Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830 J. H. Elliot From the Introduction […] Differences of creed and of national origin paled before the universality of experience that brought emigrants three thousand miles or more from their European homelands to a new and strange world on the farther shores of the Atlantic.[…] Yet, to a greater or lesser degree, those responses would be shaped by a home culture whose formative influence could never be entirely escaped.[…] My principal focus has been the development of the settler societies and their relationship with their mother countries… I have, however, always tried to bear in mind that the developing colonial societies were shaped by the constant interaction of European and non-European peoples, and hoped to have been able to suggest why, at particular times and in particular places, the interaction occurred as it did. […] Such a work necessarily depends very largely on the writings of others. There is now an immense literature on the history of the colonial societies of British and Spanish America alike, and I have had to pick my way through the publications of a large number of specialists… To all these works, and many others not cited in the notes or bibliography, I am deeply indebted, even when - and perhaps especially when - I disagree with them. [...]