This multi-authored volume examines the process of European expansion into the Atlantic by focusing on a region that has come to be known as the American South. During the three centuries after Europeans began to cross the Atlantic with confidence, they interacted with one another, with the native people, and with enslaved Africans across the South. The volume's essays offer examples of colonial encounter for those who are curious about how the broad processes of historical change influenced particular people and places. In recent years there have appeared several important studies that addres ... More

This multi-authored volume examines the process of European expansion into the Atlantic by focusing on a region that has come to be known as the American South. During the three centuries after Europeans began to cross the Atlantic with confidence, they interacted with one another, with the native people, and with enslaved Africans across the South. The volume's essays offer examples of colonial encounter for those who are curious about how the broad processes of historical change influenced particular people and places. In recent years there have appeared several important studies that address the Atlantic World generally and/or the specific experiences of Spanish, British, and French imperial projects in the South. A key aspect of each of these colonial schemes was finding ways to engage profitably—from the European perspective—with Native Americans. The consequences of Indian encounters with European invaders has long been a principal feature of ethnohistorical research, but during the last long generation scholars of Native Americans in the South have increasingly viewed their subject in an Atlantic World context. With such scholarship as its foundation, the goal of the present volume is to bring together scholars with research linked to each of the three major European colonial powers to draw increased scholarly attention to the South as a significant arena of imperial ambition.