An Event in Atlantic History: Space, Time, and Historical Narrative in Eighteenth-Century Cuba

Atlantic history has tended to concern itself with mobilities and connectivities across regions previously thought of as separated by national or imperial boundaries.  But if there is an “Atlantic” approach to the histories of peoples, places, plants, pathogens, goods, ideas, and cultural practices and their movements within this broader system, is there also an “Atlantic” way to speak about the temporal events that occured there?  Or does Atlantic history resist a singular type of linear narrativity?  What sorts of paradigms can we adopt to retell the stories of events that occurred within this broader matrix in their full complexity?  This paper will use the example of the British invasion and occupation of Havana at the end of the Seven Years’ War, an event that involved and affected tens of thousands of actors from throughout the Atlantic world, to explore questions of space, time, and historical narrative for Atlantic and global history.