After Columbus’s “discovery” of the Americas, the Atlantic Ocean ceased to be a barrier separating two isolated worlds and became a highway that connected two ends of a larger geographic unit. Columbus and his crew were followed by millions of travelers who, voluntarily or not, traversed the Atlantic either to settle permanently in the Americas or as part of itinerant trajectories that took them from one side of the Atlantic to the other many times throughout their lives. This online exhibit, created by students in the Spring 2020 seminar “Atlantic Travelers,” taught by Ernesto Bassi, presents and analyzes the Atlantic trajectories of conquistadors, pirates, slaves, businessmen, loyalist refugees, black sailors, healers, military adventurers, and women whose Atlantic crossings contributed to the creation of an Atlantic World.
