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.”