This course approaches the eighteenth century as an essential moment in the development of an international network of exchange that bound geographically alien spaces together. The master metaphor of the course is “traffic”–a traffic in ideas, people and commodities that redraws the epistemological map of the century in a more inclusive way. Our own exploration of the epoch will read these networks under four overarching themes: The Age of Exploration. Atlantic Travel Narratives, The Trade in Commodities. It-Narratives, The Atlantic Slave Trade. Slave Narratives, and The Colony Writes Back.