Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
University of Pennsylvania Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Journal of the History of Ideas.
http://www.jstor.org
Three
Approaches to
and
the
Slave
Locke
Trade
Wayne Glausser
Every modern scholar who takes him seriously has had to confront
an embarrassingfact: John Locke, preeminent theorist of natural liberties,
and an influential resource for abolitionist thinkers of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, actually participated in the slave trade.
Interpreters of Locke have responded to this embarrassmentin three
different ways. A first group treats it as an unfortunate but minor lapse
in the public conduct of a man deservedly known for adherence to liberal
principles. Locke's conduct here, according to this first mode of explanation, constitutes a deviation from his theory. A second group would
agree that his participation in slave trading seems to contradict his basic
principles; but instead of merely dismissing his conduct as a deviation
from theory, these interpretersdraw out of Locke's writings an elaborate,
unworthy justification of the kind of slavery in which he participated.
For this second group, then, Locke did manage to accommodate theory
to practice, but only by an embarrassingly tortured logic. A third group
concludes that Locke's accommodation of slavery does not proceed from
the violation or torture of his basic theories. Instead, these interpreters
argue, his treatment of slavery should be seen as part of the fabric of
Lockean philosophy, however embarrassing that might be for modern
admirers of one of the founding liberals.1
Two difficulties hinder any final judgment about the relative validity
of the three approaches. First, as we shall see, the evidence by which
1James Farr also finds three versions of
accounting for Locke's involvement in slavery,
in "So Vile and Miserable an Estate: The Problem of Slavery in Locke's Political
Thought," Political Theory, 14 (1986), 263-89. Farr's three versions are similar to mine,
although his third group is defined much more narrowly and includes only the argument
about Lockean theory as a foundation for racism. Farr argues that all of the existing
accounts are inadequate, and he offers a new approach. I would classify his arguments
as a combination of my third or integral approach (like David Brion Davis, he finds
that Locke's theory of natural rights permits a justification of slavery) and my first or
deviation approach (there can be no Lockean grounds for justifying Afro-American chattel
slavery).
199
Copyright 1990 by JOURNALOF THE HISTORYOF IDEAS, INC.
200
Wayne Glausser
they may be evaluated has flaws and ambiguities. It would be unproductive, however, simply to declare the material undecidable, and abandon the project to a premature indeterminacy. Second, the conclusions
reached by various interpreters appear to depend as much on critical
predisposition as on evidence. The deviation approach emanates from a
kind of tempered idealism: theory will govern practice, except in certain
obvious cases of temptation and lapse. The torture approach recognizes
a specific area in which practice governs theory, rather than vice-versa;
but a seam remains visible, where something different intruded on the
theory and was joined to it. The third approach recognizes no such seam.
Theory and practice are inseparable, a seamless text of power relations.
The three approaches can thus be situated-and at least to some extent
ask to be validated-as different (but complementary) responses to familiar questions of idea and act.
To examine these three approaches, we first need to look at the
available facts about Locke's involvement in slavery. Scholars have
reached a fairly settled consensus about the facts, if not about how to
evaluate them; and the consensus comes despite lingering uncertainties
surrounding some of these facts. Locke participated in the institutions
of slavery in two basic ways. First, he invested in slave trading companies.
Second, he acted as secretary and to some degree policy advisor to three
different groups involved in the affairs of the American colonies, including
the provision and regulation of slaves.
Facts about the investments are solid enough, if not complete. (Investment records in the seventeenth century were often discarded after
a transaction was finished.) Among his various investments two stand
out for this discussion. Locke put money in two companies whose commercial activities depended on slavery: the Royal African Company, and
a company of adventurers formed to develop the Bahama Islands. The
first of these was explicitly a slave trading enterprise. Locke invested six
hundred pounds in the Royal African Company, shortly after its formation in 1672.2Lord Ashley (Locke's friend and patron, soon to become
the First Earl of Shaftesbury) had invested two thousand pounds, which
made him the third largest investor.3 Locke's investment, then, was no
inconsequential matter either to the company or to Locke, who was
always so careful with his money. The Royal African Company was
formed in 1672 to trade along the West Coast of Africa and primarily
2 The
figure of six hundred pounds I take from Maurice Cranston, John Locke: A
Biography (New York, 1957), 115.
3 See K. H. D. Haley, The First Earl of Shaftesbury (Oxford, 1968), 233. Only the
Duke of York and Sir Robert Viner made larger investments, and Haley assumes that
Shaftesburyadvised Locke to put money in the company. This seems reasonable, although
Locke would never have risked money without careful consideration or under any sort
of coercion.
201
202
Wayne Glausser
these stakes, and planters in the Bahamas complained that the proprietors
and their company provided insufficient support. Locke and his patron,
however, remained interested in the Bahamas. Shaftesburytried to bolster
planters' confidence with plans for new crops and a hereditary nobility.
Locke attended to Bahamian matters for some years, and apparently at
one point he was considering a more active involvement in planting. This
can be inferred from a letter to Locke from his friend Sir Peter Colleton,
a West Indies planter:
I find I am your partnerin the Bahamatrade which will turn to accomptif
you meddlenot with planting,but if you plantotherwisethen for provizionfor
your factor you will have your whole stock drownedin a plantationand bee
never the better for it....
203
204
Wayne Glausser
to which he
205
Wayne Glausser
206
slavery, Locke slips toward two ancient traditions justifying slavery: the
classical model of natural inferiority (accepted easily enough by Plato
and Aristotle) and the Judaeo-Christianmodel of slavery as divine punishment.22But, one might argue, this is only a rhetorical flourish. And
even if it reveals traces of antique paradigms, Locke in his Second Treatise
fought to counteract whatever influence the old paradigms might have
on his thinking. Men are not born into or fitted for slavery, according
to the real Locke. "No body can give more Power than he has himself;
and he that cannot take away his own Life, cannot give another power
over it" (23). Everyone is naturally free "from any Superior Power on
Earth" (22), and anyone who attempts to enslave a person "puts himself
into a State of War" with that person (17).
There is one technical exception within this anti-slavery doctrine, but
deviation theorists can discount its importance. Locke allows that captives
taken in a just war may be kept as slaves: "This is the Perfect condition
of Slavery, which is nothing else, but the State of War continued between
a lawful Conqueror, and a Captive" (24). He uses here the primary
justification of slavery from the Justinianian Code-and a principle written into, among other things, the 1641 Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts. But deviationists can observe that Locke adds a liberal condition
to the old justification. Once victor and vanquished have made a formal
"agreement for a limited Power on the one side and Obedience on the
other, the State of War and Slavery ceases, as long as the Compact
endures..." (24). Clearly, they would argue, Locke did not expect the
old slavery to impinge on modern government, with its sophisticated
diplomatic machinery. Furthermore, Locke denies to conquerors any
claims on the children of captives (189). In no way can Locke's theory
be said to support chattel slavery as practiced on the American plantations.
A useful discussion of these models can be found in David Brion Davis, The Problem
of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, 1966), 65-92. Thomas Wiedemann has collected
a number of texts relevant to classical theories and institutions of slavery: see Greek and
Roman Slavery (Baltimore, 1981).
207
208
Wayne Glausser
viation theorists object that he is putting words into Locke's mouth, but
Seliger's case should not be dismissed lightly.
The difficult link, the one about natives being aggressors, needs more
inspection. This idea seems an absurd violation of Second Treatise principles. In the chapter on war, Locke asserts that "he who makes an
attempt to enslave me thereby puts himself into a State of War with me"
(17), and the aggressor-enslaverdeserves to be punished or killed. How
can the African and American victims of such aggression be turned into
the aggressors themselves? The answer, according to Seliger, is Locke's
theory of waste land, in which he may have been influenced by More's
Utopia.26According to this principle, people occupying (or claiming as
property) land that they either cannot or will not develop may become
aggressors against those who can and would develop that land. In Utopia,
when the population rises above fixed quotas, Utopians colonize a nearby
mainland area where "the natives have much unoccupied and uncultivated land." Ideally, the natives will agree to live under Utopian laws;
but those who
refuseto live accordingto their laws, they drivefrom the territorywhich they
carve out for themselves.If they resist, they wage war against them. They
considerit a mostjust causefor war when a peoplewhich does not use its soil
but keepsit idle and waste neverthelessforbidsthe use and possessionof it to
otherswho by the rule of natureought to be maintainedby it.27
Locke's version of this thinking resides in two Second Treatise passages.
As part of his analysis of property, he mentions that "there are still great
Tracts of Ground to be found, which ...
the People, who dwell on it, do, or can make use of..." (45). Later,
in a discussion of war reparations, Locke explains that no victor may
justly seize possession of a defeated enemy's land-except that, "where
there being more Land, than the Inhabitants possess, and make use of,
any one has liberty to make use of the waste" (184). Thus, if a native
population should "resist conquest of their waste land, they become
aggressors in war,"28and the developers may justly kill them and enslave
captives.
209
210
Wayne Glausser
33 The
211
212
Wayne Glausser
have defended Locke by pointing out mitigating passages from the Essay
or contrary tendencies in the Second Treatise, the charge is far from
being dismissed. Eugene Miller says that he "can find no basis in Locke's
account of substances for criticizing someone who chooses to define the
essence of man in such a way as to exclude Negroes or any other racial
group.
40
213
(4.7.16)
214
Wayne Glausser
(16).
This
of Slavery, 119-20.
215
them" (184). The waste landers may have their "Wampompeke," but
they have not joined the communal imaginings of "European silver
money," with its specific codes of property, exchange value, and development.48 Hence "great Tracts of Ground ...
than the People, who dwell on it, do, or can make use of, and so still
lie in common" (45).
Waste land is common land, according to this logic; and it awaits
the virtuous energy of European developers, who may find themselves
killing, enslaving, and philosophizing in the interests of development. But
earlier in his discussion of property Locke uses "common" with a different inflection: " 'Tis very clear, that God, as King David says, Psal.
cxv. 16 has given the Earth to the Children of Men, given it to Mankind
in common" (25). Here "common" implies a community of all humans,
with no exclusions. Tully looks at this passage and this version of community to articulate his anti-capitalist Locke. In such a community,
people live as small-holders, tenants in common under God, in an egalitarian golden age.
But Tully's Locke is just one of many available to the shapers of
intellectual history. The interesting trail left by "common" shows how
his justification of slavery can lead back to his abhorrence of it. Perhaps
one useful message to draw from all of this would be a caution against
totalizing interpretations. Interpreters who wish to choose one of the
three approaches-or finally to uphold or subvert a body of liberal
theory-are apt to find what they look for. The same might be said of
an analysis such as this one, which expects indeterminancy and ends up
producing a variety of competing claims to truth. Such an analysis,
whatever its inherent limitations, can help to show how Locke has written
himself into the institutions of both slavery and abolition. His treatises,
essays, secretarial records, and constitutions are sufficient to place him
but insufficient to confine him in either camp. Locke has built in too
many confusions of theory and practice, too many defenses against either
being caught in the act or missing the boat. It may also be helpful to
remember, at this point, that Locke wrote some letters in code and
48 Herman Lebovics has observed that
Locke's "ethnographic reading proved a great
aid" to his theory here, as it taught him "that Wampompeke was used in ceremonial
situations not primarily as a means of commercial exchange ('common Money') in the
sense that coins of precious metals were in Europe." See "The Uses of America in Locke's
Second Treatise of Government,"JHI, 47 (1986), 578. Selinger, on the other hand, is
inclined to belittle Locke's discussion of common money as a convenience. Locke's
knowledge of Wampompeke, however accurate, would not strengthen what Seliger considers an "inane" defense of colonization. Seliger also points to a hint of contradiction
in the argument. Locke justifies annexation on the grounds that American natives do
not recognize common money; but he also implies, in Second Treatise 184, that they
have now begun to do so: they "formerly" knew nothing of European silver money
(Liberal Politics, 117).
216
Wayne Glausser
invisible ink, and that he anxiously refused, until on his death bed, to
identify himself as the author of the Two Treatises.
If one were tempted to improve on this valuable but frustrating
message and to distinguish one approach as most useful, it would probably
be a modified version of the third or integral group. The first two approaches cannot be refuted conclusively, but they tend to imply too simple
a distinction between "disinterested" theory and the personal interests
of John Locke. Locke's investments, friendships, and quirks of personality
(such as his secretiveness, or his tenacious care with money), to the
extent we can determine them, should neither be dismissed as irrelevant
nor elevated above theory to a domain of privileged causes. Locke's work
with slavery consists of theory interwoven with practice. It would be
misleading, however, to assume that the resulting "integrated" texts
should cohere under the authority of one resolute purpose or value. The
integral approach will be helpful only to the extent that it recognizes
within Locke's work a destabilizing competition of values. Underlying
Locke's involvement in slavery is a difficult marriage of development and
natural rights.
DePauw University.