For classical liberals (often called libertarians in the US context), the founding documents of liberalism are John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government and Letters on Toleration, which set out the case for a limited government, respectful of private property rights and tolerant of religious differences. Locke lived in England (and for five years in exile in the Netherlands) in the seventeenth century, and his work is normally interpreted in terms of the struggles between the English king and parliament from the Civil War to the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, in which the absolutist Stuart dynasty was overthrown.

For those who get around to actually reading the Treatise, there are some unappealing passages in which Locke justifies slavery (as applied to captives taken in war) and denies that his theory of property rights applies to hunter-gatherer societies such as those of Native Americans. But these issues seem so far removed from Locke’s social context in seventeenth-century England as to be mere asides, irrelevant to the main argument.

Considering both his own life and his historical impact, however, Locke is more accurately regarded as an American philosopher than an English one, even though he never crossed the Atlantic in person. Recent scholarship on Locke has focused on facts that have always been well known but, like other unpleasant historical facts, have been overlooked or disregarded. This historical reappraisal implies a new and radically different understanding of his political philosophy.