Exploding the curious myth that the ocean is a barrier rather than a highway for communication, this unusual interdisciplinary study examines the English Atlantic context of early American life. From the winterless Caribbean to the ice-locked Hudson Bay, maritime communications in fact usually met the legitimate expectations for frequency, speed, and safety, while increased shipping, new postal services, and newspapers hastened the exchange of news. These changes in avenues of communications reflected--and, in turn, enhanced--the political, economic, and social integration of the English Atlantic between 1675 and 1740. As Steele deftly describes the influence of physical, technological, socioeconomic, and political aspects of seaborne communication on the community, he suggests an exciting new mode of analyzing Colonial history.

Ian K. Steele is professor emeritus and adjunct research professor of history at the University of Western Ontario. His previous books include Politics of Colonial Policy, Guerillas and Grenadiers, The English Atlantic, Betrayals, and Warpaths. A festschrift in his honor, English Atlantics Revisited, edited by Nancy L. Rhoden, is available from McGill-Queen's University Press.

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"Steele's well-researched and well-written study tells us much about the workings of the English Atlantic world....A clearly significant contribution to early modern historiography."--Business History Review

"Every reader can learn plenty from reading the book closely. Steele offers abundant detail on counless subjects....He has done heroic quantities of archival research....An informative, scholarly, thorough analysis."--Journal of Modern History

"Fills a major gap in our knowledge of how the Old Empire worked."--The Historian

"Repays a careful reading not merely for its wealth of detail but also because it suggests a promising perspective for considering the English Atlantic world and, indeed, much of early American history....It belongs on that small but growing shelf of indispensable books on communications in colonial America."--Technology and Culture

"A tour de force...By focusing on aspects of this history which many social and economic historians simply ignore, he has made a splendid contribution to what some of us think is the best sort of new social history."--Canadian Journal of History

"There is quite simply no antecedent work within the field to which [this] can be compared....It is very rare that a book so original in concept is also so comprehensive in its coverage and in the depth of its research."--Richard Johnson, University of Washington

"Steele has amassed and carefully interpreted a body of evidence, both primary and secondary, unsurpassed in its richness and comprehensiveness....He provides an excelletn background to the role of communications before the period of disintegration leading to 1776."--The Geographical Review

"Many scholars have seen the Atlantic Ocean as an intercontinental divide separating England from her American colonies, creating isolated societies. Early modern Atlantic communications have ofteen been portrayed as slow, infrequent, and dangerous. In this detailed and provocative study, Steele presents a challenging and radical reinterpretation of such views."--Choice

"Excellent....Steele's novel perspective on Anglo-American history and his meticulous mining of primary and secondary materials combine to make this a book at once solid and exciting."--Journal of American Studies