Fragile Empire reinterprets the rise of slavery in the early English tropics through an innovative geographic framework. It examines slavery at English sites in tropical zones across the Atlantic and Indian oceans, and argues that a variety of factors – epidemiology, slave majorities, European rivalries, and the power of indigenous polities – made the seventeenth-century English tropical empire particularly fragile, creating a model of empire in the tropics that was distinct from other English colonizations. English people across the tropics were outnumbered by their slaves. English slavery was forged in the tropics and it was increasingly marked by its permanence, inflexibility, and brutality. Early English societies were not the inevitable precursor to British imperial dominance, instead they were wrought with internal vulnerabilities and external threats from European and non-European competitors. Based on thorough archival research, Justin Roberts' important new study redefines our understanding of slavery and bound labor from a global perspective.

‘Through an impressive array of empirical evidence, Justin Roberts has expanded the field of Atlantic slavery and cements Indian Ocean bondage as an area worthy of scholarly attention. As a result, Roberts has written a tour de force. This is trans-oceanic and trans-imperial history at its best.'

Afua Cooper - Dalhousie University

‘This masterful work explores the astonishing fragility of England's first tropical colonies, demonstrating that from Jamaica to Madras to Sumatra, the success of England's empire was dependent upon enslaved labor.'

Simon P. Newman - author of A New World of Labor: The Development of Plantation Slavery in the British Atlantic

‘This is a fascinating and masterly global history of the early English tropical slave empire. From rich comparisons of the Caribbean, Africa, India, St. Helena and Sumatra, Roberts makes a strong case for the existence of diverse forms of bondage, the growing influence of the English Caribbean slavery model and the incredibly fragile and chaotic nature of the early English empire.'

Dexnell Peters - The University of the West Indies

‘A pioneering new work that masterfully explains the makings of racial slavery across the globe. This book will be required reading for anyone who wants to understand how and why such a brutal system of slavery emerged in Britain's first empire during the seventeenth century.'

Nicholas Radburn - author of Traders in Men: Merchants and the Transformation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade