The term transatlantic is most effective when used as it was at the time of its coinage in the late eighteenth century, as a general descriptor for the objects, ideas, and persons that crossed the Atlantic Ocean or phenomena defined by such crossing.2 The term does not necessarily indicate cosmopolitan values, although cosmopolitanism often had transatlantic elements; it does not reject or ignore the importance of local, regional, or national contexts and identifications, nor does it reject or ignore extra-Atlantic contexts and identifications (hemispheric, intra-continental, trans-oceanic, polar, planetary); and while it always concerns movement within, across, or around the Atlantic, it does not impute any positive value to such movement.