Abstract

Focusing on the period between George Anson’s circumnavigation in the 1740s and the joint British seizure of the Spanish cities of Manila and Havana in 1762, this article argues that the taking and making of objects in motion provided an important point of intersection between the British prosecution of empire in the Atlantic and in the Pacific in the eighteenth century. It has two central aims: first, to highlight the interconnectedness of the Atlantic to wider global contexts and, second, to emphasize the key role of military conflict and other processes beyond commerce in the generation and circulation of objects.