Atlantic Wars: From the Fifteenth Century to the Age of Revolution

"This is a book which, you might say, has been written before, because I’ve read world histories of this long period, even as an undergraduate. But there’s a freshness and an excitement about the way that Jeffrey Plank knows the world. There is a boundary to his subject, which is the Atlantic Ocean. But that’s a pretty big boundary. His period goes right back to the Vikings and he manages to show how wars that happened on one side of the Atlantic can affect the other side. There is the obvious triangular trade of the slave trade, but the book is not just dominated by that. It’s looking at so many other wars, which from the 15th century were becoming world wars. And that’s perhaps the most distinctive thing about the Atlantic, that it introduced us to the ‘world war’ in a way that other oceans haven’t. And that the transformations of power that have occurred across that ocean have been greater in their impact on the world, so far, than any others. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . It’s the way in which he’s managed to integrate themes across the book with a constant progress through the centuries that is really clever. It’s compellingly written, it’s clearly written. That’s not always the case with books covering such a wide area. There’s a terrible feeling you get in some such books of, ‘Meanwhile back in Cape Town…’ but you don’t get that here. You constantly feel that he’s on top of a particular scenario or a scene, which he’s going to take you through. So it’s an exciting read, a compelling read for newcomers and for those who’ve seen the same sort of thing happen before. One final general observation. All of these six books are beautifully produced. Physically they are a pleasure to read. I think that one has to remember that’s why books survive. We just like handling them. It’s why the Kindle, although it’s good for reading Agatha Christie late at night, will never replace a book, which looks like one of these books and feels like one of these books. Part of our best books of 2021 series."