Afterword

Summary

The afterword revisits the major themes of the book but also points to the particularly important role of Irish writers in articulating critiques of empire, unsurprising in view of their nation’s subject relation within the United Kingdom. This final section also addresses the question of slavery, now seen as the greatest contradiction in Enlightenment political thought and practice, noting that this issue becomes prominent politically and theatrically in the last decades of the eighteenth century. Early Whig hostility to extractive colonial policy, recently uncovered by Steven Pincus, suggests however that mainstream anti-slavery positions may have emerged earlier than previously believed, suggesting potential rethinking of such tragedies as Oroonoko and Young’s The Revenge.