Discovering a new manuscript by John Locke

Discovering a new manuscript by John Locke

Serendipity is the scholar’s friend. When, in the late summer of 2023, I called up Additional Manuscript 27,382 at the British Library, I hadn’t expected to find an unknown document by John Locke inside. The volume fell open at a small sheet in a familiar hand. I’d been working on Locke’s engagement with English colonial activity for three decades and thought I’d seen everything he wrote on the subject, from the Bodleian Library in Oxford to the…