Writing Atlantic History;
or, Reconfiguring the History of Colonial British America

Nicholas Canny

Because David Thelen invited me to contribute to this "transnational" issue of the Journal of American History only after the Amsterdam-Cambridge planning conference had concluded, I first came to know of what was being undertaken through the typescript of the proceedings. As I perused those papers, I was struck by the frequency with which the various participants explained their conversion to transnationalism by reference to their personal experiences, and this brought me to appreciate that my first involvement with what, in the late 1960s, was still being referred to as the "colonial period of American history" would make sense only if it included some autobiography.	1
I grew up in postwar independent Ireland, which was then a distinctive place: this new state had, in a sense, opted out of the twentieth century by remaining neutrally aloof from the conflict that had torn Europe apart. At the same time, its persistence as the poorest country in western Europe and its desire to overcome the resulting sense of inferiority by calculating its wealth in spiritual rather than material terms suggested that its loyalty rested with the previous century. The inescapable manifestation of poverty was heavy emigration of unskilled, or semiskilled, youths, including many who had sat in the benches with me in grade school. Most then sought employment in Britain rather than in the United States, which had been the preferred destination in the nineteenth century. As a consequence of poverty and emigration, relatively few of my generation proceeded to high school and fewer still to university, and those laypeople who matriculated at university were usually expected by their families to follow professional courses leading to secure careers at home or abroad.1	2
Those of us who persevered, against all worldly and otherwordly advice, to study the humanities were introduced to an unappetizing curriculum by generally unexciting, if sometimes conscientious, professors, in spartan lecture halls and in libraries whose holdings of books and journals were remarkable only for their dilapidated condition.2 Where history was concerned the most time was devoted to studying the history of Ireland, which was firmly anchored in that of Britain, but all undergraduates in history were additionally required to master the details of political developments in European history over long stretches of time and to familiarize themselves with the circumstances of the principal alliances, wars, and treaties that signposted whatever meandering path was being pursued from the podium. Most of our information came from books that might have been written in the nineteenth century (and some of them were), and it was only through the study of Irish history that one was introduced to historical documents, and it was only through the pages of Past and Present, then a new, vibrant, and relatively inexpensive journal, that one became acquainted with the historical debates then engaging historians in Britain and further afield.	. . .