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A landmark account of the origins of American slavery, revealing how ancient Roman ideas were used to defend the establishment of a slave empire in the English Atlantic world.

The period from 1550 to 1700 was critical in the development of slavery across the English Atlantic World. During this time, English discourse about slavery revolved around one central question: How could free persons be made into slaves? John Samuel Harpham shows that English authors answered this question with reference to a tradition of ideas that stretched back to Roman law. In turn, these ancient ideas formed the basis for the earliest defenses of American slavery.

The Roman tradition had located the main source of slavery in war: Enslavement was the common fate of captives who otherwise could have been killed. In early modern culture, this account was incorporated into legal studies and influential natural rights theories from the likes of Hugo Grotius and John Locke. When Europeans started to publish firsthand accounts of Africa, these reports were received into a culture saturated in Roman ideas. Over time, English observers began to assert that the common customs of enslavement across the nations of Africa fit well within the Roman model. Once assured that the slave trade could be traced back to customs they understood as legitimate, Englishmen proved keen to profit from it.

Powerful and eloquent, The Intellectual Origins of American Slavery recovers the moral logic that propelled the development of an immoral institution.