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While slavery was peculiar within a democratic republic, it was an integral and seldom questioned part of the 18th-century British empire. Examining the complex culture of the South Carolina law country from the end of the Stono Rebellion through the American Revolution, historian Robert Olwell analyzes the structures and internal dynamics of a world in which both masters and slaves were also imperial subjects.
This book examines the political economy of the master-slave relationship viewed through the lens of consumption and market exchange. What did it mean when human chattel bought commodities, "stole" property, or gave and received gifts? Forgotten exchanges, this study argues, measured the deepest questions of worth and value, shaping an enduring struggle for power between slaves and masters. The slaves' internal economy focused intense paternalist negotiation on a ground where categories of exchange - provision, gift, contraband, and commodity - were in constant flux. At once binding and alienating, these ties endured constant moral stresses and material manipulation by masters and slaves alike, galvanizing conflict and engendering complex new social relations on and off the plantation.
This book examines the relationship between freedom and true knowledge, which is a central part of the hotly debated issue of human freedom. Is truth necessary for the attainment of freedom? Does a free life require a clear understanding of reality? And if so, to what extent? These questions lead back to a classical philosophical debate, of which the first major chapter was written by Plato. In the dialogues, he describes human life as a peculiar form of imprisonment and calls for a global liberation of human cognition. This work analyses this ambitious project and its unique influence on the work of two modern authors, Hegel and Nietzsche, who explicitly linked the notions of ignorance and truth to those of bondage and freedom—or slavery and mastery—and whose philosophies are also centred on the liberation of human consciousness. Following a historical and systematic approach, this book is of interest to readers who are reasonably acquainted with the history of ancient and modern philosophy, including undergraduate and graduate students, as well as scholars working on Plato, German Idealism, Nietzsche and other related fields.
