Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Acknowledgments vii
4. Introduction 1
5. Part One BUILDING THE ARCHIVE
6. 1 “The Cord that bindes up all”: Richard Ligon and the Natural History of Barbados 21
7. 2 “A very perverse Generation of People”: Natural History in the Service of the Planters 50
8. 3 “Negroes, cattle, mules, and horses”: The Plantation in Theory and in Practice 74
9. 4 “The purchase of slaves, teeth and dust”: Natural Histories of the African Slave Trade 105
10. Part Two DEPLOYING THE ARCHIVE
11. 5 “The groans, the dying groans, of this deeply afflicted and oppressed people”: Anthony Benezet and the Natural History of Atlantic Slavery 139
12. 6 “An unnatural state of oppression”: Environmental Writing in the Abolitionist Essay 156
13. 7 “But say, whence first th’unnatural trade arose?” Abolitionism’s Environmental Poetics 180
14. Conclusion: “An inexhaustible mine of wealth” 212
15. Notes 225
16. Bibliography 237
17. Index 253