About AtlanticParallels.com
History doesn’t happen in isolation.
While colonists in Virginia were clearing land and planting tobacco, farmers in Devon were doing nearly the same work — under very different constraints. While a Continental soldier shivered at Valley Forge, a British redcoat half a world away was writing letters home about a war he didn’t fully understand either.
Most history is written about events. AtlanticParallels.com is written about people — ordinary people living through extraordinary times, on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Parallel Lives Approach
The signature lens of this site is comparison. Not “what happened” but “what it was like to live it — and how that compared.”
We take a farmer, a soldier, a sailor, a woman, a merchant, or a craftsman and ask: what was their daily life like in colonial America? And what did that same life look like for their counterpart in England, France, or Spain at the same moment?
The answers are sometimes surprising. Sometimes they’re almost identical. Often they reveal something about why history unfolded the way it did.
What You’ll Find Here
AtlanticParallels.com covers six content pillars:
- Early America — Colonial life, the Revolution, the founding era, and the people who lived through it all
- Medieval Daily Life — The human texture of the Middle Ages: what people ate, feared, built, and believed
- Age of Sail — The Atlantic as highway: exploration, trade, naval warfare, and life at sea
- Warfare & Military History — Battles, strategy, and the experience of the soldiers who fought them
- Weapons Evolution — How technology transformed warfare from medieval arms to the musket era
- Architectural Marvels — How cathedrals, castles, and colonial buildings rose without modern tools
If you’re a history enthusiast who wants more than dates and battles — who wants to feel what it was actually like — you’re in the right place.
A Note on Accuracy
We take historical accuracy seriously. Every article is thoroughly researched before publication. Where historians disagree or evidence is incomplete, we say so. History is interpretation, and we try to be honest about the limits of what we know.
If you spot an error or have a correction, please contact us. We welcome it.
Connect
The best place to follow along is on X (Twitter): @AtlcParallels
New articles, historical facts, parallel-lives comparisons, and “on this day” posts go out regularly. Come join the conversation.
AtlanticParallels.com is an independent publication. We have no institutional affiliation.