communication in the Era of the Haitian Revolution.” PhD diss., Duke University, 1986.
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Explores how Afro-Americans were linked via regional networks of communication that transmitted news, ideas, and rumors across the Atlantic world. Argues that the networks played a formative role in the politics and identities of the African diaspora. A portion is reprinted in Chapter 4 Origins of the Black Atlantic: Rewriting History, edited by Laurent Dubois and Julius S. Scott, pp. 69-98 (London: Routledge, 2009).
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Steele, Ian K. The English Atlantic, 1675–1740: An Exploration of Communication and Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
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Pathbreaking study of English Atlantic communications, the changes in communication over time, and the impact of communications on political, economic, and social relations. Traces the spread of news via commercial shipping, the postal service, and the packet boat system. Defines the communications infrastructure that underlay “innumerable transatlantic networks of business, politics, religion, and family during the colonial era” (pp. 8–9).
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Strom, Jonathan, Hartmut Lehmann, and James Van Horn Melton, eds. Pietism in Germany and North America 1680–1820. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2009.
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Essential collection of chapters that places Pietism within the context of Atlantic networks. Communication networks factor centrally in the chapters by D. F. Durnbaugh on radical Pietist groups (chapter 3) and Alexander Pyrges on the Ebenezer community in the Georgia colony, England, and Germany (chapter 4).
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Networks of Commercial Exchange

The starting point for investigating Atlantic commercial networks is McCusker and Morgan 2000, which provides a panoramic view of the early modern Atlantic economy. Roitman 2009 explores the family networks of New Christians on the eastern side of the Atlantic in the early 17th century. Moving west, Socolow 1978 is a classic study of the merchants’ role in community building in the Rio de la Plata Viceroyalty. Hoberman 1991 and Studnicki-Gizbert 2000 investigate merchants’ networks in 16- and 17th-century Mexico, whereas Bosher 1987 studies commercial exchanges from the perspective of familial and religious networks. Hancock 1995 explores the networked world of Richard Oswald and other 18th-century London merchants. Hancock’s study of Madeira wine (Hancock 2009) is a producer-merchant-consumer network analysis par excellence.

Bosher, J. F. The Canada Merchants, 1713–1763. Oxford: Clarendon, 1987.
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Eschews a materialist focus and instead concentrates on the family and religious lives of about a hundred merchant families in New France. For both Catholic and Protestant communities, family networks were the “key to the world of the eighteenth-century merchant” (p. 23). Whereas the Catholic network was squarely focused in the French empire, the French-Canadian Huguenot network extended into England and the Netherlands.
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Hancock, David. Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735–1785. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
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Demonstrates the intricate operations of a far-flung network that moved commodities and capital around the Atlantic basin during the mid-18th century. Discusses how Richard Oswald and his associates developed an ever-expanding network of “suppliers, clients, correspondents, agents, factors, and employers” (p. 132). See especially Part 2 on the role of networks in shipping, planting, and slave trading. Also notable for Hancock’s attention to social mobility.
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Hancock, David. Oceans of Wine: Madeira and the Organization of the Atlantic World, 1640–1815. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.
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Highly detailed examination of the Madeira wine commodity chain (production, distribution, and consumption), which was developed, Hancock argues, within a decentralized, networked, and self-organized world. Consistently turns to the concept of networks to explain, for example, how merchants found customers, how trust was established and enhanced, and how innovations changed the product over time.
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Hoberman, Louisa Schell. Mexico’s Merchant Elite, 1590–1660: Silver, State, and Society. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991.
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Explores the evolution and influence of colonial merchants (wholesalers) in 17th-century Mexico. Focuses on the merchants’ involvement in three sectors: mining, agriculture, and trade. Discusses the social and family networks of prominent merchants and their accumulation of wealth and power over time.
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McCusker, John J., and Kenneth Morgan, eds. The Early Modern Atlantic Economy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
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An edited collection focused primarily on the British Atlantic economy (with some attention to France and Brazil). Networks feature prominently in the chapters by Peter Mathias (chapter 1), Kenneth Morgan (chapter 2), and David Hancock (chapter 5). Mathias, in particular, explores the operations of kinship networks.
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Roitman, Jessica Vance. “New Christians, Jews, and Amsterdam at the Crossroads of Expansion Systems.” In Migration, Trade, and Slavery in an Expanding World: Essays in Honor of Pieter Emmer. Edited by Wim Klooster, 119–140. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill, 2009.
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Deploys the concept of networks to analyze Atlantic trades, especially the slave trade. Argues for the importance of New Christian family networks in the Iberian expansion system at the turn of the 17th century.
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Socolow, Susan Migden. The Merchants of Buenos Aires, 1778–1810: Family and Commerce. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
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Traces the origins, elaboration, and activities of the merchant community, especially wholesalers (comerciantes), in turn-of-the-century Buenos Aires. Demonstrates how the merchants’ imbrication in familial, commercial, religious, and government networks facilitated their rise to prominence.
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Studnicki-Gizbert, Daviken. “From Agents to Consulado: Commercial Networks in Colonial Mexico, 1520–1590 and Beyond.” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 57.1 (2000): 41–68.
DOI: 10.3989/aeamer.2000.v57.i1.258Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Challenges the conventional historiography to argue that the relationship between Spain and Mexico “was characterized by interaction rather than subordination” (p. 42). Describes the Mexican trade networks’ role in lending, monetizing, and infrastructure building, all of which made Mexico City a central node in a broad Atlantic (and Pacific) web of connections. Available online by subscription.
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Diasporic Networks

McCabe, et al. 2005 is a good point of departure for thinking about the importance of diasporas (defined as “large-scale ethnic migrations”) in world history. Most work on diasporic networks concerns the Jewish diaspora, well represented here by a range of scholars. Israel 2002 examines the Jewish diaspora using the widest lens, which includes Europe, the Near East, and the Atlantic world. Kagan and Morgan 2009 highlights various networks of Jews, crypto-Jews, and conversos, as well as their multifaceted role in the Atlantic empires of the early modern world. Graizbord 2004 is a study of how conversos used familial and commercial networks to move throughout Europe, whereas Trivellato 2009 focuses on the use of social networks to build trust across space and religious divides. Also included here are works on other diasporas: Studnicki-Gizbert 2007 shows the part played by the diasporic “Portuguese Nation” within the Spanish Empire; van Ruymbeke and Sparks 2003 examines network building within the Huguenot diaspora in Europe and across the Atlantic; and Delaney and MacRaild 2005 uses the concept of networks to examine the agency of migrants in the Irish diaspora. For works on the African diaspora, see the separate Oxford Bibliographies articles on Africa and the Atlantic World and African Religion and Culture.

Delaney, Enda, and Donald MacRaild. “Irish Migration, Networks and Ethnic Identities since 1750: An Introduction.” In Special Issue: Irish Migration, Networks, and Ethnicities since 1750. Immigrants & Minorities 23.2–3 (2005): 127–142.
DOI: 10.1080/02619280500188013Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Special issue devoted to the complex dynamics of the Irish diaspora. Uses the concept of networks to achieve a “realignment of perspective” challenging the well-established idea of the Irish as hapless victims. Various articles demonstrate how Irish migrants drew on a wide range of resources to move throughout the British Isles, Europe, North America, and the British Empire. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Graizbord, David L. Souls in Dispute: Converso Identities in Iberia and the Jewish Diaspora, 1580–1700. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.
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Intriguing study of the movements of conversos, not only throughout Italy, France, and the Netherlands but also across religious boundaries. Demonstrates the reliance of conversos on kinship and trading networks, both to flee persecution in Iberia and to return to the peninsula.
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Israel, Jonathan I. Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World of Maritime Empires (1540–1740). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2002.
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Argues that Sephardic Jews played a unique role in the maritime, commercial, and colonial expansion of western Europe. Spans two centuries and six empires, examining the specific circumstances that allowed the diaspora to emerge, flourish, and ultimately decline, as well as Sephardic networking methods. Connects the Near Eastern, European, and Atlantic worlds.
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Kagan, Richard L., and Philip D. Morgan, eds. Atlantic Diasporas: Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism, 1500–1800. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.
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A key starting point for any discussion of Atlantic networks of migration and mobility. The contributors explore multiple networks, including those of Armenians, Dutch Mennonites, Sephardic Jews, crypto-Jews, and Marranos. Kinship and trading networks receive the most attention. See especially chapter 3 by Wim Klooster on the role of intermediaries in Dutch colonies, and chapter 6 by Francesca Trivellato on trust building and cooperation among Sephardic merchants.
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McCabe, Ina Baghdiantz, Gelina Harlaftis, and Ioanna Pepelasis Minoglou, eds. Diaspora Entrepreneurial Networks: Four Centuries of History. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005.
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Examines a broad range of diaspora trading networks from the 16th century forward. An interdisciplinary, comparative study that focuses on the Eurasian world and the role of such networks in the creation of the modern global economy.
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Studnicki-Gizbert, Daviken. A Nation upon the Ocean Sea: Portugal’s Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492–1640. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
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Traces the creation and operation of the Atlantic trading network of the Portuguese Nation (a religiously diverse diasporic community of traders, sea captains, mariners, servants, artisans, and migrants). See especially chapter 4, “A Vast Machine” (pp. 91–121), which describes various characteristics of the Nation’s trading networks, including their international reach, multilateral organization, interconnection, and vertical integration.
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Trivellato, Francesca. The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.
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Although situated in the Mediterranean basin, this significant study for historians seeks to deploy social network analysis (SNA) in its investigations of the Atlantic world. Uses SNA to analyze the business practices of two Sephardic families based in Livorno, Tuscany. Successfully demonstrates how trust was established in cross-cultural economic exchanges.
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van Ruymbeke, Bertrand, and Randy J. Sparks, eds. Memory and Identity: The Huguenots in France and the Atlantic Diaspora. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003.
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Edited collection that posits the idea of a “Huguenot Atlantic” to bring together scholarship on Huguenots in France and Huguenots in the diaspora. Describes Huguenot mercantile, religious, and family ties as “layers of superimposed networks” (p. 12). See chapter 8 on family bonds across the refuge by Carolyn L. Chapell and chapter 10 on the Huguenots and South Carolina’s plantation economy by R. C. Nash.
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Networks of Migration and Settlement

The mechanisms and functions of migration networks were quite consistent across the Atlantic world. Kinship was the primary factor in determining migration patterns of southern and northern Europeans, as seen in Altman and Horn 1991, Hoerder 2002, and the specific case studies in Iberian Atlantic World and North Atlantic World. Forced migration, especially the Atlantic slave trade, did involve networks, but ones that differed significantly from the ones examined here; please see David Northrup, “The Atlantic Slave Trade,” Matt Childs, “Atlantic Slavery,” Leslee Choquette, “Atlantic Diasporas” and Susanne Lachenicht, “Migrations and Diasporas,” in the series.

Altman, Ida, and James Horn, eds. “To Make America”: European Emigration in the Early Modern Period. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
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Collection of essays examining the migration of Spanish, British, French, and German peoples to wide-ranging destinations in the Americas. Includes a useful introduction that provides an overview of the magnitude, pace, character, structure, and motives behind European migration. Identifies the importance of kinship networks in lubricating private migration patterns.
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Hoerder, Dirk. Cultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second Millennium. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.
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Essential overview of the history of migration from the 16th through the 19th centuries. Global in scope, with the Atlantic world receiving significant attention. Discusses various kinds of networks (familial, commercial, and social) throughout with attention to both specific networks (e.g., Armenian) and networks that connected communities and regions.
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Iberian Atlantic World

Altman 1989 and Altman 2000 emphasize the importance of studying European localities as well as transatlantic destinations. Pescador 2003 demonstrates the multifaceted impact of return migrants on European points of departure. Borges 2009 offers an analysis of a migratory stream of a later period: families from southern Portugal to Argentina at the turn of the 20th century.

Altman, Ida. Emigrants and Society: Extremadura and America in the Sixteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
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A pioneering study of the impact of migration on two localities, Cáceres and Trujillo, in Extremadura, Spain. Underscores the importance of families and kinship networks, demonstrates the maintenance of transatlantic contacts, and traces cycles of migration and return migration.
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Altman, Ida. Transatlantic Ties in the Spanish Empire: Brihuega, Spain and Puebla, Mexico, 1560–1620. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.
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Tracks the transfer and settlement of over one thousand people from Brihuega, Spain, to Puebla de los Angeles, New Spain (now Mexico), in the early colonial period. Describes this as a unique migration, both in terms of its size and intensity, and explores the dense network of familial, economic, and social connections between Brihuega and Puebla that resulted.
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Borges, Marcelo J. Chains of Gold: Portuguese Migration to Argentina in Transatlantic Perspective. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2009.
DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004176485.i-353Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Explores the circuit of transatlantic labor migration taking Europeans from rural southern Portugal to Argentina. Emphasizes the role of social networks in facilitating migration and adaptation. Social networks created migratory chains that influenced the migration’s destination selection and experience in Argentina.
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Pescador, Juan Javier. The New World inside a Basque Village: The Oiartzun Valley and Its Atlantic Emigrants, 1550–1800. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2003.
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Explores how Atlantic networks transformed the economy and society of the Oiartzun Valley over the course of three centuries. Demonstrates the formation, operation, and impact of the red de paisonos (countryman’s network), for both individuals and the community as a whole.
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North Atlantic World

Elliott 1988, Roeber 1991, Fogleman 1996, and Meadows 2000 examine the varied networks that brought Irish, Dutch, German, and French migrants, respectively, across the ocean. Beiler 2009 charts the religious-cum-migration networks of 18th-century dissenters. Beiler 2008 is a fascinating exploration of one migrant’s story to demonstrate broader themes. Delaney and MacRaild 2005 (cited under Diasporic Networks) champions the idea of networks as a way to appreciate and examine migrants’ agency.

Beiler, Rosalind J. Immigrant and Entrepreneur: The Atlantic World of Caspar Wistar, 1650–1750. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008.
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Uses the life of Caspar Wistar, a German migrant and businessman, to illustrate the emergence of the German-Atlantic world at the turn of the 18th century. Important for demonstrating how immigrants like Wistar, who were not connected to formal institutional networks, used more flexible and fluid communication, commercial, and credit networks to establish themselves in the American colonies.
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Beiler, Rosalind J. “Dissenting Religious Communication Networks and European Migration, 1660–1710.” In Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500–1800. Edited by Bernard Bailyn and Patricia L. Denault, 210–236. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.
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Describes the evolution, structure, and functions of Mennonite, Quaker, and Pietist networks of the 18th century. Focuses on the development of communication and information channels. Dissenting networks fostered group identity, provided for the immediate needs of those escaping persecution in Europe, and facilitated the transfer of the groups to the New World.
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Elliott, Bruce. Irish Migrants in the Canadas: A New Approach. Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988.
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Tracing genealogies, mobility, and economic strategies; emphasizes the importance of kinship networks in the migration of 775 families from County Tipperary, Ireland, to Canada between 1815 and 1855. Demonstrates (and diagrams) how chain migration spread across kin networks via marriage to create “interweaving networks of chain migration” (p. 126).
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Fogleman, Aaron Spencer. Hopeful Journeys: German Immigration, Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial North America, 1717–1775. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.
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Thorough exploration of the sources, mechanisms, and settlement patterns of German migration to North America during the 18th century. Shows how the Germans’ communication, financial, village, and religious networks enabled their success as migrants and settlers. Moravians and other radical Pietists were particularly successful in developing networks that facilitated the physical and social mobility of German migrants.
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Games, Alison. “Migration.” In The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800. 2d ed. Edited by David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick, 31–50. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
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Overview of migration patterns in the British Atlantic between the 17th and early 19th centuries. Argues that migration made the Atlantic world. Considers the role of commercial networks in the slave trade, informal family and religious networks in facilitating voluntary migration, and information and gossip networks in influencing migrants’ choice of destination.
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Meadows, R. Darrell. “Engineering Exile: Social Networks and the French Atlantic Community, 1789–1809.” French Historical Studies 23.1 (2000): 67–102.
DOI: 10.1215/00161071-23-1-67Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Employs concepts drawn from social network analysis (such as the notion of “personal community” and “weak social ties”) to analyze the forced migration of thirty thousand French émigrés and refugees during the 1790s. Emphasizes the role of individual actors and sees the episode not as a haphazard movement but as a process of chain migration. Draws on the crucial resources provided by social networks to survive the exile experience. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Roeber, A. G. “‘The Origin of Whatever Is Not English among Us’: The Dutch-Speaking and the German-Speaking Peoples of Colonial British America.” In Strangers within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire. Edited by Bernard Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan, 220–283. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
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A study of the divergent experiences of Dutch and German communities in North America. Examines patterns of migration, networks, and culture to demonstrate the complexities of their encounters with the English-speaking Atlantic world. See especially Roeber’s discussion of the support network that facilitated the movement and settlement of German speakers.
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Fraternal Networks

The Atlantic world was home to many and varied fraternal associations that facilitated members’ movement, both in terms of geographical transfer and social mobility. Harland-Jacobs 2011 urges historians of fraternalism to move beyond the nation-centered analyses that have dominated the scholarship and instead to adopt transnational approaches to study these transnational institutions.

Harland-Jacobs, Jessica. “Worlds of Brothers.” Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism 2.1 (2011): 10–37.
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Calls into question the dominance of the nation-state as the central unit of analysis in historical studies of fraternalism. Challenges scholars to apply macrohistorical methodologies when examining the history of fraternalism: world history for the Jesuits and the Freemasons, Atlantic history for confraternities and the Orange Order, and transnational history for the Odd Fellows. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Freemasons

The first modern fraternity, Freemasonry emerged in Britain during the 17th century and spread across the world during the 18th century. The brotherhood was structured and functioned as a network, as demonstrated by Harland-Jacobs 1999 and Fozdar 2006. Its prominent presence in the Atlantic world, although underappreciated until recently, is increasingly recognized and studied. Bullock 1996 investigates the social and political dimensions of Freemasonry during the Revolution and early national eras. Sesay 2006 and Kantrowitz 2010, although examining different periods, both explore how black men used Freemasonry to imagine a world in which all men were equal and to organize themselves to achieve that goal. Harland-Jacobs 1999 considers both the global and British North American dimensions of the Masonic network, whereas Pflugrad-Jackisch 2011 examines the role of Freemasonry and other fraternal orders in Virginian society during the antebellum period. (Note: Academic investigations of Freemasonry in the Caribbean and Latin America are sorely lacking.)

Bullock, Steven C. Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730–1840. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
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Pathbreaking study of Freemasonry in the North America during the Revolutionary and early national periods. The early chapters look at the brotherhood in its North Atlantic context. Bullock argues that the brotherhood, appropriated by nonelites during and after the Revolution, helped forge a broad social and political basis for the new American nation.
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Fozdar, Vahid. “Imperial Brothers, Imperial Partners: Indian Freemasons, Race, Kinship and Networking in the British Empire and Beyond.” Paper presented at a conference held at the University of California, Berkeley, in April 2003. In Decentring Empire: Britain, India, and the Transcolonial World. Edited by Durba Ghosh and Dane Kennedy, 104–129. Hyderabad, India: Orient Longman, 2006.
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Although a study of Freemasonry in India, the chapter offers important insights on networking, defined as “activity associated with belonging to an institutional structure or system that allows people to socialise and exchange ideas, and give and get help more easily than they would be able to do outside that structure” (p. 105). Shows how participation in Freemasonry gave Indian Masons access to international economic networks.
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Harland-Jacobs, Jessica. “‘Hands across the Sea’: The Masonic Network, British Imperialism, and the North Atlantic World.” Geographical Review 89.2 (1999): 237–253.
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Lays out the origins, scope, and functions of Freemasonry’s network. Uses the British North Atlantic as a case study for demonstrating the brotherhood’s ability to connect people across an expansive ocean basin. Reveals the benefits the network provided and the ideologies it promoted. Available online for purchase or by subscription. See also Harland-Jacobs, Builders of Empire: Freemasons and British Imperialism, 1717–1927 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), especially chapter 1.
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Kantrowitz, Stephen. “‘Intended for the Better Government of Man’: The Political History of African American Freemasonry in the Era of Emancipation.” Journal of American History 96.4 (2010): 1001–1026.
DOI: 10.1093/jahist/96.4.1001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Investigates Freemasonry’s role as an arena of political thinking and activity for African American men during the mid-19th century. The brotherhood provided both practical training (in terms of developing organizational and leadership skills) and a radical promise: the equality of man. Shows African Americans’ use of Freemasonry to build extensive “networks of deliberation and solidarity” (p. 1002). Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Pflugrad-Jackisch, Ami. Brothers of a Vow: Secret Fraternal Orders and the Transformation of White Male Culture in Antebellum Virginia. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2011.
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Examines the Freemasons, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and the Sons of Temperance in antebellum Virginia. Argues that participating in these fraternal orders diffused potential class tensions among white men, bolstered their civic authority, and helped ease the transition to a market economy.
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Sesay, Chernoh M., Jr. “Freemasons of Color: Prince Hall, Revolutionary Black Boston, and the Origins of Black Freemasonry.” PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2006.
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Exploration of how Prince Hall used Freemasonry to build community, rise to prominence, and engage in political activism in turn-of-the-century Boston. Discusses the evolution and mobility of Boston’s free black community. Demonstrates how Hall both built local networks and participated in broader Atlantic networks of evangelicals, Freemasons, and others.
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Orangemen

Emerging in Ireland at the end of the 18th century, the Orange Order was modeled after the Freemasons but had a specific politico-religious agenda: maintenance of Protestant power in Ireland and the Protestant succession in the British monarchy. During the 19th century, the network of Orange lodges spread to England, across the Atlantic, and eventually throughout much of the British Empire, as discussed by MacRaild 2005. Houston and Smyth 1980 tracks the extension of the Orange network and explains its functions in British North America, whereas Harland-Jacobs 2008 adopts a broader perspective in order to appreciate the Atlantic dimensions of Orange fraternalism.

Harland-Jacobs, Jessica. “‘Maintaining the Connexion’: Orangeism in the British North Atlantic World.” Atlantic Studies 5.1 (2008): 27–49.
DOI: 10.1080/14788810701878317Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Applies David Armitage’s “Three Concepts of Atlantic History” (see Armitage and Braddick 2009, cited under General Overviews) to examine the social and political dimensions of the Orange Order’s Atlantic network. Discusses the “Orange Atlantic” and the impact of distinct local contexts (Irish, metropolitan, and colonial) on the development of the order, especially in terms of official policy toward the order. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Houston, Cecil J., and William J. Smyth. The Sash Canada Wore: A Historical Geography of the Orange Order in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980.
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Offers a thorough examination of the Orange Order’s spread across Canada during the 19th and early 20th centuries, its membership profile, and its varied convivial, social, and political functions. The authors argue that, in the Canadian context, Orangeism went beyond its Irish base to embrace a wide spectrum of Protestant, loyalist men.
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MacRaild, Donald M. Faith, Fraternity and Fighting: ‪The Orange Order and Irish Migrants in Northern England, c. 1850–1920. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 2005.
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Pioneering academic study of the Orange Order in northern England. Situates Orangeism within the broader context of British associational life. Chapter 8, “An Orange Diaspora,” systematically explores the utility of the concept of networks for the study of Orangeism, concluding that the brotherhood performed many networking functions for members across the British world. See also the chapter by MacRaild, “Associationalism of the Orange Diaspora,” in The Orange Order in Canada, edited by David A. Wilson, 25–41 (Dublin, Ireland: Four Courts, 2007).
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Confraternal Networks

Confraternities are lay religious brotherhoods and voluntary associations that flourished in late medieval/early modern Europe and were transferred across the Atlantic with the Iberian conquest of the Caribbean and Latin America. They provided institutional networks not only for the performance of specific religious activities (such as the organization of festivals and processions) but also for mutual assistance and social mobility. Black and Gravestock 2006 provides a good starting point for the topic, especially given their attention to both the European and the Latin American contexts. Webster 1998 presents a concise overview of confraternities’ establishment in Latin America and surveys the historiographical terrain. Historians have studied confraternities in a wide range of New World settings, including Graff 1973 on New Grenada and Meyers and Hopkins 1988 on Peru, Guatemala, and Mexico. Mulvey 1982 and von Germeten 2006 explore black confraternities (which facilitated the mobility of slaves, free blacks, and Atlantic Creoles), whereas Clark 1997 examines a women’s confraternity in 18th-century New Orleans.

Black, Christopher, and Pamela Gravestock, eds. Early Modern Confraternities in Europe and the Americas: International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006.
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A wide-ranging collection examining confraternities in Europe and Latin America from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Includes an important methodological chapter by Nicholas Terpstra (pp. 264–282), in which he argues that scholars should examine fraternities in multiple geographic contexts and adopt an interdisciplinary perspective.
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Clark, Emily. “‘By All the Conduct of Their Lives’: A Laywomen’s Confraternity in New Orleans, 1730–1744.” The William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. 54.4 (1997): 769–794.
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Fascinating glimpse into the activities of the Ladies Congregation of the Children of Mary. Comprising women from diverse social backgrounds, the confraternity facilitated the incorporation of women into colonial society and functioned as an independent operational base for Catholic women to pursue religious and social advancement. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Graff, Gary Wendell. “Cofradías in the New Kingdom of Granada: Lay Fraternities in a Spanish-American Frontier Society, 1600–1755.” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1973.
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Explores the establishment, composition, and activities (both social and religious) of confraternities in the Viceroyalty of New Granada during the 17th and 18th centuries. Argues that, compared with the brotherhoods in Spain, the confraternities of New Granada performed fewer social welfare functions; nonetheless, their social activities included organizing religious festivals and processions and providing funeral benefits and, to a lesser extent, mutual aid.
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Meyers, Albert, and Diane Elizabeth Hopkins, eds. Manipulating the Saints: Religious Brotherhoods and Social Integration in Postconquest Latin America. Hamburg, Germany: Wayasbah, 1988.
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Most of the essays examine local confraternal culture primarily in Peru, Guatemala, and Mexico, but the chapter by Patricia Mulvey and Barry Crouch (pp. 51–65) provides a useful comparative analysis of slave confraternities across Latin America. Often one of the few, if not the only, forms of association open to slaves and free blacks, the religious brotherhoods provided status and facilitated social mobility.
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Mulvey, Patricia A. “Slave Confraternities in Brazil: Their Role in Colonial Society.” The Americas 39.1 (July 1982): 39–68.
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Explores the wide range of religious, social, and economic functions performed by slave confraternities in colonial Brazil. Argues that they functioned as conservative mutual aid societies. Confraternities facilitated the upward mobility of slaves by providing legal advice to slaves involved in disputes over their freedom and loans to members so that they could purchase their freedom. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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von Germeten, Nicole. Black Blood Brothers: Confraternities and Social Mobility for Afro-Mexicans. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006.
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Traces the history of black confraternities in Mexico from the 16th century through the 18th century. Argues that, by joining confraternities, Afro-Mexicans created important fictive families that performed a wide range of religious and social functions. Emphasizes the role of confraternities in facilitating Afro-Mexicans’ social mobility and acculturation over the long term.
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Webster, Susan. “Research on Confraternities in the Colonial Americas and Select Bibliography.” Confraternitas 9.1 (1998): 15–21.
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A guide for research in the field of colonial American confraternity studies. Traces their origins among the mendicant missions of the 16th century, provides a helpful survey of their spread across colonial Latin America, and explains their widespread success and popularity. Focuses on their role in indigenous societies during the early modern period. Includes a bibliography of primary and secondary sources.
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Catholic Networks

For helpful overviews of the Catholic Atlantic, Greer and Mills 2007 (thematic and topical) and Armstrong 2007 (historiographical). Most of the scholarship that examines the theme of Catholic networks concerns the Jesuits, who arguably established the first global fraternal enterprise. Alden 1996 provides a comprehensive overview. Clossey 2010 pays particular attention to Jesuits’ global network-building activities. Harris 1996 and Martínez-Serna 2009 offer close examinations of two specific aspects of Jesuit networking: their pursuit of science and their managerial acumen. Contributors to Greer and Bilinkoff 2003 discuss cases of sainthood within the Catholic Atlantic. For an example of Ursuline networks, see Clark 2007.

Alden, Dauril. The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond, 1540–1750. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996.
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Lengthy exploration of the Society of Jesus from its establishment in Portugal through the mid-18th century. Does not fully deploy the concept of the network, but chapter 9 focuses on the Atlantic World; chapter 21 discusses the Jesuit trading network.
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Armstrong, Megan. “Transatlantic Catholicism: Rethinking the Nature of the Catholic Tradition in the Early Modern Period.” History Compass 5.6 (2007): 1942–1966.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00483.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examination of the Atlantic world as an early modern Catholic space. Thorough historiographical overview of recent work on the history of Catholicism, focusing on Spain, New Spain, France, and New France. Especially concerned on tracing how the Church, as an institution, changed over time. Available online by subscription
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Clark, Emily. Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society, 1727–1834. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
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Traces the history of Ursuline nuns in New Orleans through the French, Spanish, and early American periods. Places the Ursulines in the context of France’s multinodal “network of charitable and reformatory institutions” (p. 26) and discusses the blood and fictive kin networks of enslaved people within the Ursuline community.
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Clossey, Luke. Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
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A work of historical dromography (“geography, history and logistics of trade, movement, transportation and communication networks” [p. 10]) that explores the global mission of the Society of Jesus. Mexico is one of the main areas of focus. Discusses the society’s “horizontal global network,” especially in chapters 7 through 9 on the Jesuit missionary network (pp. 136–161), the Jesuit financial network (pp. 162–192), and the Jesuit information network (pp. 193–215).
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Greer, Allan, and Jodi Bilinkoff, eds. Colonial Saints: Discovering the Holy in the Americas, 1500–1800. New York: Routledge, 2003.
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Important collection of essays examining cases of sainthood and syncretism from across the Atlantic world. For networks, see chapters by Dot Tuer on the Guarani missions (pp. 77–98) and Dominique Deslandres on representations of female holiness in Quebec (pp. 129–152).
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Greer, Allan, and Kenneth Mills. “A Catholic Atlantic.” In The Atlantic in Global History, 1500–2000. Edited by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Erik R. Seeman, 3–19. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007.
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Explores Catholic Christianity using an integrative, Atlantic perspective. A helpful survey and overview of both themes and historiography.
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Harris, Steven J. “Confession-Building, Long-Distance Networks, and the Organization of Jesuit Science.” Early Science and Medicine 1.3 (October 1996): 287–318.
DOI: 10.1163/157338296X00051Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Applying the models of long-distance networks developed by John Law and Bruno Latour, attributes the Jesuits’ success in pursuing scientific scholarship (as part of its broader mission to spread the Catholic confession) to their ability to develop long-distance networks. Provides a helpful précis of the theories of Law and Latour before modifying them to describe and explain the Jesuit network. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Martínez-Serna, J. Gabriel. “Procurators and the Making of the Jesuits’ Atlantic Network.” In Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500–1830. Edited by Bernard Bailyn and Patricia L. Denault, 181–209. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.
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Shows how procurators (managers hired by the Society of Jesus to manage its properties, keep records, and represent the society in its dealings with the state) built a transnational, Pan-Atlantic network along which “flowed orders, requests, reports, funds, goods, equipment, books, and people” (p. 17).
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Protestant Networks

Noll 2003 provides a good starting point for the study of the transatlantic networks built by various Protestant sects. Bremer 1994 explores one of the earliest Atlantic networks, which was created by Puritan epistolary exchanges of the 17th century. Larson 1999 and Gragg 2009 deal with different aspects of the highly articulated Quaker network. Wellenreuther 2009 explores the Atlantic milieu of Jacob Leisler, including its Huguenot and Dutch Reformed dimensions. See Sparks 2004 for a fascinating story of how two African elites became caught in the Atlantic’s slaving networks and were eventually delivered to freedom and back to Africa by their resourceful use of the Methodist network centered in Bristol.

Bremer, Francis J. Congregational Communion: Clerical Friendship in the Anglo-American Puritan Community, 1610–1692. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1994.
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The “Puritan friendship network” figures centrally in this exploration of godly communion and the ties that connected Puritans across the 17th-century Atlantic world. The network served as placement service, conveyed news and information, distributed publications, and played an important role in the shaping of Puritan ideas and practices.
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Gragg, Larry D. The Quaker Community on Barbados: Challenging the Culture of the Planter Class. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009.
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Attributes the success of the Quakers’ network, described as the “most effective and enduring” of all Atlantic networks (p. 2), to their shared ideology and experience of persecution, the meeting structure, the itinerant ministry, exchange of annual letters, and the dissemination of Quaker publications. Argues that Quakers on Barbados used the network to challenge the island’s dominant planter class.
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Larson, Rebecca. Daughters of Light: Quaker Women Preaching and Prophesying in the Colonies and Abroad, 1700–1775. New York: Knopf, 1999.
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Traces the contours of the “tight-knit sectarian network” (p. 9) created by the activities of over a thousand Quaker female ministers in the 18th-century Atlantic world. Clearly demonstrates the central role of women in Quaker communities and the extent and effectiveness of their network.
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Noll, Mark A. The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield, and the Wesleys. History of Evangelicalism 1. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003.
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Provides an overview of the 18th-century evangelical movement—Atlantic in scope, if not in conceptualization. Discusses networks both in terms of individuals (e.g., George Whitefield) and submovements (e.g., the Calvinist revival network and the Clapham sect).
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Sparks, Randy J. The Two Princes of Calabar: An Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.
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Two “princes” of a ruling family, Little Ephraim Robin John and Ancona Robin Robin John, become involved in two vastly different Atlantic networks: the web of slave traders, which twice compels them across the ocean (first to Dominica and Virginia and later to England), and the web of Methodist evangelicals, which helps them to achieve freedom and ultimately return to Africa (and the practice of slave trading).
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Wellenreuther, Hermann, ed. Jacob Leisler’s Atlantic World in the Later Seventeenth Century: Essays on Religion, Militia, Trade, and Networks. Berlin: LIT-Verlag, 2009.
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Edited collection examining the various aspects of the North Atlantic world at the end of the 17th century by exploring the activities of Jacob Leisler, a German-born colonist, businessman, and governor of New York, who was executed for treason in the early stages of the Glorious Revolution. Contributors discuss Leisler’s world and wider networks of kinship, commerce, politics, and ideas.
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Scientific Networks

Networks were crucial to the development and transmission of scientific knowledge across the Atlantic world. Latour 1987 is an important theoretical starting point of any discussion of scientific networks; Lux and Cook 1998 builds on Latour and other social network theorists. Schiebinger 2009 challenges the Latourian model of metropolitan “centres of calculation” by demonstrating the multicentered nature of scientific exchange. Bennett and Hodge 2011 looks at scientific networks in the broad British imperial context, whereas Delbourgo and Dew 2008 focuses squarely on the Atlantic world with attention to northern, southern, and circum-Atlantic circuits. Barrera-Osorio 2006 explores the relationship between the Spanish Empire and the Scientific Revolution. Wilson 2000 provides a valuable study of the role of religious networks in the circulation and exchange of scientific knowledge and pharmaceuticals.

Barrera-Osorio, Antonio. Experiencing Nature: The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006.
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Aims to “integrate the Atlantic world into the history of science” (p. 1). Shows how the network of royal institutions and officials, soldiers, merchants, friars, physicians, and others gathered, organized, and circulated knowledge of the New World. Argues for the connection between empiricism and empire building.
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Bennett, Brett M., and Joseph M. Hodge, eds. Science and Empire: Knowledge and Networks of Science across the British Empire, 1800–1970. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
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Although not focused on the Atlantic world, useful for analyzing how networks produced, circulated, and legitimated scientific knowledge. Demonstrates the interconnections among science, empire building, and globalization.
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Delbourgo, James, and Nicholas Dew, eds. Science and Empire in the Atlantic World. New York: Routledge, 2008.
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Essential collection that explores how scientific knowledge was produced in the Atlantic world. Adopts a comparative, international perspective “bring[ing] to life a world of criss-crossing networks, heterogeneous practices, and multiple itineraries” (p. 6) that trafficked in scientific knowledge. Networks factor centrally in the introduction and most chapters.
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Latour, Bruno. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.
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Pioneering work by a sociologist who argues that we must examine how science is practiced in order to understand it. Analyzes science as the building of networks in which “centres of calculation” serve as the crucial nodes of knowledge production.
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Lux, David S., and Harold J. Cook. “Closed Circles or Open Networks? Communicating at a Distance during the Scientific Revolution.” History of Science 36.112 (1998): 179–211.
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Argues for the importance of open networks, as opposed to circles and classes, in the transmission of scientific knowledge and the establishment of credibility. Although not a study of the Atlantic world, does approach the Scientific Revolution as an international movement. Usefully surveys key texts in modern social network theory.
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Schiebinger, Londa. “Scientific Exchange in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World.” In Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500–1800. Edited by Bernard Bailyn and Patricia L. Denault, 294–328. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.
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Demonstrates how networks of scientific knowledge and practice transcended imperial and racial boundaries by tracing the circulation of ideas about the body and medicine among the Amerindian, African, and European communities of the 18th-century Caribbean.
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Wilson, Renate. Pious Traders in Medicine: A German Pharmaceutical Network in Eighteenth-Century North America. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000.
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Study of how German Pietists developed an extensive North Atlantic distribution network. The Francke Foundation, based in Halle, Germany, was the network’s central hub; Pietist pastors were its nodes; and British and German merchants provided the linkages. As the network distributed pharmaceuticals and medical knowledge, it contributed to the elaboration of a distinctive German-Atlantic culture.
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