The Atlantic, the ocean that made the modern world

Just as the classical world was built around the Mediterranean, the modern world was built around the Atlantic. The Romans called the Med ‘Mare Nostrum’ – Our Sea. The Atlantic, on the other hand, was a place of contest for centuries. European nations fought for supremacy and plunder upon it, traded for wealth across it, and scrambled for territory around it.

According to John K. Thornton, author of A Cultural History of the Atlantic World 1250-1820, the creation of an ‘Atlantic World’ was driven by the hunger of European states for hard cash. Money was needed to support the fantastically expensive armies which, from the late Middle Ages onwards, European nations were obliged to maintain as they engaged in a prolonged arms race. The rewards of trading with West African nations (rich in gold and other things) and colonising Atlantic islands in order to grow valuable crops like sugar led governments to encourage daring voyages of exploration.