S. Max Edelson studies the history of British America and the Atlantic world. His research examines space, place, and culture in colonial North America and the Caribbean. His first book, Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina (Harvard, 2006) examines the relationship between planters and the environment in South Carolina as the key to understanding this repressive, prosperous society and its distinctive economic culture. His second book, The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America Before Independence (Harvard, 2017), describes how Britain used maps and geographic knowledge to reform its American empire in the eighteenth century. 

Edelson and Professor Alan Taylor direct the UVa Early American Seminar at Monticello, an ongoing research seminar jointly sponsored by the Corcoran Department of History and the International Center for Jefferson Studies.  The intellectual center of our dynamic graduate program in colonial, Revolutionary, and early national history, the EAS is a community of scholars that includes PhD students, faculty, and visiting researchers who meet regularly to share and critique works in progress.