Chapters
Primary Source Documents
The documents in this collection are organized into chronological chapters with a thematic focus for each time period. This organization is intended to provide a narrative arc while also highlighting connections between particular ideas and debates as they intersected with, and shaped, historical events on both sides of the Atlantic.
Note: Some transcriptions are under editorial review and may contain errors.
Please do not cite or otherwise reproduce without permission.
Prologue: Iberian Antecedents
Las Siete Partidas (1348)
Inter Caetera (1493)
Requerimiento (1513)
Early Spanish Slave Trade (1519/20)
Petition to the Portuguese King (1526)
New Laws of 1542
Chapter 1: Debating Power & Empire
Chapter 2: Restoration Settlements
Charles II Treason & Sedition Act (1661)
Royal African Company Documents (1660 – 1667)
Jamaica Slave Code (1664)
Barbados Slave Code (1661 – 1667)
Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina (1669)
Colonial State Papers (1670s)
Enquiries to the Governor of Virginia (1671)
Chapter 3: Reacting to Absolutism
A Letter From Sir Thomas Grantham To a Member of Bacon’s Rebellion
John Locke – An Essay on Reputation
Morgan Godwyn – Trade Preferred Before Religion (1685)
Marvell Andrew – A Collection of Poems On Affairs
Chapter 4: Glorious Revolutions?
Algernon Sidney – Discourses Concerning Government (c. 1680-1683)
James Tyrrell – Bibliotheca Politica
John Locke – Two Treatises of Government (1689)
Lord Sunderland Correspondence on the Appointment of John Locke to Christ Church (1684)
The Bloody Assizes: Or, A Complete History of the Life of George Lord Jefferies
The Dominion of New England
Chapter 5: Whig Moments
Chapter 6: Tory Reactions
1698 African Trade Act
Robert Harley’s investigations into Bacon’s Rebellion (1676-1705)
Queen Anne’s speech on the Assiento 1712
Assiento and the Treaty of Utrecht 1710-1713
Cato by Joseph Addison 1712
Hogarth’s South Sea Bubble Print 1720
Yorke Talbot Decision 1729
Chapter 7: Revolutionary Atlantics