The concept of self-ownership was first articulated in anglophone political thought in the decades between the outbreak of the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution. This book traces the emergence and evolution of self-ownership over the course of this period, culminating in a reinterpretation of John Locke's celebrated but widely misunderstood idea that "every Man has a Property in his own Person." This is a bold, innovative study of some of the most influential concepts to emerge from this groundbreaking period of British history.

Lorenzo Sabbadini is a government lawyer at HM Treasury and an independent researcher specializing in early modern intellectual history.Lorenzo Sabbadini is a government lawyer at HM Treasury and an independent researcher specializing in early modern intellectual history.

"Sabbadini presents a carefully argued republican interpretation of the complex development of the ideas of self-ownership, property, and liberty in the major texts of English political thought. An important contribution to this richly contested field of study." James Tully, University of Victoria

"Lorenzo Sabbadini's achievement is to show the centrality of a much less studied concept of the English Revolution: self-ownership. With rigorous argument and impeccable scholarship, Sabbadini sheds a flood of new light on key figures from the Levellers to John Locke." David Armitage, Harvard University

"With skill and sensitivity, Sabbadini recovers the various ways in which a host of major thinkers conceptualized the nexus of liberty and property, with major implications for the interpretation of key strands of republican thinking in the period." Richard Bourke, King's College, Cambridge

"Sabbadini, a government lawyer at HM Treasury in the UK, insightfully explores the meaning and association of liberty, property, and self-ownership from the English Civil War to the Glorious Revolution. In doing so, he sets the stage for a reinterpretation of property in John Locke's political thought and for a reevaluation of property's role in modern republican theories." Choice

“Sabbadini's detailed and persuasive study of the discourses of property and self-ownership in mid-seventeenth-century England provides an important corrective to the Lockean idea of self-ownership in pursuit of the liberal tradition. But just as importantly, by tying property and self-ownership to slavery, he reveals how forms of economic dependence are working to undermine notions of individual freedom in contemporary society, with potentially explosive results.” Journal of British Studies