Jace Weaver. The Red Atlantic

Jace Weaver argues that “[t]he Atlantic formed a multilane, two-way bridge across which traveled ideas and things that changed both Europeans and American indigenes” (p. 30). In The Red Atlantic: American Indigenes and the Making of the Modern World, 1000–1927, however, Weaver focuses less upon these broad processes than upon the familiar story of native peoples who crossed the Atlantic: atypical figures including diplomats and emissaries, soldiers and sailors, captives and slaves, and performers and celebrities. Despite its arresting title, Weaver's book fails because of limitations in the author's conceptualization of a “Red Atlantic,” because of significant weaknesses in the research upon which the book is based, and because the author has little to say that has not been said before. The Red Atlantic, Weaver asserts, “encompasse[d] the Atlantic and its major adjacent bodies of water” (p. 15). Chronologically it began “in the year 1000 c.e. when Indians first encountered Europeans in the persons of the Vikings,” and Columbus's voyage “constituted a're-inauguration'” of the Red Atlantic almost five centuries later. It ended “in 1927, when Charles Lindbergh's solo flight signaled forever a change in how people interacted with the Atlantic (although regular transatlantic plane service would not begin until 1939)” (p. 16), though Weaver's case for the significance of this date is not convincing. The Red Atlantic's beginning and end rest, in Weaver's hands, upon events initiated by non-Indian actors.

Ancient history · Atlantic World · Conceptualization · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies