Contesting Empires ― Opposition, Promotion, and Slavery

Hart digs deep into the archives and re-reads the documents of the earliest "voyages of discovery" to the New World, finding that tucked amongst the admonitions to find gold which we all heard about in high school were reminders to build the empire and take slaves. Amongst Hart's findings are that the Catholic Church was not at all convinced empires were such a good ideas, and that certain perceptions about race, sexuality and social class imbued every page. He also finds that even some of those involved in building empires were ambivalent or even in opposition, especially when the efforts to enslave and suborn became progressively more excessive, and that slavery had a complex and surprising role in the American Revolution, a war which was said to be for the liberty of all. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)