Negotiated Empires - Centers and Peripheries in the Americas, 1500-1820 (Paperback)

This innovative volume brings together original essays by leading historians of the Atlantic World, representing the latest developments in historiography of the period. These essays present the argument that coercive imperial authority has been vastly overrated. Distance, the primacy of trade over politics, and the refusal of colonized peoples to recognize European authority resulted in de-centralized 'American' empires.