Writing of Two Worlds. A Review of J.H. Elliott's <em>Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830</em> (New Haven: Yale UP, 2006)

Authors

  • Camilla Townsend Rutgers University

Keywords:

Imperialism, English Empire, American Empire, colonialism

Abstract

John Elliott has succeeded in a Herculean task. In writing a comparative study of England and Spain in the Americas from the moment of discovery through to the final political break, he of necessity confronted and absorbed many literatures. Beyond this, he did what we comparativists know to be a delicate, indeed nearly impossible task: he wrote a readable book even as he wove back and forth between his two subjects paragraph by paragraph rather than chapter by chapter. He wrote in such a way that audiences who were deeply familiar with one of his subjects but not at all with the other could understand the foreign territory and yet not feel bored while in the more familiar terrain.

Author Biography

Camilla Townsend, Rutgers University

Camilla Townsend es profesora asociada de Historia en Rutgers University. Su especialidad es la historia comparativa colonial, con especial énfasis en las relaciones entre sociedad colonial y poblaciones indígenas. Es autora de tres libros: Tales of Two Cities: Race and Economic Culture in Early Republican North and South America (2000), Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma (2004), y Malintzin's Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico (2006)

Published

2007-01-01

How to Cite

Townsend, C. (2007). Writing of Two Worlds. A Review of J.H. Elliott’s <em>Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830</em> (New Haven: Yale UP, 2006). A Contracorriente: Una Revista De Estudios Latinoamericanos, 5(1), 357–362. Retrieved from https://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/view/397

Issue

Section

Reviews: Empire & Colonialism