Competing Visions of Empire: Labor, Slavery, and the Origins of the British Atlantic Empire
ISBN: 9780300189445
Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / Yale University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Early Modern History (1500 to 1700);

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.

Abigail Swingen is an assistant professor of history at Texas Tech University. She lives in Lubbock, Texas.

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