Race

Highlighting the importance of diasporic people in shaping British Romanticism, this collection challenges descriptions of Romanticism as the expression of a national character or culture. Within the context of a circum-Atlantic world driven by an insatiable hunger for sugar and slaves, the contributors uncover the material contributions and the extraordinary creativity and resistance of slaves, sailors and servants. Key is the emergence of race as a category of identity, class, and containment that ensured the persistence of servitude after abolition.