Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery

For Seth Rockman, it’s a material world. Meet Rockman, the author of Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery, as he discusses his revealing book. It’s a study delving into the biggest stories of early American history through ordinary artifacts such as shoes made in Massachusetts for the use of enslaved people in Mississippi. The book looks at American goods in the early 19^th century, from the process of connecting the communities where they were made to those towns where they were used. It chronicles and reexamines “the geography of slavery and freedom from American independence to the Civil War.  “And in doing so,” the promotional material explains, “we can confront questions that continue to preoccupy us in the age of the iPhone and fair-trade coffee: what are the moral, ecological, and political relationships linking consumers and producers across long distances? What does it mean to be “complicit?” Rockman, an associate professor of history at Brown University. Serves on the faculty advisory board of Brown University’s Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. Hosted by the Program in Early American Economy and Society. Free, 5:30 p.m. EST. The Library Company of Philadelphia, 1314 Locust St. 215-546-3181 or librarycompany.org.