This volume uses a biography-as-history approach to illuminate the interconnectedness of the peoples of the Americas, West Africa, and Europe. Contributors highlight individuals' and people's experiences made possible by their participation in the creation of an Atlantic world, where conflict, cooperation, neccessity and invention led to new societies and cultures. Composed of chapters that span a broad chronological, topical and thematic range, Atlantic Biographies highlights the uniqueness of the Atlantic as a social, political, economic, and cultural theater bound together to illustrate what the Atlantic meant to those subjects of each chapter. This is a book about people, their resilience, and their resolve to carve a niche or have a broader impact in the ever-changing world around them.

Recent studies on Dutch encounters with indigenous peoples in the Americas and West Africa have taken a narrow regional approach rather than a comparative Atlantic perspective. This book, based on Dutch archival records and primary and secondary sources in multiple languages, integrates indigenous peoples more fully in the Dutch Atlantic by examining the development of formal relations between the Dutch and non-Europeans in Brazil, the Gold Coast, West Central Africa, and New Netherland from the first Dutch overseas voyages in the 1590s until the dissolution of the West India Company in 1674. By taking an Atlantic perspective this study of Dutch-indigenous alliances shows that the support and cooperation of indigenous peoples was central to Dutch overseas expansion in the Atlantic.