Competing Visions of Empire

Labor, Slavery, and the Origins of the British Atlantic Empire

Abigail L. Swingen

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Year: 2015
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780300189445
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Abigail L. Swingen's insightful study provides a new framework for understanding the origins of the British empire while exploring how England's original imperial designs influenced contemporary English politics and debates about labor, economy, and overseas trade. Focusing on the ideological connections between the growth of unfree labor in the English colonies - particularly the use of enslaved Africans - and the development of British imperialism during the early modern period, the author examines the overlapping and often competing agendas of planters, merchants, privateers, colonial officials, and imperial authorities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Author’s Note
• Map
• Introduction
• One. Unfree Labor and the Origins of Empire
• Two. Commonwealth and Protectorate Imperialism: The Western Design and Its Consequences, 1654–1660
• Three. Restoration Imperialism: The Shaping of Imperial Administration, 1660–1671
• Four. Politicized Empire: The Crown, the African Company, and Centralization, 1671–1678
• Five. Exclusion, the Tory Ascendancy, and the English Empire, 1678–1688
• Six. The 1690s: War, Unfree Labor, and Empire
• Seven. The Slave Trade, the Asiento, and the National Interest, 1698–1718
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Index