So another week begins in the slow, nearly empty march to the Christmas holidays. This should mean more time to read, and I've just started a book about the philosophy and practice of slavery in the New World, because the winters aren't quite dark enough.
The first chapter of Blackburn's book lays out where slavery stood as a concept as the Early Modern World began. Slavery is, of course, an ancient concept, but had declined in Western Europe through the Middle Ages for a number of political and religious reasons. Still, the philosophical underpinnings of slavery (Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Isidore) always left some room to justify the policy intellectually, even as slavery became less popular or tenable as an economic practice (rise of free cities, post-plague peasant power in Western Europe, etc.)