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Podcast: EMPIRE LINES
Episode: A New Map of the Island of Barbados, Philip Lea and John Seller (1686)
Description: Dr. Lou Roper explores the uncharted history of enslaved Africans in England's 17th century colonies, via Philip Lea and John Seller's A New Map of the Island of Barbados.
In 1686, Lea and Sellers meticulously mapped the tooth-shaped Caribbean island of Barbados, England's central and wealthiest colony. Great detail was given to ‘every parish, plantation, watermill, windmill, and cattlemill…with the name of the present possessor’. Yet they wholly excluded the island’s most important element - the population of enslaved people of African descent. Peeling back the layers of the New Map uncovers how England's early empire was a pr...