The long shadow of Edward Long

Abstract

In this interview, Professor Catherine Hall considers the impact and legacy of Edward Long’s three-volume History of Jamaica, published in 1774. Long—slave-owner, planter and supporter of a racial-based slave economy—drew on a range of contemporary thinking in politics, economics and natural sciences, and on his own detailed experience of Jamaica, to make a case for the ‘naturalness’ of African enslavement and of what is now termed ‘racial capitalism’. Professor Hall considers the uncomfortable contexts and longevity of this seminal 18th-century book and its influence on racial thinking that still resonates today.