Coastal/Coastwise Trade

Throughout the Atlantic world—from Quebec to Montevideo and from London to Benguela—coastlines served as sites of local, interimperial, and transatlantic trade. While some scholars define coastal trade as domestic, this bibliography takes an expansive view. In a region inhabited by different European, Indigenous, African, and African-descended peoples, coastal trade entailed cross-imperial and cross-cultural interactions. In some instances, competing powers shared the same coastline. In northeastern North America, along a coastline home to the Wabanaki, British and later American territories neighbored French and then British colonies. Likewise, in the Caribbean, French, Spanish, and later Haitian powers shared the island of Hispaniola. Along these coasts, trade was naturally interimperial. In other instances, residents of the Atlantic world flouted imperial authority, refusing to recognize what they viewed as arbitrary boundaries. Indigenous peoples rejected European attempts to circumscribe borders, asserting their own understanding of coastal space. Meanwhile, smugglers routinely crisscrossed colonies and empires to sustain local communities in the wake of imperial neglect. The works included in this bibliography highlight the contested and quotidian nature of coastal trade. They consider how coastal trade could extend or contest transatlantic trade routes. They chart how this trade operated, sketch its geography and hydrography, and demonstrate how it buttressed colonization, often in ways that were distinct from oceanic trade. Taken together, these works show how coastal trade shaped the lives of diverse inhabitants throughout the Atlantic world.