Within the chronological framework of Implantation, Maturation and Transition, this book provides the history of European expansion in the Americas from the age of Columbus through the abolition of slavery. Suggesting a shift in the traditional units of analysis away from nationally defined boundaries, this volume considers all of the Americas - and Africa - to encourage students to see the larger interimperial issues which governed behaviour in both the new world and the old. It also provides students with a mechanism for viewing interimperial rivalries from the largest possible perspective, by focusing, not only on commercial and demographic history and military and economic interaction between metropolitan regions and their colonies, but on the interdependence of European, African, and Amerindian peoples and culture.