AM 214: THE AM 214: THE ENLIGHTENMENT ENLIGHTENMENT
Dec 20, 2015
AM 214: THE AM 214: THE ENLIGHTENMENTENLIGHTENMENT
Plan of LecturePlan of Lecture
Thomas Thistlewood and the EnlightenmentBirth of scientific racismMajor philosophical ideasAbolitionAmerican RevolutionDid slaves have an enlightenment?
On 16 December 1786 the Cornwall Chronicle in western Jamaica published the following obituary:
Deaths … in Westmoreland … Thomas Thistlewood, Esq., a gentleman whose social qualities, during a residence of upwards of 30 years in that parish, had greatly endeared him to the whole circle of his neighbours and acquaintances, and whose attainments, in many branches of natural knowledge, in which he was peculiarly communicative, rendered him a most desirable companion to men of science.
Thomas Thistlewood and the Thomas Thistlewood and the EnlightenmentEnlightenment
Michael Chenoweth, The Eighteenth Century Climate of Jamaica
A violent and sadistic man – Derby’s doseBut also a keen participant in
Enlightenment discourse
A Planter and His MistressA Planter and His Mistress
The Contradictions of the The Contradictions of the EnlightenmentEnlightenment
Is there a contradiction between modernity and violence?
Violence customary towards dependents and in the army
Explosion in hanging- 1770-1830: 7,000 hangings England and Wales
Antislavery sentiment non-existent until ca. 1750
Definitions of the Definitions of the EnlightenmentEnlightenment
Mark Goldie: “The Enlightenment was not a crusade but a tone of voice, a sensibility.”
Roy Porter: the Enlightenment was “primarily the expression of new mental and moral values, new canons of taste, styles of sociability and views of human nature.”
Thistlewood as man of Thistlewood as man of sensibilitysensibility
Sympathy a key concept (David Hume)Adam Smith:
“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others … Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively matter.”
Thistlewood and slavesThistlewood and slaves
Indifference to death of CambridgeNo questioning of right of white dominanceEdward Long: Africans “void of genius”
without a system of morality”Colour consciousness as principal barrier to
sympathetic identification
The Enlightenment, Slavery The Enlightenment, Slavery and Racismand Racism
Racism endemic among the most revered figures of the European Enlightenment (e.g. David Hume, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant)
Hume, Voltaire, KantHume, Voltaire, Kant
I am apt to suspect the Negroes, and in general all other species of man to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was any civilized nation of any other complection than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures among them, no arts, no science. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient Germans, the present Tartars, have still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between breeds of men. In Jamaica indeed they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly.”
VoltaireVoltaire
Their round eyes, their flat nose, their lips which are always thick, their differently shaped ears, the wool on their head, the measure even of their intelligence establishes between them and other species of men prodigious differences.
Immanuel KantImmanuel Kant
The Negroes of Africa have received from nature no intelligence that rises above the foolish. The difference between the two races is thus a substantial one; it appears to be just as great in respect to the faculties of the mind as in colour.
Growth of idea of Great Chain of BeingGeorge Frederickson; “the scientific
thought of the Enlightenment was a precondition for the growth of a modern racism based on physical typology.”
Carl Linnaeus and taxonomies of classification
Dr James Hunt, 1865
Ideas of the EnlightenmentIdeas of the Enlightenment
Scripturalism refined into rational beliefScience gained a new prestige, under Isaac
NewtonQuestioning of prescriptive dogmas
John Locke 1632-1704John Locke 1632-1704
Lockean PhilosophyLockean Philosophy
Defenses of toleration and political libertyJoseph Addison and The SpectatorModel of the mind maturing through
experience from ignorance to knowledgeEmpiricism and the senses
The Enlightenment and The Enlightenment and AbolitionAbolition
Apart from Jean Bodin, no philospoher, even Locke, willing to condemn slavery
First real attack, Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (1748) and Francis Hutchinson (1738)
Edmund Burke and the Great Map of Mankind Thomas Day: “Slavery is a monstrous crime” The African came to represent innocent nature
David Brion DavisDavid Brion Davis
The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture“By the 1770s, a large number of moralists,
poets, intellectuals and reformers had come to see American slavery as an unmitigated evil.”
The American Revolution an The American Revolution an AbolitionAbolition
Christopher Brown, Moral CapitalArgues that American Revolution made
Britons think about slavery in new, politically charged, way
Grudging and gradual emancipation in America
Greater intellectual impact in Europe
William Pulteney, 1778William Pulteney, 1778 In principle they pretend to be the most zealous champions
of freedom; in practice they are the severest of tyrants. “The rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they hold to be inalienable;” yet they have, in various instances, violated these unalienable rights without even a pretence to urge in excuse for their unjust and despotic conduct. They assert that “all men are created equal,” yet they shamefully make a property of their fellow creatures, whom they purchase for gold, condemn to the most servile and laborious employments, and render completely miserable by inflicting upon them the most unjust and severe torments that ingenious cruelty can invent or unrelenting tyranny can practice.”
William Pulteney, Earl of BathWilliam Pulteney, Earl of Bath
Did Slaves Have an Did Slaves Have an Enlightenment?Enlightenment?
Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World“Events in Haiti were the most concrete expression of the idea that the rights proclaimed in France’s 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man were indeed universal. They could not be quarantined in Europe or prevented from landing in the ports of the colonies, as many had argued they should be. The slave insurrection of Saint Domingue led to the expansion of citizenship beyond racial barriers, despite the massive political and economic investment in the slave system at the time.” Thus he concludes, “If we live in a world in which democracy is meant to exclude no one, it is in no small part because of the actions of those slaves in Saint Domingue who insisted that human rights were theirs too.”