The Ashley Cooper Plan - by Thomas D Wilson (Paperback)

About the Book

"In The Ashley Cooper Plan, Thomas Wilson connects Anthony Ashley Cooper (the First Earl of Shaftesbury) and John Locke's seventeenth-century vision of well-ordered society to the design of cities in the Province of Carolina to current debates about the relationship about climate change, sustainable development, urbanity, and the place of expertise in general. This important work focuses on the ways in which political culture, ideology, and governing structures have shaped political acts and public policy and illuminates one of the fundamental paradoxes of American history: although the Ashley Cooper Plan was a model of rational planning, its utopian qualities were soon undermined by the lure of profits to be had from slaveholding. Wilson argues that the "Gothic" framework of the Carolina "Fundamental Constitutions" was stripped of its original imperative of class reciprocity in the transition to slavery, which reverberates in American politics to this day"--

Book Synopsis

In this highly original work, Thomas D. Wilson offers surprising new insights into the origins of the political storms we witness today. Wilson connects the Ashley Cooper Plan -- a seventeenth-century model for a well-ordered society imagined by Anthony Ashley Cooper (1st Earl of Shaftesbury) and his protégé John Locke -- to current debates about views on climate change, sustainable development, urbanism, and professional expertise in general. In doing so, he examines the ways that the city design, political culture, ideology, and governing structures of the Province of Carolina have shaped political acts and public policy even in the present. Wilson identifies one of the fundamental paradoxes of American history: although Ashley Cooper and Locke based their model of rational planning on assumptions of equality, the lure of profits to be had from slaveholding soon undermined its utopian qualities. Wilson argues that in the transition to a slave society, the "Gothic" framework of the Carolina Fundamental Constitutions was stripped of its original imperative of class reciprocity, reverberating in American politics to this day.

Reflecting on contemporary culture, Wilson argues that the nation's urban-rural divide rooted in this earlier period has corrosively influenced American character, pitting one demographic segment against another. While illuminating the political philosophies of Ashley Cooper and Locke as they relate to cities, Wilson also provides those currently under attack by antiurbanists -- from city planners to climate scientists -- with a deeper understanding of the intellectual origins of a divided America and the long history that reinforces it.

Review Quotes

"Wilson offers an engaging and important look at the ideological model that shaped the early South during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries." -- H-Net Reviews

About the Author

Thomas D. Wilson is an urban planner, writer, and independent scholar.