Competing Visions of Empire

Download or read book Competing Visions of Empire written by Abigail L. Swingen and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-02-17 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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, often competing agendas of planters, merchants, privateers, colonial officials, and imperial authorities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.