Reading Locke on the Plantation

This talk will extend into book history Edmund Morgan’s articulation of the well-known paradox that some early Americans were asserting their own desire for freedom from Britain while simultaneously enslaving others. Considering Locke’s political theory, it will examine how the African diaspora underwrote the dissemination of books of British literature and philosophy, and how Jefferson, Washington, and others bartered slave-produced goods for books through the London agents with whom they did business.