The Intellectual Origins of American Slavery: English Ideas in the Early Modern Atlantic World
John Samuel Harpham
Harvard University Press
The period from 1550 to 1700 was critical in the development of slavery across the English Atlantic world. During this time, English discourse about slavery revolved around one central question: How could free persons be made into slaves?
John Samuel Harpham shows that English authors found answers to this question in a tradition of ideas that stretched back to the ancient world, where they were most powerfully expressed in Roman law. These ideas, in turn, became the basis for the earliest defenses of American slavery.
An eloquent account of the moral logic that propelled the development of an immoral institution, The Intellectual Origins of American Slavery reveals the power of an overlooked tradition of ideas in the history of human bondage.