My years of research on the emergence of slavery in the British Empire not only supports the argument that all markets are regulated, but shows that the character of that regulation can lead to an extraordinary form of capitalism, a form that strikes at the heart of the idea of free markets....

Most scholars who have written about the law of slavery in England have focused on Somerset’s case of 1772, which had an intellectual impact not only in England itself but across the British Empire. While we recognize that Somerset represented some change in practice, historians have searched...

Seeing everything from the perspective of Somerset (1772) has obscured the vibrant debate within the English judicial system over the legality of slavery in England and its empire over more than a century. Not only was the Common Law on slavery changing profoundly during the seventeenth century;...

In the spring of 1685, Morgan Godwyn, a minister who had served in Virginia and Barbados for more than 15 years, disappeared after publishing a book condemning the slave trade, and in 1687, he died. This paper is an attempt both to explain the mystery surrounding his death by providing a context...

My years of research on the emergence of slavery in the British Empire not only supports the argument that all markets are regulated, but shows that the character of that regulation can lead to an extraordinary form of capitalism, a form that strikes at the heart of the idea of free markets....

“Well done.” The spindly marks of John Locke’s quill in 1698—part of the voluminous reports of imperial administration—gave me goose bumps when I read them last summer. Tangible evidence that early slavery was challenged in the wake of the Glorious Revolution, they were not by just...