EENLIGHTENMENT DEBATES TOOK PLACE within a rapidly evolving material world. Agricultural reforms contributed to a rise in population that in turned fueled substantial economic growth in eighteenth-century Europe. A new public sphere emerged in the growing cities in which people exchanged opinions in cafés, bookstores, and other spaces. A consumer revolution brought fashion and imported foods into the reach of common people for the first time.

These economic and social changes were fed by an increasingly integrated Atlantic economy. Over time, the peoples, goods, and ideas that crisscrossed the ocean created distinctive Atlantic communities and identities.