Volume I problematizes the concepts of Enlightenment and revolution, revealing how the former did not wholly cause the latter. The volume also provides a comprehensive analysis of the American Revolution, making it essential to American historians and scholars of the Atlantic World.

Volume III covers the Iberian Empires and stresses the ethnic dimension of the independent processes in Spanish America and Brazil. An important reference text for historians of the Atlantic World with a keen interest in the Iberian Empires.

Volume II covers the revolutions of France, Europe, and Haiti, with particular focus on the French and Haitian Revolutions and the changes they wrought. An important reference text for historians of the Atlantic World with a keen interest in Europe.

A bold new account of the Age of Revolution, one of the most complex and vast transformations in human history “A fresh and illuminating framework for understanding our past and imagining our future. Powerfully argued and engagingly written, Patrick Griffin’s timely account of revolutionary regime change and reaction shows how a world of empires became our world of nation-states.”—Peter S. Onuf, coauthor of Most Blessed of the Patriarchs “When we speak of an age of revolution, what do we mean? In this synoptic, compelling book, Patrick Griffin asks the difficult questions and invites readers to reconsider the answers.”—Eliga Gould, author of Among the Powers of the Earth The Age of Atlantic Revolution was a defining moment in western history. Our understanding of rights, of what makes the individual an individual, of how to define a citizen versus a subject, of what states should or should not do, of how labor, politics, and trade would be organized, of the relationship between the church and the state, and of our attachment to the nation all derive from this period (c. 1750–1850). Historian Patrick Griffin shows that the Age of Atlantic Revolution was rooted in how people in an interconnected world struggled through violence, liberation, and war to reimagine themselves and sovereignty. Tying together the revolutions, crises, and conflicts that undid British North America, transformed France, created Haiti, overturned Latin America, challenged Britain and Europe, vexed Ireland, and marginalized West Africa, Griffin tells a transnational tale of how empires became nations and how our world came into being.

Volume III covers the Iberian Empires and the important ethnic dimension of the Ibero-American independence movements, revealing the contrasting dynamics created by the Spanish imperial crisis at home and in the colonies. It bears out the experimental nature of political changes, the shared experiences and contrasts across different areas, and the connections to the revolutionary French Caribbean. The special nature of the emancipatory processes launched in the European metropoles of Spain and Portugal is explored, as are the connections between Spanish America and Brazil, as well as between Brazil and Portuguese Africa. It ends with an assessment of Brazil and how the survival of slavery is shown to have been essential to the new monarchy, although simultaneously, enslaved people began pressing their own demands, just like the indigenous population.

In the late eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, revolutions transformed the British, French, and Spanish Atlantic worlds. During this time, colonial and indigenous people rioted and rebelled against their occupiers in violent pursuit of political liberty and economic opportunity, challenging time-honored social and political structures on both sides of the Atlantic. As a result, mainland America separated from British and Spanish rule, the French monarchy toppled, and the world’s wealthiest colony was emancipated. In the new sovereign states, legal equality was introduced, republicanism embraced, and the people began to question the legitimacy of slavery. Revolutions in the Atlantic World wields a comparative lens to reveal several central themes in the field of Atlantic history, from the concept of European empire and the murky position it occupied between the Old and New Worlds to slavery and diasporas. How was the stability of the old regimes undermined? Which mechanisms of successful popular mobilization can be observed? What roles did blacks and Indians play? Drawing on both primary documents and extant secondary literature to answer these questions, Wim Klooster portrays the revolutions as parallel and connected uprisings.