Last week I posted an excerpt from my field exam in transatlantic history in the long 19th century, in which I discussed some of the methodological challenges of the field.  I suggested that the idea of the Atlantic or of the transatlantic is “rooted in and sustained by materiality at every turn.” No text on my reading list better explored or exemplified that intertwining of the ideal and the material than Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker’s The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001). Below is a section from my Read more