This innovative volume brings together original essays by leading historians of the Atlantic World, representing the latest developments in historiography of the period. The volume takes a comparative approach, with individual essays examining governance in British, Portuguese, French, Dutch and Native America. As a whole, these essays present the argument that coercive imperial authority has been vastly overrated in previous scholarship due to factors like distance, the primacy of trade over politics, and the refusal of "colonized" peoples to recognize European authority. While some of the essays look at the relationships between imperial centers and colonial peripheries, others examine interactions and experiences of people at the peripheries of their respective empires, including Native Americans, African Americans and Euroamericans. No other book collects essays on the New World empires in one volume. Contributors:Ida Altman, H.V. Bowen, Philip Boucher, Amy Turner Bushnell, Leslie Choquette, Christine Daniels, Jack P. Greene, Mary Karasch, Wim Klooster, Elizabeth Mancke, Peter S. Onuf, John Jay Tepaske, David J. Weber, Michael Zuckerman.