The development of David Armitage's "white Atlantic" history parallels the Cold War origins of American studies with its mission to define and promote "American culture" or "American civilization." British scholar Paul Gilroy's "The Black Atlantic" served as a necessary corrective. Armitage's statement leads his review of Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker's important "The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic." In the piece, he refers to the "red Atlantic," by which he means "red" as in radical. In Native American/American Indian studies, the author has been identified, both by others and by self-profession, as a "nationalist." In this essay, without abandoning, rejecting, or betraying his nationalism in any way, the author wants to take a cosmopolitan turn. He posits and discusses the "Red Atlantic." While the author agrees with Gilroy's argument, he fears that, as a black Englishman seeking inclusion for diasporic Africans within the British story, Gilroy becomes ensnared in that trap. Where the author parts company with Gilroy is in his "attacks" on nationalisms. In articulating the Red Atlantic, the author is restoring Indians as actors in the transoceanic story. In helping create the Red Atlantic, they were integrated into--and integrated themselves into--the nascent world economy. (Contains 118 notes.)