From the Empire of Great Britain to the British Empire: The Emergence of the British Atlantic Community, c. 1540-1740

David Armitage

The idea of Atlantic history is a product of the late twentieth century, but the conception of an Atlantic community long antedates this historiographical agenda. This paper examines the emergence of a conception of the British Atlantic world as a single polity defined by a distinctive genealogy, history, and ideology. The idea of a community that encompassed Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean islands, and the continental colonies of North America emerged in recognizable form only in the 1730s, when political philosophers, historians, and polemicists argued that these formerly disparate territories were linked by common interests, a shared history, and a unifying ideology into a single commonwealth called the "British Empire." The conception of an Atlantic polity was therefore a relatively late development in British political thought and, once it had emerged, lasted barely thirty years (c. 1735-65).

[WP #97020]