Cultural Significance
Transatlantic travel played a major role in the expansion of Western civilization into the Americas. It is the Atlantic that separates the "Old World" from the "New World". In modern times, some idioms refer to the ocean in a humorously diminutive way as the Pond, describing both the geographical and cultural divide between North America and Europe, in particular between the English-speaking nations of both continents. Many British people refer to the United States and Canada as "across the pond", and vice versa.
The "Black Atlantic" refers to the role of this ocean in shaping black people's history, not least in diasporas. Irish migration to the US is meant when the term "The Green Atlantic" is used. The "Red Atlantic" is a relatively new term that refers to seafarers as proletarians and revolutionaries who historically resisted exploitation at sea and forged a new multicultural and polyglot Atlantic working-class.
Read more about this topic: Atlantic Ocean
Famous quotes containing the words cultural and/or significance:
“Somehow we have been taught to believe that the experiences of girls and women are not important in the study and understanding of human behavior. If we know men, then we know all of humankind. These prevalent cultural attitudes totally deny the uniqueness of the female experience, limiting the development of girls and women and depriving a needy world of the gifts, talents, and resources our daughters have to offer.”
—Jeanne Elium (20th century)
“I am not afraid that I shall exaggerate the value and significance of life, but that I shall not be up to the occasion which it is.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)