Introduction

This Introduction shows how this book contributes to the emerging field of postcolonial book history and cultural historiography. By demonstrating its relevance to the capitalism and slavery thesis, it shows how books, too, were industrial goods capitalized by slave labor. It explains that early American proprietary subscription libraries were centers for revolutionary leadership development, and one location where colonials imbibed British political thought. In challenging the civic republicanism thesis of Caroline Robbins, J. G. A. Pocock, and Bernard Bailyn it argues that ownership of slaves was the proprietorship formative of the virtue of the republican citizen and that C. B. MacPherson’s theory of possessive individualism more accurately describes their citizenship. It maps the networks through which colonials purchased books, and gives a history of early American reading. The most popular genres among early Americans are documented, and anti-slavery is shown to be both a product of revolutionary thinking and an inspiration for it.