Smith, Emma. "Slavery, sugar, and the value of Shakespeare." Throughlines. Throughlines.org/suite-content/slavery-sugar-and-the-value-of-shakespeare. [Date accessed].
Slavery, sugar, and the value of Shakespeare
Contending with the human cost of valuable books
How and why books became valuable in 18th-century Britain was not simply a story of taste and scholarship, but one fueled by the vast profits of slavery and plantation economies. As sugar wealth flooded the market, it transformed secondhand texts like Shakespeare’s First Folio into coveted symbols of status, embedding slave-produced capital into the foundations of literary material culture. To understand our libraries and editorial traditions today, we must confront how deeply these systems of value were shaped by the economics and injustices of the transatlantic slave trade.
Further learning
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Racialized genders in the early modern world
Abdulhamit Arvas teaches on the interwoven concepts of race, religion, and gender within early modern Europe. Travel narratives offer insights on how race and religion were gendered, and how gender and sexuality became a mark of racialization.
Blackness and Shakespeare's sonnets
Shakespeare’s works at large, and early modern literature more broadly, all deal with constructions of race. Shakespeare’s sonnets are especially fruitful for considering how the languages of fairness and darkness are used in nuanced ways to develop particular understandings of race.
