Empires of the Atlantic world: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830

Worlds overseas

Occupation: Intrusion and empire, Hernán Cortés and Christopher Newport, motives and methods; Occupying American space, Symbolic occupation, physical occupation, peopling the land; Confronting American peoples, Mosaic of peoples, Christianity and civility, coexistence and segregation; Exploring American resources, Plunder and 'improvement,' labor supply, transatlantic economies

Consolidation: Crown and colonists, Framework of empire, authority and resistance; Ordering of society, Hierarchy and control, Social antagonism and emerging elites; America as sacred space, God's providential design, the church and society, a plurality of creeds; Empire and identity, Transatlantic communities, Creole communities, cultural communities

Emancipation: Societies on the move, Expanding populations, moving frontiers, slave and free; War and reform, Seven Years War and imperial defence, the drive for reform, redefining imperial relationships; Empires in crisis, Ideas in ferment, a community divided, a crisis contained; New world in the making, Search for legitimacy, the end of empire, the emancipation of America, contrasting experiences

Epilogue.