Review of Elliot

Elliot, J. H. Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.


In his Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830, Elliot comparatively studies the emergence and evolution of the Spanish and British empires in the New World, from colonies to independent countries. He takes a very methodical approach to this rather enormous task, and the structure of the book reflects this accordingly. He breaks this evolution down into three parts: “Occupation”, “Consolidation” and “Emancipation” in order to demonstrate the general cycles each empire went through, and also to show how each developed differently despite their similar undertakings. His overarching argument is that because the English focused more on settlement, the English colonial empire evolved more quickly towards autonomy than the Spanish, who were mostly concerned with conquest. The motivation for conquest is imperial glory and expansion which implies a reliance on the empire, whereas a successful settlement is an independent one.
Elliot depends greatly on secondary sources, rather than primary sources, in this book. The two largest of the secondary sources are The Cambridge History of Latin America which spans the length of eleven volumes, and The Oxford History of the British Empire, at a mere five volumes. He also relies heavily on The American Historical Review, The Hispanic American Historical Review, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, and The William and Mary Quarterly. This sort of reliance can only be expected in regards to such an ambitious work as this. He does incorporate a reasonable number of primary sources, such as Gomara’s Cortes. The Life of the Conqueror by his Secretary, and The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1647-1729 by Samuel Sewall.
“Occupation” begins with the Elliot’s comparison of Hernan Cortes and Christopher Newport, and their different approaches to imperial establishment in the Americas. He does, to a certain degree, fall into the myth of “exceptional men” per Matthew Restall in his Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest in his examination of these two men. “If [Cortes] lacked military experience when he set out on the conquest of Mexico, he had developed the qualities of a leader, and had become a shrewd judge of men… Newport, too, was an adventurer, but of a very different kind” (8). To Elliot, Cortes and Newport serve as the first representatives of their respective countries in the Americas, and their actions put the evolution of their colonies into motion. This section is mostly concerned with the foundation of Spanish and English colonies in America, the colonists’ interactions with the American peoples, and the exploitation of New World resources newly available to imperialists.