Enlightenment and Empire: Race, Slavery, and the Limits of Universalism
The Enlightenment's engagement with race, slavery, and colonial empire: from the universalist claims of the eighteenth century to the contemporary critique of Enlightenment universalism.
The Enlightenment is best known for its universalist claims — for the assertion that all human beings possess certain fundamental rights, that the proper political life is one in which these rights are protected, and that the proper political community is one in which the principle of equal human dignity is recognized. The claim has been the source of the modern human rights tradition, and it remains one of the basic commitments of contemporary political thought.
The same Enlightenment, however, was deeply implicated in the European colonial enterprise, and the universalist claims were often used to justify the exclusion of non-Europeans from the benefits of the Enlightenment. The most striking example is the institution of slavery, which was a central feature of the European colonial economies in the eighteenth century, and which the Enlightenment thinkers by no means uniformly opposed. Voltaire and Hume, in particular, made statements about the inherent inferiority of Black Africans that have been a source of lasting embarrassment for the Enlightenment tradition. The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), which was led by enslaved people who had taken seriously the universalist claims of the French Revolution, was a test of the Enlightenment commitment to universal rights, and the response of the European powers to the revolution was a stark reminder of the limits of the universalism.
The contemporary engagement with the Enlightenment is, in significant part, an engagement with this tension. The defenders of the Enlightenment argue that the universalist claims are the basic commitments of the tradition, and that the racist and colonialist statements of some of the Enlightenment thinkers are the betrayals of the tradition. The critics of the Enlightenment argue that the universalist claims were, in significant part, an ideological cover for the European colonial enterprise, and that the proper response is to reject the Enlightenment tradition altogether. The debate is, in significant part, a debate about how to read the history of the eighteenth century, and it is a debate that has important implications for the contemporary practice of politics.
The Universalist Claims
The universalist claims of the Enlightenment are most clearly expressed in the documents of the American and French Revolutions. The American Declaration of Independence (1776) holds that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) holds that “men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” The two declarations have become the basic documents of the modern human rights tradition, and the principles they express have been the basic commitments of the contemporary doctrine of universal human rights.
The universalist claims were, however, limited in their application. The American Declaration was signed by slaveholders, and the contradiction between the claim of universal equality and the practice of chattel slavery was one of the central features of the early American republic. The French Declaration was the work of a colony that practiced slavery, and the contradiction between the claim of universal rights and the practice of colonial slavery was one of the central features of the early French revolutionary settlement. The Haitian Revolution was, in significant part, a response to the contradiction; the revolution was led by enslaved people who had taken seriously the universalist claims of the French Revolution, and the revolution was a test of the commitment of the European powers to the principle of universal rights.
The Scientific Racism of the Enlightenment
The same Enlightenment that developed the universalist claims also developed what has come to be called “scientific racism” — the attempt to ground racial hierarchies in the new science of human nature. The most important figure in the development of the scientific racism of the Enlightenment is Immanuel Kant, whose essays on race (1775, 1777) attempted to ground the racial hierarchy in the natural differences among the human “races.” The essays are notable for the systematic use of the new biology of Linnaeus and Buffon, and for the attempt to apply the Enlightenment principles of natural classification to the human species.
The racial hierarchy developed by the Enlightenment thinkers was, in significant part, a response to the encounter with non-European peoples in the colonial expansion. The encounter raised a question that the Enlightenment tradition had to face: if all human beings are created equal, then how is the European conquest of the Americas, of Africa, and of Asia to be justified? The defenders of the conquest responded by denying the equality of the conquered peoples. The defenders of the universalist principles responded by extending the principles to the conquered peoples, and by developing the modern human rights tradition. The tension between the two responses is one of the central features of the Enlightenment tradition, and it is the source of the contemporary debate about the legacy of the Enlightenment.
The scientific racism of the Enlightenment was, in significant part, the work of philosophers who were also critics of slavery. Kant’s essays on race, for example, were written by a philosopher who was a critic of the slave trade and a defender of the principle of equal human dignity. The contradiction is one of the most striking features of the Enlightenment tradition, and it has been the source of the contemporary critique of the Enlightenment. The defenders of the Enlightenment argue that the contradiction is a betrayal of the universalist principles of the tradition. The critics argue that the contradiction is a feature of the tradition, not a betrayal of it, and that the universalist claims were, in significant part, an ideological cover for the European colonial enterprise.
The Defense of Slavery
The defense of slavery in the Enlightenment was, in significant part, a defense of the economic order of the European colonial empires. The most influential defense of slavery in the eighteenth century was the defense of the French colonial economy by the Physiocrats — the school of French economists, including François Quesnay and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, who argued that the wealth of a nation depends on the productivity of its agricultural land, and that the colonial slave economy was the most efficient way of producing the agricultural products of the tropics. The Physiocratic defense of slavery was influential in the eighteenth century, and it was the source of the modern theory of “comparative advantage” that later became the basis of the modern theory of free trade.
The defense of slavery in the Enlightenment was also, in significant part, a defense of the racial hierarchy that the Enlightenment had developed. The defenders of slavery argued that the enslaved peoples of the colonies were, by nature, inferior to the European peoples, and that the enslavement of the inferior peoples was justified by the natural inequality. The defense was, in significant part, the work of writers who were also defenders of the universalist claims. The contradiction is one of the most striking features of the Enlightenment tradition.
The abolitionist movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was, in significant part, a response to the contradiction. The abolitionists — including Clarkson, Wilberforce, Garrison, Douglass, and the various other writers and activists of the period — argued that the universalist claims of the Enlightenment tradition required the abolition of slavery, and that the defense of slavery was a betrayal of the tradition. The abolitionist argument was, in significant part, an argument about the proper interpretation of the Enlightenment, and it was the source of the modern human rights tradition.
The Contemporary Critique
The contemporary critique of the Enlightenment, developed most powerfully by the postcolonial and decolonial thinkers of the last fifty years, has argued that the universalist claims of the Enlightenment were, in significant part, an ideological cover for the European colonial enterprise. The critique has been developed by writers including Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth, 1961), Edward Said (Orientalism, 1978), and the various contemporary decolonial thinkers. The critique has had a major impact on the contemporary engagement with the Enlightenment, and it has become one of the basic positions in the contemporary debate.
The contemporary defenders of the Enlightenment have responded to the critique in several ways. Some have argued that the universalist claims are the basic commitments of the tradition, and that the racist and colonialist statements of some of the Enlightenment thinkers are the betrayals of the tradition. Some have argued that the tradition is, in significant part, a tradition of argument, and that the proper response to the racist and colonialist statements is to argue against them, not to reject the tradition. Some have argued that the proper response is to develop a more nuanced reading of the tradition, in which the universalist claims and the racist and colonialist statements are both taken seriously.
The contemporary debate about the Enlightenment and empire is, in short, a debate about how to read the history of the eighteenth century, and it is a debate that has important implications for the contemporary practice of politics. The defenders of the Enlightenment argue that the tradition is worth defending, and that the proper response to the racist and colonialist statements is to develop a more consistent universalism. The critics of the Enlightenment argue that the tradition is not worth defending, and that the proper response is to develop an alternative tradition, based on the resources of the non-European world.
The contemporary reader who is serious about the Enlightenment will be familiar with both positions, and will recognize that the debate is, in significant part, a debate about the meaning of the political philosophy of the eighteenth century for the contemporary world. The debate is not simply an academic debate; it is a debate about how to think about the most important political questions of the present, and it is a debate that has important implications for the contemporary practice of politics. The contemporary reader will, in short, read the Enlightenment with the awareness that the tradition is rich and complex, that the universalist claims are the basic commitments, and that the racist and colonialist statements are the betrayals of the basic commitments. The proper response to the betrayals is not to reject the tradition, but to develop a more consistent universalism, in which the basic commitments are taken seriously and the betrayals are rejected.