Progress, Pluralism, and Politics: Liberalism and Colonialism, Past and Present 9780228004080, 9780228004097, 9780228005254

Table of contents :
Cover
Copyright
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Adam Smith on Politics, Progress, and Judgement
2 Kant on Universal Right, Universal History, and the European State
3 Jeremy Bentham, Utilitarianism, and Empire
4 L.T. Hobhouse, ‘New Liberalism’, and the ‘New Imperialism’
5 Liberalism and Colonialism Pastand Present
Index

Citation preview

PRO G R E S S , P L U R A L I S M , A ND POLI T I C S

31892_Williams.indd 1

20-10-15 08:23

M c Gill-Queen’s Studies in the History of Ideas Series Editor: Philip J. Cercone   1 Problems of Cartesianism Edited by Thomas M. Lennon, John M. Nicholas, and John W. Davis

10 Consent, Coercion, and Limit: The Medieval Origins of Parliamentary Democracy Arthur P. Monahan

  2 The Development of the Idea of History in Antiquity Gerald A. Press

11 Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800: A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy Manfred Kuehn

  3 Claude Buffier and Thomas Reid: Two Common-Sense Philosophers Louise Marcil-Lacoste   4 Schiller, Hegel, and Marx: State, Society, and the Aesthetic Ideal of Ancient Greece Philip J. Kain   5 John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England Charles B. Schmitt   6 Beyond Liberty and Property: The Process of SelfRecognition in EighteenthCentury Political Thought J.A.W. Gunn   7 John Toland: His Methods, Manners, and Mind Stephen H. Daniel   8 Coleridge and the Inspired Word Anthony John Harding   9 The Jena System, 1804–5: Logic and Metaphysics G.W.F. Hegel Translation edited by John W. Burbidge and George di Giovanni Introduction and notes by H.S. Harris

31892_Williams.indd 2

12 Paine and Cobbett: The Transatlantic Connection David A. Wilson 13 Descartes and the Enlightenment Peter A. Schouls 14 Greek Scepticism: Anti-Realist Trends in Ancient Thought Leo Groarke 15 The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought Donald Wiebe 16 Form and Transformation: A Study in the Philosophy of Plotinus Frederic M. Schroeder 17 From Personal Duties towards Personal Rights: Late Medieval and Early Modern Political Thought, c. 1300–c. 1650 Arthur P. Monahan 18 The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi Translated and edited by George di Giovanni

20-10-15 08:23

19 Kierkegaard as Humanist: Discovering My Self Arnold B. Come 20 Durkheim, Morals, and Modernity W. Watts Miller 21 The Career of Toleration: John Locke, Jonas Proast, and After Richard Vernon 22 Dialectic of Love: Platonism in Schiller’s Aesthetics David Pugh 23 History and Memory in Ancient Greece Gordon Shrimpton 24 Kierkegaard as Theologian: Recovering My Self Arnold B. Come 25 Enlightenment and Conservatism in Victorian Scotland: The Career of Sir Archibald Alison Michael Michie 26 The Road to Egdon Heath: The Aesthetics of the Great in Nature Richard Bevis 27 Jena Romanticism and Its Appropriation of Jakob Böhme: Theosophy – Hagiography – Literature Paola Mayer

31892_Williams.indd 3

28 Enlightenment and Community: Lessing, Abbt, Herder, and the Quest for a German Public Benjamin W. Redekop 29 Jacob Burckhardt and the Crisis of Modernity John R. Hinde 30 The Distant Relation: Time and Identity in SpanishAmerican Fiction Eoin S. Thomson 31 Mr Simson’s Knotty Case: Divinity, Politics, and Due Process in Early EighteenthCentury Scotland Anne Skoczylas 32 Orthodoxy and Enlightenment: George Campbell in the Eighteenth Century Jeffrey M. Suderman 33 Contemplation and Incarnation: The Theology of MarieDominique Chenu Christophe F. Potworowski 34 Democratic Legitimacy: Plural Values and Political Power F.M. Barnard 35 Herder on Nationality, Humanity, and History F.M. Barnard 36 Labeling People: French Scholars on Society, Race, and Empire, 1815–1849 Martin S. Staum

20-10-15 08:23

37 The Subaltern Appeal to Experience: Self-Identity, Late Modernity, and the Politics of Immediacy Craig Ireland 38 The Invention of Journalism Ethics: The Path to Objectivity and Beyond, Second Edition Stephen J.A. Ward 39 The Recovery of Wonder: The New Freedom and the Asceticism of Power Kenneth L. Schmitz 40 Reason and Self-Enactment in History and Politics: Themes and Voices of Modernity F.M. Barnard 41 The More Moderate Side of Joseph de Maistre: Views on Political Liberty and Political Economy Cara Camcastle 42 Democratic Society and Human Needs Jeff Noonan 43 The Circle of Rights Expands: Modern Political Thought after the Reformation, 1521 (Luther) to 1762 (Rousseau) Arthur P. Monahan

46 When the French Tried to Be British: Party, Opposition, and the Quest for Civil Disagreement, 1814–1848 J.A.W. Gunn 47 Under Conrad’s Eyes: The Novel as Criticism Michael John DiSanto 48 Media, Memory, and the First World War David Williams 49 An Aristotelian Account of Induction: Creating Something from Nothing Louis Groarke 50 Social and Political Bonds: A Mosaic of Contrast and Convergence F.M. Barnard 51 Archives and the Event of God: The Impact of Michel Foucault on Philosophical Theology David Galston 52 Between the Queen and the Cabby: Olympe de Gouges’s Rights of Women John R. Cole

44 The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament Janet Ajzenstat

53 Nature and Nurture in French Social Sciences, 1859–1914 and Beyond Martin S. Staum

45 Finding Freedom: Hegel’s Philosophy and the Emancipation of Women Sara MacDonald

54 Public Passion: Rethinking the Grounds for Political Justice Rebecca Kingston

31892_Williams.indd 4

20-10-15 08:23

55 Rethinking the Political: The Sacred, Aesthetic Politics, and the Collège de Sociologie Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi 56 Materialist Ethics and Life-Value Jeff Noonan 57 Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Dialectical Justification of Philosophy’s First Principles Ardis B. Collins 58 The Social History of Ideas in Quebec, 1760–1896 Yvan Lamonde Translated by Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott 59 Ideas, Concepts, and Reality John W. Burbidge 60 The Enigma of Perception D.L.C. Maclachlan 61 Nietzsche’s Justice: Naturalism in Search of an Ethics Peter R. Sedgwick 62 The Idea of Liberty in Canada during the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, 1776–1838 Michel Ducharme Translated by Peter Feldstein 63 From White to Yellow: The Japanese in European Racial Thought, 1300–1735 Rotem Kowner 64 The Crisis of Modernity Augusto Del Noce Edited and translated by Carlo Lancellotti

31892_Williams.indd 5

65 Imprinting Britain: Newspapers, Sociability, and the Shaping of British North America Michael Eamon 66 The Form of Politics: Aristotle and Plato on Friendship John von Heyking 67 War as Paradox: Clausewitz and Hegel on Fighting Doctrines and Ethics Youri Cormier 68 Network Democracy: Conservative Politics and the Violence of the Liberal Age Jared Giesbrecht 69 A Singular Case: Debating China’s Political Economy in the European Enlightenment Ashley Eva Millar 70 Not Even a God Can Save Us Now: Reading Machiavelli after Heidegger Brian Harding 71 Before Copernicus: The Cultures and Contexts of Scientific Learning in the Fifteenth Century Edited by Rivka Feldhay and F. Jamil Ragep 72 The Culturalist Challenge to Liberal Republicanism Michael Lusztig

20-10-15 08:23

73 God and Government: Martin Luther’s Political Thought Jarrett A. Carty 74 The Age of Secularization Augusto Del Noce Edited and Translated by Carlo Lancellotti 75 Emancipatory Thinking: Simone de Beauvoir and Contemporary Political Thought Elaine Stavro

77 The Aesthetics of Fear in German Romanticism Paola Mayer 78 Objectively Engaged Journalism: An Ethic Stephen J.A. Ward 79 Progress, Pluralism, and Politics: Liberalism and Colonialism, Past and Present David Williams

76 Life Embodied: The Promise of Vital Force in Spanish Modernity Nicolás Fernández-Medina

31892_Williams.indd 6

20-10-15 08:23

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics Liberalism and Colonialism, Past and Present

David Williams

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago

31892_Williams.indd 7

20-10-15 08:23

©  McGill-Queen’s University Press 2020 ISBN ISBN ISBN ISBN

978-0-2280-0408-0 (cloth) 978-0-2280-0409-7 (paper) 978-0-2280-0525-4 (ePDF) 978-0-2280-0526-1 (ePUB)

Legal deposit fourth quarter 2020 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Progress, pluralism, and politics: liberalism and colonialism, past and present / David Williams. Names: Williams, David, 1969– author. Series: McGill-Queen’s studies in the history of ideas; 79. Description: Series statement: McGill-Queen’s studies in the history of ideas; 79 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200306049 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200306200 | ISBN 9780228004080 (cloth) | ISBN 9780228004097 (paper) | ISBN 9780228005254 (ePDF) | ISBN 9780228005261 (ePUB) Subjects: LCSH: Imperialism—Philosophy. | LCSH: Liberalism—Philosophy. | LCSH: Political science—Philosophy. | LCSH: Europe—Colonies—History. Classification: LCC jv51.w55 2020 | DDC 325/.301—dc23

This book was typeset by Marquis Interscript in 10,5 /13 New Baskerville.

31892_Williams.indd 8

20-10-15 08:23

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements xi Introduction 3 1   Adam Smith on Politics, Progress, and Judgement  31 2   Immanuel Kant on Universal Right, Universal History, and the European State  59 3   Jeremy Bentham, Utilitarianism, and Empire  89 4   L.T. Hobhouse, ‘New Liberalism’, and the ‘New Imperialism’  118 5   Liberalism and Colonialism Past and Present  147 Index 177

31892_Williams.indd 9

20-10-15 08:23

31892_Williams.indd 10

20-10-15 08:23

Preface and Acknowledgements

like many books, this one has a distinctly autobiographical flavour. When I started out as a graduate student at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the years immediately after the end of the Cold War, I became increasingly interested in those liberal ideas – democracy, civil society, ­human rights, ‘good governance’, collective security, and humanitarian intervention – that had become more prominent in international politics as a result of the new-found dominance of what Mohammed Ayoob and Matthew Zierler have called the ‘unipolar concert’ of liberal states led by the United States.1 Many of these ideas and practices were pursued through the use of altogether more interventionist practices, in part enabled by the economic and political weakness of many postcolonial states and the collapse of the Soviet Union. It seemed implausible to me that this could be explained simply with reference to the ‘interests’ of these liberal states, either economic or geopolitical; rather, understanding these ideas and their associated practices seemed to require paying attention to the particular forms and patterns of liberal thinking itself. As I pursued this line of investigation, an exploration of the classic texts and arguments within what we now often think of as the ‘liberal tradition’ seemed to offer fruitful possibilities. The thinkers that (now) make up this tradition were concerned not just with why the world ought to be different, but about how liberal institutions and practices might be made real in the world. While the policies and practices of 1 Mohammed Ayoob and Matthew Zierler, ‘The Unipolar Concert: The NorthSouth Divide Trumps Transatlantic Differences’, World Policy Journal 22, no. 1 (2005): 31–42.

31892_Williams.indd 11

20-10-15 08:23

xii

Preface and Acknowledgements

international-development institutions (my particular concern at the time) did not in any simple way reproduce these arguments, it seemed to me that we might learn something about what these institutions were doing, and why they were doing it, by looking at some canonical liberal thinkers. This opened up a way of thinking about liberalism as a ‘political project’ (a phrase borrowed from Margaret Canovan).2 Canovan’s vitally important point was that liberals are ‘economical with the truth’ when they suppose (or pretend) that the values, practices, and attitudes that characterize liberal modes of life are already ‘there’ (in ‘nature’ or the basic features of human reasoning, for example) and need only to be released from the shackles imposed by ‘tradition’ or oppressive tyrants to become real in the world. Instead, liberal modes of life have to be made and remade on an ongoing basis and in the face of other ways of thinking about and organizing social life. As Canovan put it, liberalism is like ‘making a garden in a jungle that is continually encroaching’.3 Seeing liberalism in this way meant turning attention not just to the ideas but also to the kinds of concrete practices employed by liberal institutions in their dealings with non- or partially liberal others. The history of liberal thought also suggested links between the arguments of colonial liberals, such as John Stuart Mill, and the practices of liberal states and organizations in the post–Cold War period. In this way, while the circumstances were different, it seemed plausible to argue that the liberal project was in important ways ‘interventionist’ or ‘colonial’ in aspiration; driven by a belief (or faith) in the superiority of their own ideas, liberal states and organizations felt entitled and even obligated to try construct liberal forms of life in diverse other places. And that is roughly what I (along with others, of course) tried to argue in my first two books.4 While the study of the history of liberal thought seemed to me to provide important resources for understanding some of what was

2 Margaret Canovan, ‘On Being Economical with the Truth: Some Liberal Reflections’, Political Studies 38, no. 1 (1990): 5–19. 3 Ibid., 16. 4 David Williams, The World Bank and Social Transformation in International Politics: Liberalism, Governance and Sovereignty (London: Routledge 2008), and David Williams, International Development and World Politics: History, Theory and Practice (London: Routledge 2011).

31892_Williams.indd 12

20-10-15 08:23



Preface and Acknowledgements xiii

happening in international politics after the end of the Cold War, this kind of argument was open to at least two important challenges. The first was methodological and spilled out of the Cambridge School approach to the history of political thought, which anyone grappling with this history, in Britain at least, has to contend with. On some readings, this approach called into question precisely the kinds of continuities and connections that seemed to me important and illuminating. The second came in the form of a series of arguments designed to show that, while there were ‘colonial’ thinkers within the liberal canon, there were also some important ‘anti-colonial’ thinkers – notably, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, and Jeremy Bentham. This obviously challenged the idea that liberalism was in some essential or necessary sense ‘colonial’ or imperial in aspiration or by implication. This book is an inevitably partial response to these challenges. There is no doubting the extraordinarily creative contribution of Cambridge School scholars to the study of the history of political thought, but I have become less sure that this is the only way we can sensibly approach past thinkers. In the end, disputes about methodology, however intellectually absorbing and productive, are for me at any rate not as important as being clear about the point and purpose for us ‘now and around here’ (to use a phrase from Bernard Williams) of reading past thinkers.5 There are many points and purposes, of course, but for this book they revolve around the ways in which the history of thought might provide some resources for reflecting on how we think today, and perhaps for helping us to think a bit better. The second of these challenges poses the hard case for the kind of arguments I have made in the past. This book explores the basis for, and the limitations of, the critique of colonialism articulated in four canonical liberal thinkers: Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, and L.T. Hobhouse. Very roughly, and to use Duncan Bell’s useful terms, the book tries to steer a course between the ‘necessity thesis’ that views liberalism as inevitably colonial and the ‘contingency thesis’ that sees the connections between liberalism and empire as the product of particular historical circumstances rather than anything

5 Bernard Williams, In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press 2005), 8.

31892_Williams.indd 13

20-10-15 08:23

xiv

Preface and Acknowledgements

intrinsic in liberal thinking itself.6 There are quite profoundly colonial or imperial elements in the thought of these thinkers, and some of the similarities and continuities between them suggest that the colonial aspects of their thought are not simply contingent but instead the product of some deep-seated features of liberal patterns of thinking, especially about progress and pluralism. At the same time, all four of these thinkers were often also deeply critical of European colonial rule and its associated practices. The tensions here are not simply the product of particular historical circumstances or the likelihood that even serious thinkers sometimes struggle to be entirely consistent (although both are present), but the result precisely of the ways in which these thinkers thought seriously about how liberal forms of life might actually be made. Sometimes European conquest and colonial rule was thought to play an important role in helping to instantiate certain liberal goods, but sometimes it might be actively detrimental. And judgements about this were conditioned by host of considerations about, for example, the impact of colonialism on domestic politics, the different ways in which processes of change were understood in different places, the particular type of colonialism involved (where it was happening and how), and whether or not a reformed form of colonialism was possible. For all four of these thinkers, much of their critique of aspects of European conquest and colonial rule, as well as the tensions and ambivalences we find in their thought, can be traced back to their attempts to think seriously about how liberal goods might actually be realized in different places. In a memorable phrase written in 1979, John Dunn said that the example of the French Revolution meant that liberals were ‘haunted by the grim understanding that an over-vigorous attempt to dispose of infamy can readily result in the gratuitous destruction of much else besides: that even if it is not possible to make omelettes without breaking eggs, it is child’s play to break eggs by the dozen without contriving to make any kind of an omelette at all’.7 The present book is partly inspired by my worry, as a citizen of a broadly liberal state (and such a location is an important part of the position that underpins this book), 6 Duncan Bell, Reordering the World: Essays on Liberalism and Empire (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press 2016), 21. 7 John Dunn, Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1979), 30.

31892_Williams.indd 14

20-10-15 08:23



Preface and Acknowledgements xv

that in the period of the unipolar c­ oncert liberals often forgot this point. As anyone who lived through the arguments that were had in these states will know, many commentators, academics, international civil servants, politicians, and citizens of a liberal persuasion were often caught up in the excitement of disposing of infamy and took a certain pride in a hard-nosed acceptance that such a thing would require breaking a few eggs. But this combination of moral righteousness and the will to power no longer looks so attractive. The m ­ essianic excesses of liberalism in the post–Cold War world look very ­different given the appallingly destructive ‘interventions’ in Afghanistan, Iraq, and more recently Libya. The ability of Western states and organi­zations to make anything like omelettes in these and other places has been called into serious doubt. In addition, the dominance of the concert of liberal states no longer seems so assured. While I disagree with some of their interpretations, those scholars who have identified a strand of anticolonial liberalism are quite right, I think, in stressing that the question of how liberals and liberal states relate to diverse others is one of the most important questions facing liberalism, and liberal states, in the present moment. Such is the ‘context’ (to use a methodologically loaded word) within which this book was written. It is my view that liberal states and liberalminded citizens, as well perhaps as liberal theorists and academics themselves, might do well to think a bit more about how they and liberal states should relate to non- or only partially liberal others: to think about why the imperial temptation is often so strong for liberal states, and for many liberals themselves, but also why it is that at best the results of ­imperial ventures are so often disappointing and at worst catastrophic. This means that it might be helpful to return to those liberal thinkers who were indeed tempted by the possibility of making omelettes in other places, but who were also well aware of the gratuitous destruction that very often accompanied that process. The categories, claims, tensions, and ambivalences in this past thought do not provide any simple answers for us, but they do offer some resources for reflecting on our thinking today. In the course of exploring the ideas in this book, and of writing it, I have incurred a great many debts. I have discussed the issues here with family, friends, students, and colleagues over a number of years and I learned from all these discussions, even if only that I was not at all clear myself about what I thought. Some of the arguments were

31892_Williams.indd 15

20-10-15 08:23

xvi

Preface and Acknowledgements

presented to the Association for Political Theory conference in Boulder, Colorado, where I owe a special debt to Jeanne Morefield and Inder Marwah, whose work parallels mine; to the ‘World Order in the Nineteenth Century’ workshop at the Central European University in Budapest, where I owe a special thanks to Mladen Medved; and, several times, to the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University in London, where colleagues responded generously and critically – as I have come to expect. I am also very grateful to the School for the sabbatical leave that allowed the time to draft the central part of the book. I would particularly like to thank Nick Hostettler, Kim Hutchings, Mike Kenny, Lasse Thomassen, Caroline Williams, James Dunkerley, Ray Kiely, Robbie Shilliam, and Adam Fagan for their insight and encouragement. A version of chapter 1 was published as ‘Adam Smith and Colonialism’ in International Political Theory 10, no. 3 (2014). I want to record my special thanks to the journal and its editor, Patrick Hayden, for giving me the confidence to press on with the project. Jennifer Pitts generously provided comments on some early ideas that developed into this book, and her work remains a touchstone for everyone’s thinking about these issues. Particular thanks go to Richard Baggaley at McGill-Queen’s University Press, to Curtis Fahey for his work in editing the manuscript, and to the two anonymous referees. The book is much improved as a result of all their generous and perceptive comments. A number of people deserve special thanks for their unfailing support: Tom Young, Carl Zarecky, Peter Brett, Jean-François Drolet, Toby Dodge, and George Lawson. What I have written here is not what any of them would have written, but it could not have been written without them. My largest debts as always are to my family. Tanya Epstein lived through the ups and downs of the project and I am incredibly grateful for her support, advice, and encouragement. The book is dedicated to my wonderful children, Seth and Nina. David Williams Mile End Road London

31892_Williams.indd 16

20-10-15 08:23

PRO G R E S S , P L U R A L I S M , A ND POLI T I C S

31892_Williams.indd 1

20-10-15 08:23

31892_Williams.indd 2

20-10-15 08:23

Introduction

in 1999 uday mehta said that the fact of liberalism’s association with empire had been ‘strangely hidden’.1 This was, perhaps, not quite right at the time, but in any case the situation today is dramatically different.2 Across a host of academic disciplines and from a variety of perspectives, the relationship between liberal ideas, concepts, and arguments and the justifications for and practices of European conquest and colonial rule has been extensively debated and discussed. One of the terrains upon which this debate has taken place is what we have come to call the canon of liberal thinkers.3 A good deal of attention has been paid to the ways in which the arguments of these thinkers were shaped by and in turn shaped the colonial practices and imaginaries of their day. Given the status of these thinkers within what we now take to be the

1 Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1999), 5. 2 See, for example, Bernard Semmel, The Liberal Ideal and the Demons of Empire: Theories of Imperialism from Adam Smith to Lenin (Baltimore, md: Johns Hopkins University Press 1993); Bihkuh Parekh, ‘Liberalism and Colonialism’, in J. Nederveen and B. Parekh, eds., The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power (London: Zed 1995), 81–98; James Tully, An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993), esp. chap. 3. Going further back, the seminal text is Donald Winch, Classical Political Economy and Colonies (London: London School of Economics 1965). 3 I do not claim that this terrain is the only way to explore the relationship between the history of liberalism and the history of empire, and for some questions it is likely to be downright misleading. For an important and engaging alternative, see Andrew Sartori, Liberalism in Empire: An Alternative History (Oakland: University of California Press 2014).

31892_Williams.indd 3

20-10-15 08:23

4

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

history of liberal thought, this concern is unsurprising.4 Yet there is much more at stake in this set of engagements than simply illuminating previously neglected elements of their thought. Underlying much of the concern with the colonial aspects of liberal thought historically are more profound issues about the judgements we might make about liberal thought, in the past and thus also in the present, about how we think about the actions of liberal agents in their dealings with diverse others (again in the past and the present), and about the extent to which liberal thinking can provide a sociologically or politically sensible and normatively plausible set of categories and concepts to help liberals today think about relations with non- or only partially liberal others. For those who have wanted to critique liberal thought on the grounds that it is deeply intertwined with the practices of European colonialism, the key canonical figures have been John Locke and John Stuart Mill. Locke certainly participated in colonial (and indeed slave-trading) ventures.5 He served as secretary to the Lords Proprietors of the Colony of Carolina from 1669 to 1675, and in that position he had an important role in drafting the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, which said that ‘every freeman of Carolina shall have absolute power and authority over

4 The slightly convoluted phrasing here is deliberate. There are extensive debates about whether and in what sense it is legitimate to talk about a canon or ‘tradition’ of liberal thought. See in particular John Gunnell, ‘The Myth of Tradition’, American Political Science Review 72, no. 1 (1978): 122–34; John Gunnell, ‘American Political Science, Liberalism and the Invention of Political Theory’, American Political Science Review 82, no. 1 (1988): 71–87; and Duncan Bell, ‘What Is Liberalism?’ Political Theory 42, no. 6 (2014): 682–715. The main thrust of these objections is that the canon or tradition of liberal thought is produced through the concerns of the present rather than being an actual historical entity. For the purposes of this book, these objections are less important: the figures examined here are part of the ‘canon’ of liberal thought as liberals have it today, and because of this they have been important figures in current debates about liberalism and colonialism. As long as we are clear about what we can and cannot hope to learn from looking at these figures, and as long as we are as clear as we can be about how we imagine the relationship between their past and our present, it seems entirely legitimate to talk about them in this way. 5 For Locke and slavery, see James Farr, ‘“So Vile and Miserable an Estate”: The Problem of Slavery in Locke’s Political Thought’, Political Theory 14, no. 2 (1986): 263–89; and Wayne Glauser, ‘Three Approaches to Locke and the Slave Trade’, Journal of the History of Ideas 51, no. 2 (1990): 199–216.

31892_Williams.indd 4

20-10-15 08:23



Introduction 5

his negro slaves’.6 Locke also played a central part in England’s relationship with its nascent colonies in the Americas through his work as secretary and treasurer of the English Council of Trade and Foreign Plantations and then as a commissioner on the English Board of Trade formed in 1696.7 Beyond these biographical details, the key claim has been that colonial considerations suffuse his more theoretical works, especially the Two Treatises.8 Barbara Arneil, for example, has argued that the Two Treatises was written as a ‘defense of English colonial policy in the New World’, and that the chapter ‘Of Property’ in that text ‘was written to justify the seventeenth century dispossession of aboriginal peoples of their land’.9 Here certain standard ‘liberal’ categories and concepts such as ‘natural rights’, property ownership, and a concern with economic improvement are all seen not just to have ‘colonial’ implications but also to have been derived, at least in some part, from European encounters with the New World. For Mehta, the example of Locke demonstrates that ‘liberal involvement with the British Empire is broadly coeval with liberalism itself’.10 Such arguments serve not only to destabilize the comfortable view of Locke as a ‘founding father’ of liberalism but also, even more dramatically, to cast one of its foundational texts in a wholly new light. Whether this interpretation of Locke is actually right is still a matter for debate, as is the extent to which Locke’s own participation in English colonial practice in the

  6 John Locke, ‘Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina’, in John Locke, Political Writings, ed. D. Wootton (London: Penguin 1993), 230. There is a debate about whether Locke actually authored this particular clause, although it seems clear he was heavily involved in drafting the constitution. See David Armitage, Foundations of Modern International Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013), chap. 5.   7 For a discussion of this latter position, see Peter Laslett, ‘John Locke, the Great Recoinage and the Origins of the Board of Trade: 1695–1698’, William and Mary Quarterly 14, no. 3 (1957): 370–402.   8 See Tully, An Approach to Political Philosophy, chap. 5, for example.  9 Barbara Arneil, John Locke and America: The Defence of English Colonialism (Oxford: Clarendon 1996), 2. See also Barbara Arneil, ‘“The Wild Indian’s Venison”: Locke’s Theory of Property and English Colonialism in America’, Political Studies 44, no. 1 (1996): 60–74. 10 Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, 4. See also Armitage, Foundations of Modern International Thought, 91.

31892_Williams.indd 5

20-10-15 08:23

6

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

Americas reflected his more theoretical arguments.11 Nonetheless, Locke’s participation in and justification for English colonialism in the Americas has condemned him, and perhaps liberalism too, in the eyes of many commentators.12 The connections between the life and work of John Stuart Mill and colonialism, particularly British (East India Company) rule in India, are well known.13 Mill worked from 1823 until 1858 for the East India Company and towards the end of his tenure wrote an important defence of the ‘improvements’ Company rule had brought to the subcontinent.14 Mill is also (in)famous for having articulated a justification for British rule in India. As he put it in Considerations on Representative Government, British rule in India is legitimate ‘if it is the arrangement which in the existing state of civilization of the subject people, most facilitates their transition to a higher state of improvement’.15 Mill was certainly not an uncritical apologist for the British Empire, but he nevertheless argued that British rule in India was necessary if India was to become more ‘civilized’. As with Locke, it has been argued that this justification was not a departure from the basic principles of his liberal thought but

11 See, for example, Paul Corcoran, ‘John Locke on Native Right, Colonial Possession, and the Concept of Vacuum Domicilium’, European Legacy 23 no. 3 (2018): 225–50; and Jack Turner, ‘John Locke, Christian Mission, and Colonial America’, Modern Intellectual History 8, no. 2 (2011): 267–97. 12 See Kathy Squadrito, ‘John Locke and the Dispossession of the American Indian’, American Indian Culture and Research Journal 20, no. 4 (1996): 145–81. See also Domenico Losurdo, Liberalism: A Counter-History (London: Verso 2011), chap. 1. 13 Eileen Sullivan, ‘Liberalism and Imperialism: J.S. Mill’s Defense of the British Empire’, Journal of the History of Ideas 44, no. 4 (1983): 599–617; Beate Jahn, ‘Kant, Mill and Illiberal Legacies in International Affairs’, International Organization 59, no. 4 (2005): 177–207; Duncan Bell, ‘John Stuart Mill on Colonies’, Political Theory 38 no. 1 (2011): 34–64. See also Parekh, ‘Liberalism and Colonialism’, and Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, chap. 3. 14 See R.J. Moore, ‘John Stuart Mill at East India House’, Historical Studies 20, no. 81 (1983): 497–519; and, more generally, Lynn Zastoupli, John Stuart Mill and India (Stanford, ca: Stanford University Press 1994). Also, see John Stuart Mill, ‘Memorandum of the Improvements in the Administration in India in the Last Thirty Years,’ in J. Robson, M. Moir, and Z. Moir, eds., The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill: Vol. XXX: Writings on India (Toronto: Toronto University Press 1990), 91–175. 15 John Stuart Mill, ‘On Representative Government’, in J. Robson, ed., The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill: Vol. XIX: Essays on Politics and Society (Toronto: Toronto University Press 1977), 567.

31892_Williams.indd 6

20-10-15 08:23



Introduction 7

rather followed from them.16 The ‘duty’ to ‘civilize’ others flowed not just from the claim that some societies are more ‘civilized’ than others, but also from the belief that progress had to be directed and that without such direction little progress towards ‘civilization’ was to be expected in places like India. While Locke and Mill were very different thinkers in very different contexts, the fact that both participated in and justified the colonialism of their day seems to confirm in the eyes of many ­liberalism’s complicity in European colonial practices.17 There has also been a wider set of arguments that go beyond the connections between individual thinkers and elements of European colonial practice to explore the ways in which the patterns of liberal thought organize the plurality of human societies (past and present), systematically install liberal values as ends for humanity, and cast liberal societies as the vanguard of human history. Here liberal thought is seen as ‘colonial’ or ‘imperial’ by implication, even when it is not explicitly so in aspiration. Barry Hindess, for example, has argued that liberal thought has always been judgemental of peoples, societies, and cultures that do not live up to the standards of conduct arrived at in liberal ­theory.18 On this view, the history of liberal thought is replete with distinctions between ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized,’ ‘backward’ and ‘modern’, and, more generally, ‘us’ and ‘them’ which provide the resources for judging other places to be inferior or lacking in some important ways. This generates a set of cultural or civilizational hierarchies and a liberal ‘urge to dominate the world’.19 Similar themes are present in the critique of liberalism from within the broad and diverse terrain of post-colonial thought. Post-colonial critics are right to argue that liberal thought has often operated to deny that people in distant and diverse places have the same full claims to respect, tolerance, and rights that are due to people in more ‘advanced’ cultures (as Mill amply demonstrates); and there is no doubt, too, that liberalism’s universalist aspirations do little to disguise the fact that it often operates with a profoundly

16 David Williams, ‘Liberalism, Colonialism and Liberal Imperialism’, East Central Europe 45, no. 1 (2018): 94–118. See also Parekh, ‘Liberalism and Colonialism’, and Jahn, ‘Kant, Mill and Illiberal Legacies’. 17 Parekh, ‘Liberalism and Colonialism’, makes this point. 18 Barry Hindess, ‘Metropolitan Liberalism and Colonial Autocracy’, in E. Rooksby, ed., Habitus: A Sense of Place (London: Routledge 2005), 117–30. 19 Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, 20.

31892_Williams.indd 7

20-10-15 08:23

8

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

parochial and highly stylized picture of the ‘West’ as the centre of world history and fulcrum of cultural and moral judgement. Liberalism here is part of the ‘colonial matrix of power’, to use Walter Mignolo’s phrase; it expresses a series of claims that are inextricably tied to the cumulative waves of Western domination.20 It also becomes a, perhaps the, leading exemplar of what Gaytari Spivak has called European ‘epistemic violence’ – the ‘remotely orchestrated, far-flung and heterogeneous project to constitute the colonial subject as Other’ – as it de-legitimates alternative claims to knowledge and normativity, and in the end denies the lived experience of plural others in any other terms than their distance from some vision of liberal modernity.21 Such arguments have not gone unchallenged, however, in part I suspect because many liberals today are deeply uncomfortable with the idea that their history has been complicit in colonialism (and sometimes slavery) and that there is still something intrinsically ‘colonial’ or ‘imperial’ about their thinking today – especially as many of these same liberals would roundly condemn some of the practices associated with contemporary patterns of Western domination. To this end, there has been an important series of responses that have identified a significant anticolonial strand within the liberal canon. It has been argued that some liberal thinkers developed powerful critiques of colonialism that condemned the costs, cruelties, and injustices associated with European rule over distant others, that exposed the hypocrisies associated with justifications for any ‘civilizing mission’, and that accorded plural others some measure of cultural respect.22 The existence of these thinkers has led some to conclude that there is nothing intrinsically colonial about liberal thought.23 20 Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Durham, nc: Duke University Press 2011). See also Anibal Quijano, ‘Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality’, Cultural Studies 21, nos. 1–2 (2007): 168–78; and John Hobson, Eurocentric Conception of World Order: Western International Theory, 1760–2010 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012). 21 Gaytari Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in C. Nelson and L. Grossberg, eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (London: Macmillan 1988), 271–313. 22 Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press 2005), makes this argument most cogently. 23 Ibid., 4. See also Frederick Cooper, ‘Postcolonial Studies and the Study of History’, in A. Loomba, ed., Postcolonial Studies and Beyond (Durham, nc: Duke University Press 2005), 401–22.

31892_Williams.indd 8

20-10-15 08:23



Introduction 9

This book is concerned with four thinkers who each articulated significant critiques of some of the patterns and practices of European colonialism – Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, and L.T. Hobhouse. At the very least, these thinkers show that the relationship between liberal patterns of thought and attitudes towards European colonialism is far from straightforward. They were critical of many of the practices of European colonialism and some of the arguments used to justify it, and they were certainly alert to the costs, hypocrisies, and cruelties that often accompanied it. At the same time, it is clear that there are aspects of their thought that are intrinsically colonial, both in the sense that they sometimes believed European colonialism had been and could be a progressive force in diverse places, and in the sense that their patterns of thought replicated many of the colonial and imperial aspects of liberal thought more generally. On the face of it, then, there is a tension or ambivalence here. These thinkers are both anti-colonial and colonial in important respects. This book explores this tension and tries to explain why it is that all four of these thinkers exhibited considerable ambivalence about the progressive possibilities of European conquest and colonial rule. It does so with three basic objects in mind. First, and most straightforwardly, it aims to contribute to the existing debates about the connections between liberalism and empire, past and present, by trying to stress the complexity of the arguments we find in these thinkers and the different ways different kinds of colonialism were understood. Second, the book tries to demonstrate the significance of certain characteristically liberal patterns of thought that are revealed most especially in considerations of relations with distant and diverse others, and in so doing it hopes to make some contribution to the more general debate about ‘liberalism’ and some of its central features. Finally, the book endeavours to use the arguments of these past thinkers to help clarify some of the things that are at stake today in arguments within liberal societies about their relations with distant and diverse others.

Colonialism, Anti-Colonialism, and the Liberal Project Some of the ambivalence we seem to find in these four thinkers is explained by the fact that ‘colonialism’ was not a singular phenomenon. Across the historical span of these thinkers, and sometimes within the

31892_Williams.indd 9

20-10-15 08:23

10

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

work of the same thinker (Bentham especially), we find arguments about settler and plantation colonialism in the Americas, penal colonialism in Australia, British (East India Company) rule in India, and the ‘new imperialism’ associated with the rapid colonization of Africa in the late nineteenth century. These thinkers were critical of aspects of all of these kinds of colonialism, but we also find different kinds of ambivalence about the various forms of relations with assorted plural others, driven in part by the different ways in which these others were understood. Some of the ambivalence is attributable, too, to the fact that their discussions of European relations with diverse others were not confined simply to the question of formal colonial or settler colonial rule. So, while they were sometimes critical of colonialism and its associated practices, they also often endorsed other aspect of European domination. Kant, for example, thought that European contact with diverse others was in important ways progressive, while also recognizing that colonial rule as often practised was cruel and unjust. A final reason for the ambivalence of these thinkers on the subject of colonialism is that over their sometimes long lifetimes, and across their often voluminous works, these thinkers just were not especially consistent on issues around colonialism, and perhaps did not intend to be.24 But there is also something more fundamental underlying these complex judgements about different kinds of relationship between Europe and diverse others that partly explains why they were not ‘consistent’ in our terms (either clearly ‘for’ or ‘against’ European colonialism). It derives from the particular way these thinkers approached the issue in the first place. They did so in a way quite typical of the thinkers we now call liberal: through a concern with the instantiation of certain goods or ends. Their work articulates and in some respects embodies a series of ‘projects’.25 At the broadest level, to see their work in terms 24 Quentin Skinner argued forcefully against what he called the ‘myth of coherence’. See his ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, History and Theory 8, no. 1 (1969): 3–53. 25 This is a term Tom Young and I have used before. It is taken from Margaret Canovan, ‘On Being Economical with the Truth: Some Liberal Reflections’, Political Studies 38, no. 1 (1990): 5–19. Part of the point of using the term is to draw attention to the transformative aspirations of liberalism, as well as to those aspects of liberal thought concerned with what might be required in practice to achieve this transformation. To say that liberals’ work embodies a project is to say that it is itself intended as a contribution to such a transformation.

31892_Williams.indd 10

20-10-15 08:23



Introduction 11

of a project is to see it as answering two sets of questions. The first set of questions concerns the kinds of goods or ends it would be desirable for people to have (both in Europe and elsewhere), why this is the case (the justifications for these goods or ends), and what kinds of arrangements would have to be in place for people to have them. The second set of questions concerns more concrete, practical, and perhaps even tactical considerations about how it is that people might actually come to enjoy these goods or ends. These are questions about how any necessary changes might actually come about: about what kinds of processes might be involved, and what kinds of agency should be involved, about the possible costs and benefits of different practices, and about the relevant standpoint from which to judge the answers to these questions. As Charles Taylor has put it, ‘liberalism is a fighting creed’.26 Answers to the first set of questions explain why the battle is worth fighting, answers to the second set explain how it might be fought. To put the point another way, liberal patterns of thought are neither simply just ‘theory’ nor simply just ‘ideology’.27 They are rather theoretically informed attempts to think seriously about how what is not real might be made real in the world. With this in mind, it is possible to outline briefly some of the key arguments we find across these thinkers. First, it is important to recognize that, while all of them took colonialism very seriously, none of them were thinking about colonialism alone. Rather, they approached colonialism ultimately through a concern with the achievement of certain goods, both domestically and more widely. The range of ends or goods these thinkers argued for are rather typical of the kinds of ends or goods that we have come to associate with liberal thinking more generally. These include such things as the growth of material prosperity (‘improvement’), peace, ‘progress’, personal and social ‘development’, and freedom, for

26 Charles Taylor, ‘The Politics of Recognition’, in A. Gutmann, ed., Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press 1992), 62. 27 This way of thinking about liberal patterns of thought has the potential to contribute to some of the wider debates about the relationship between ‘theory’ and the world, although I do not pursue that here. See Samuel Moyn, ‘Imaginary Intellectual History’, in D. McMahon and S. Moyn, eds., Rethinking Modern Intellectual History (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2014), 112–30.

31892_Williams.indd 11

20-10-15 08:23

12

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

example.28 Given the centrality of colonialism to European political and intellectual life, it is unsurprising that ideas about colonialism formed part of the thinking about these projects; but the important point is that our four thinkers generally thought about colonialism through the prism of these projects. What this meant was that the question they were concerned with was not usually ‘is colonialism good or bad?’ or even ‘is colonialism legitimate or not?’ but rather ‘what does colonialism do?’ or ‘how does colonialism advance or retard the achievement of certain goods or ends?’ Broadly put, we find three types of criticism of colonialism and its related practices across their works. The first stressed the various costs to European states from their continuing colonial ventures. In this mode the problem with European colonialism was not what it did to the colonized but what it did to the colonizers, and in particular what it did to the possibilities of progressive reform within European states. Smith and Bentham, for example, were particularly concerned with the economic costs associated with the mercantilist trade policies integral to European colonial practice at the time. Such practices ‘deranged’ (to use Smith’s term) the natural distribution of resources and artificially increased the price of traded goods. These practices were indeed economically beneficial to certain groups, particularly merchants and traders, but they imposed economic costs on the wider population. More generally, both Bentham and Hobhouse argued that the resources spent on administering and defending the colonies could and should

28 There is, of course, a very extensive debate about whether liberalism’s primary commitment either is or should be to ‘neutrality’. The first point to note is that past liberal thinkers were most certainly not committed to neutrality, and, if ‘liberalism’ can be said to have an origin, it lies in the thought that some practices and forms of social life are more ‘felicitous’ (peaceful, secure, stable, rich, respectful, etc.) than others. See Stephen Salkever, ‘“Lopp’d and Bound”: How Liberal Theory Obscures the Goods of Liberal Practices’, in R. Bruce Douglass, G. Mara, and H. Rich eds., Liberalism and the Good (New York: Routledge 1990), 167–202. The second point to note is that, as William Galston has insisted, even contemporary liberalism is in fact committed to certain goods. See William Galston, Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues and Diversity in the Liberal State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991). The further and perhaps politically salient point here is that it does no one any favours to pretend that liberals either are or can be ‘neutral’. Non-liberals see through the pretense, and liberals would be better off thinking seriously about how the goods they value can be sustained in the collective life of liberal societies.

31892_Williams.indd 12

20-10-15 08:23



Introduction 13

have been spent more beneficially on improvements at home. The political costs of colonialism were especially central to the arguments of Smith, Bentham, and Hobhouse. Colonialism and its associated practices, they thought, empowered some groups politically at the expense of others, encouraged political corruption, and, importantly, undermined the possibility of a more rational and progressive form of politics at home. Hobhouse in particular identified the ways in which illiberal forms of imperialism posed a danger to domestic freedom. Finally, both Kant and especially Bentham argued that the possession of colonies served to increase the likelihood of war between European states. This critique of colonialism privileged the experiences of European states and approached the varied forms of colonialism in the context of arguments for economic and political reform within Europe. A stress on the varied costs of European colonialism to the European states raised for many of these thinkers the question of why, then, ­colonialism happened at all. Part of the answer for Smith, Bentham, and Hobhouse was that certain ‘interests’ helped to motivate and maintain it. But a further concern, especially evident in the work of Bentham and Hobhouse, was the support given to colonialism by elements of European society. Both thinkers despaired at the fact that domestic populations could be convinced to support misguided and costly colonial ventures, but there were important differences in how they understood this problem. As part of Bentham’s increasingly radical political program, forms of democratic government were seen as an important way of combating the ‘sinister interests’ at work in the continuation of colonial rule and exposing to public scrutiny the (false) arguments used to justify it. For Hobhouse, however, the actual functioning of democracy in an increasingly mass society was part of the problem of imperialism. People’s baser instincts could be preyed on to justify colonial wars, and Hobhouse lamented the fact that people were more interested in being entertained by cricket than in informing themselves about public affairs. We can see here a series of perhaps characteristically liberal tensions about the progressive possibilities of democratic forms of governance and about the capabilities and competencies of individual citizens within European states. And for Hobhouse at least it was a short step from condemning aspects of British imperialism to condemning the British population for their support of it. A second type of anti-colonial argument involved the identification of the cruelties and violence associated with conquest and colonial rule

31892_Williams.indd 13

20-10-15 08:23

14

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

– often with considerable rhetorical flare. All of these thinkers pointed to the ways in which European imperialism, and indeed European expansion more generally, was the cause of significant suffering on the part of conquered and colonized peoples, whether this was famines caused by the British in India, the ‘dreadful misfortunes’ (to use Smith’s phase) suffered by the indigenous peoples of America, the association of colonialism with slavery, or the violence inflicted by colonial rulers. We should not underplay their genuine humanitarian concerns here, and sometimes these concerns were underpinned by a kind of liberal cosmopolitan sympathy. But it is important to recognize that this argument, too, was directed primarily at the European states themselves. It was designed to try to force recognition of what was really involved in these ventures. And this was often accompanied by a stress on the base motives that drove colonialism (greed and stupidity according to Smith) and the hypocrisy that often surrounded it: these states called themselves ‘civilized’ but acted in sometimes grotesquely uncivilized ways. This kind of critique is perhaps developed most in the work of Hobhouse. One of his most pointed claims was that liberal (and Fabian) supporters of a ‘progressive’ vision of empire had blinded themselves to the cruel realities of imperialism, and he was trying to force them to recognize that in so doing they were themselves complicit in these cruel realities. A third type of anti-colonial argument aimed to undermine some of the standard justifications for European expansion and, sometimes, to identify what these thinkers took to be the basic injustices involved in it. This is most evident with Kant. He engaged with and rejected many of the arguments used to justify European colonialism and the appropriation of indigenous land. Further, Kant seems to have licensed a right of resistance to European encroachment on the part of indigenous societies, and his arguments about cosmopolitan right and his rejection of a duty to civilize others provide a substantial account of what was unjust about European colonialism. While Hobhouse generally stressed the costs and cruelties of European imperialism, he also framed some of his criticisms of imperial practice in terms of the demands of racial justice. There are, then, some important critiques of European imperialism and its associated practices within the work of these thinkers, although a very significant part of their objections to it was driven by a practical or even tactical prioritization of reform within Europe. There are also, however, a series of important ambiguities and tensions in their arguments about the progressive possibilities of at least some forms of

31892_Williams.indd 14

20-10-15 08:23



Introduction 15

colonialism in diverse other places. These can be traced, at least in part, to certain features of their thought that are characteristic of liberal thinking more generally. The first of these concerned temporal considerations, and especially the role that European expansion and colonialism had played, and might play, in stimulating ‘progress’; or alternatively, the extent to which ‘progress’ in diverse other places was somehow or another immanent in the unfolding of a universal history underwritten by God or nature. The second relates to how the plurality of human cultures was grasped and ordered across space and time, and how the obvious fact of human difference was accommodated within conceptual schemas that also claimed at least some form of universal validity. In their thinking about these questions, the four thinkers examined here often demonstrated what is one of the most fundamental patterns of liberal thought. This is the shifting back and forth between two modes of argument and exposition: one mode is ‘noumenal’ or universal and ahistorical, the other phenomenal or concrete and contextual. Processes and people are captured both abstractly and empirically, as out of time and in time. Both are essential parts of the liberal project; and indeed the relationship between them is made especially clear through the question of how certain liberal goods might be instantiated. For the point of any liberal project is that the empirical, the particular, or the concrete here and now does not exhibit (or exhibits only very imperfectly) the goods, practices, and institutions deemed to be desirable. Appeal must then be made to forces outside of this actual phenomenal world – whether God, ‘nature’, human nature, or ‘reason’ – that can ground the claim that these goods, practices, and institutions really are desirable, and, sometimes, that their achievement is wired into the unfolding of human life itself (why the battle is worth fighting). At the same time, the point is to think about how these goods, practices, and institutions might actually be instantiated in the phenomenal world and here the more concrete, empirical mode is essential, for it is this mode that helps to identify how any necessary changes might be achieved (how to fight it). Through the eighteenth century, the temporal constraints provided by the biblical account of earthly time were transformed.29 This involved, 29 For useful discussions, see James Barr, ‘Pre-Scientific Chronology: The Bible and the Origin of the World’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 143, no. 3 (1999): 379–87; and Dennis Dean, ‘The Age of the Earth Controversy: Beginnings to Hutton’, Annals of Science 38, no. 4 (1981): 435–56.

31892_Williams.indd 15

20-10-15 08:23

16

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

as Reinhart Koselleck has argued, a newly found and extending ‘future’, grasped through the idea of ‘progress’.30 But the idea of progress ­connected to the question of colonialism only through a set of arguments about the role of human agency in advancing the cause of progress. Smith, Kant, and Hobhouse sometimes operated with the view that progress was in some sense immanent in the course of human history itself.31 Set in motion by God or wired into ‘nature’ by the process of evolution, progress was something that had happened and could, over time, be expected to happen both at the level of individual human societies and among mankind as a whole. This kind of claim could be part of an argument against European colonialism because it suggested that colonialism was not necessary for societies to ‘progress’.32 While this understanding of progress was in some obvious sense Eurocentric, as it suggested that ‘in the end’ plural others would converge on some version of a European modernity, it did not necessarily lead to a colonial conclusion.33 On the other hand, we also find a series of uncertainties about the extent to which progress could really be expected to unfold in other places, and about the extent to which the varied forms of European expansion either had kick-started, or perhaps were necessary for, the course of progress in these places. This led to some complex forms of argument. Smith condemned certain forms of colonialism and argued that it could disrupt or hold back an otherwise natural form of progress. On the other hand, he also seemed to think there were some places where this natural form of progress would not and had not taken place, and that even if such progress was ‘natural’, colonialism operated to hurry it along. Kant certainly thought that European societies were still 30 Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (New York: Columbia University Press 2004). See also the discussion in Kimberly Hutchings, Time and World Politics: Thinking the Present (Manchester, uk: Manchester University Press 2008). 31 This is something that distinguishes them from Locke, for example. See John Dunn, ‘From Applied Theology to Social Analysis: The Break between John Locke and the Scottish Enlightenment’, in I. Hont and M. Ignatieff, eds., Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1983), 119–36. 32 Unlike J.S. Mill. For a discussion, see Williams, ‘Liberal, Colonialism, and Liberal Imperialism’. 33 Hobson, Eurocentric Conception of World Order, 59–83.

31892_Williams.indd 16

20-10-15 08:23



Introduction 17

a long way from the end of a progressive universal history, as partly evidenced by the cruelties associated with European colonization, but he could equally think that other societies were even further ‘behind’ and that this same European colonization, despite its cruelties, might play a progressive role in some places. A further layer of complexity here was that judgements about the role of European expansion and colonial rule in promoting progress could be made from different kinds of standpoints. So, for example, Smith recognized the ‘dreadful misfortunes’ suffered by the peoples of the Americas, but he also thought that the discovery of America had been beneficial to mankind as a whole as it ‘united the globe’ and stimulated trade and industry. Bentham certainly thought colonialism had been costly to the European states, but at the same time he suggested that, viewed from the perspective of ‘humanity’, it had been beneficial. This kind of argument points towards a broader tension between the standpoint(s) of progress and the standpoint(s) of justice that remains central to much of liberal thinking today. But, even if there was (or had been) a role for European colonial agency in helping the course of progress in distant and diverse societies, there was still an important question about what kinds of agency would best promote it. Smith and Bentham, for example, were generally scathing about the large global trading companies as agents of colonialism because of their malign influence on domestic politics and because their rule often did not promote improvement in the colonies. At the same time, while Smith thought that European colonialism was highly problematic, he also thought that of all the European states Britain was the one that provided the best form of colonial rule because it was the one most likely to lead to ‘improvement’. Bentham condemned European colonialism but endorsed a more progressive form of settler colonialism in Australia. Hobhouse denounced the cruelties associated with British colonial rule but supported the idea of an imperial union, which he saw as embodying a potentially more progressive relationship between Britain and its dominions. Although the arguments we find in these thinkers about the connections between European expansion and colonialism and the course of progress, in the colonies, in Europe, and for ‘humanity’ as a whole, are not straightforward, they do confirm the claim that a concern with ‘progress’ is one of the most significant sources of what we might call the ‘imperial temptation’ within liberal thought.

31892_Williams.indd 17

20-10-15 08:23

18

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

All of the thinkers examined in this book had what we might call a ‘global imagination’ that encompassed not just geography and natural history but also, more broadly, ‘anthropological’ knowledge of different peoples and cultures.34 Smith’s works, especially the Lectures on Jurisprudence, are suffused with observations about diverse peoples, past and present, and similar concerns can be found in Kant’s Anthropology and Hobhouse’s attempt at the classification of ‘simpler peoples’. From the ‘discovery’ of the Americas, early-modern European thinkers had been wrestling with the evidence of significant diversity among human groups. Across the thinkers studied here we find a variety of labels being used – peoples, nations, cultures, civilizations, and, sometimes, races – that tried to capture the boundaries of difference. And, in employing these labels, these thinkers identified a number of markers of difference that ranged from skin colour to different cultural practices, religious beliefs, political organization, and forms of material life. At one level the diversity of peoples was obvious. What was less obvious was how it related to claims about ‘identity’ – to what it was that these plural human groups shared in common – and how ‘difference’ was then to be explained.35 These thinkers very rarely posited any essential differences in the innate capabilities of people across different cultures, and they often claimed that in important ways all human groups were alike. For some of them, the similarities between European and other societies formed part of their critique of European societies and operated (sometimes) to collapse the distinction between ‘civilized’ European societies and ‘barbarian’ others. The one partial exception here is Kant, who did at times argue that there were differences in the capacity for culture, for example, among the different races.36 But even here Kant holds on to the politically powerful claim that there is just one single human species, and other parts of his work seem to rely on the idea of a shared basic structure of human reasoning. The 34 For a discussion of the idea of a global imaginary, see Manfred Steger, The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on Terror (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2008). We can see similar concerns in Locke. See, for example, Williams Batz, ‘The Historical Anthropology of John Locke’, Journal of the History of Ideas 35, no. 4 (1974): 663–70; and Ruth Grant, ‘Locke’s Political Anthropology and Lockean Individualism’, Journal of Politics 50, no. 1 (1988): 42–63. 35 The terminology is from William Connolly, Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2002). 36 These claims are examined in chap. 2.

31892_Williams.indd 18

20-10-15 08:23



Introduction 19

explanation for difference was, usually, that it arose out of different ‘material’ conditions: different cultural practices, different political systems, or even different skin colours resulted from the particular climactic, geographical, institutional, and economic situations that groups of people found themselves in. We find in these thinkers, then, claims about essential features of persons that are broadly universal, and claims about diversity that derive from the impact of material ­circumstances on these broadly universal traits. The really potent issue that emerged within these accounts of diversity relates to the question of whether there was a hierarchy among diverse groups of peoples. Almost always these thinkers thought there was, and in that sense there are certainly imperial (in the broad sense) components to their thought. But we have to be a bit careful here. Some of these thinkers used examples from other cultures to raise questions about European society. Smith, for example, thought that foot binding was a cruel custom, but he was quick to point out that ‘civilized’ cultures had their own share of cruel customs. Nonetheless, these thinkers often operated with a hierarchy that located European states as ‘higher’ or ‘further along’ than more backward cultures or societies. Again, though, we have to be careful. All of these thinkers were fiercely critical of certain aspects of European states or cultures (that was broadly the political point of many of their arguments), so the hierarchy was not always simply one that judged diverse others against the standard of existing Europe, but rather often one that derived from judging both against some other standard – the will of God, the plan of nature, the claims of reason, progress, development, and so on. This kind of cultural or civilizational hierarchy is often seen as one of the most powerful impetuses behind liberal imperialism, and in thinkers like James Mill, for example, it obviously is. There are several complications here, however. The first is that some of their arguments about colonialism were not couched in terms of the rule of the ‘civilized’ over the ‘uncivilized’ or ‘backward’. White settler colonialism was often discussed not in terms of rule over indigenous peoples, but rather in terms of the way it advanced certain broader projects. Certainly, in such discussions the claims of indigenous peoples were very often ignored or downplayed (this is especially the case with Smith and Bentham) and in that sense there is a potentially vicious hierarchy at work, but it is not one that always issues in justifications for European rule over less civilized others. The second complication is that such hierarchies did

31892_Williams.indd 19

20-10-15 08:23

20

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

not invariably lead straightforwardly to a justification for colonialism, of whatever kind. Sometimes they formed part of an argument for a particular kind of colonialism – notably with Bentham and Hobhouse – and sometimes they did not. Sometimes an acceptance of hierarchy could be combined with a form of anti-colonialism. This was so because, while there might be some ‘civilizing’ role that Europeans could play, this had to be balanced against the costs of pursuing any such mission and a realistic assessment of the cruelties and violence that would accompany it. These four thinkers, then, were certainly sometimes tempted by the thought that colonialism could play a progressive role both in other societies and among ‘humanity’ as a whole, and they also often judged other societies as inferior in important respects to societies in Europe. In this sense there are ‘colonial’ aspects to their thought which illustrate the temptations of the European colonial project even for those sceptical of elements of it. But they also argued against many of the institutions and practices of European conquest and colonial rule, and some of the arguments that were used to justify them. These thinkers were also much more alive to the costs, hypocrisies, and cruelties associated with colonialism, and altogether less impressed by the moral righteousness that sometimes accompanied it. Taken together, they represent a complex, sometimes ambiguous, but also sometimes very clearsighted strand of liberal thinking about both the possibilities and the limitations of European colonialism as a vehicle for advancing the liberal political project.

Thinking about the History of Political Thought In making this kind of argument, the analysis presented here aims to avoid either condemning liberal thought for its complicity in European colonialism or rescuing it from this complicity. There are both anticolonial and colonial elements to the thought of these thinkers, and part of the point is to try to understand what these elements are. But this kind of understanding might also be helpful for us as a resource for reflecting upon the ways in which relations between liberal societies and distant and diverse others are debated today. I pursue this in chapter 5. To suggest that there are things that the study of past thought might contribute to debates that are had in the present is immediately

31892_Williams.indd 20

20-10-15 08:23



Introduction 21

to contend with at least three important issues: first, the character of these ‘debates’ themselves and what kind of contribution to them might be made by historical and theoretical work; second, as part of this, the orientation of the historian or theorist towards the present where these debates take place; and third, given the use of past thinkers, the orientation towards the past and its relationship with the present. These have all been extensively debated within the history of political thought and beyond.37 There is little point in pretending to have resolved any of these debates, but it is important to be clear about the position taken here – if only to go some way towards forestalling some of the obvious criticisms that could be directed at it.38 To say that the debates that have been had within liberal societies about how they ought to relate to non- or only partially liberal others are and have been highly consequential is barely to do justice to their significance for liberal states themselves, and for the people in those societies that have been subject to the various forms of ‘intervention’ undertaken by these states, especially since the end of the Cold War. Any politically realistic assessment of the form of these debates, however (as with most debates in liberal societies), has to recognize that their character is far, often very far, from any ideal of deliberative democracy. This is not just a descriptive claim that democratic politics involves a good number of practices that (perhaps regrettably) are not deliberative in character. Rather, liberal-democratic politics in any form we can conceivably imagine for us here and now necessarily involves practices that are non-deliberative.39 Michael Walzer, for example, has identified fourteen such practices (and there may be others): political education, organization, mobilization, demonstration, statement, debating, bargaining, lobbying, campaigning, voting, fund-raising, corruption, scut work (routine tasks like stuffing envelopes), and ruling. As he has said, 37 Although the latter of these perhaps not enough. It is not just that political theorists and historians of political thought are located in a particular time and place, and that this shapes the way they relate to the past – a point made many times. It is also that they stand in a particular relationship to their own time and place, and they are often not clear enough on what they imagine that relationship to be. 38 For a useful recent collection of essays that revisits the methodological debates in the history of political thought, see McMahon and Moyn, eds., Rethinking European Intellectual History. 39 See Michael Walzer, Thinking Politically: Essays in Political Theory (New Haven, ct: Yale University Press 2007), chap. 9.

31892_Williams.indd 21

20-10-15 08:23

22

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

‘democratic political processes … are pervasively nondeliberative.40 ‘Conversation’ might be a better metaphor than deliberation for these debates, but only if we understand ‘conversation’ to refer to the kinds of actual conversations that real groups of people actually have – full of exaggerations, half-truths, and appeals to unexamined assumptions, very likely to stray off topic, often dominated by those who shout the loudest or talk the most, and sometimes liable to complete breakdown. These are conversations ‘constrained, indeed, by the ordinary constraints of everyday life: the pressure of time, the structure of authority, the discipline of parties and movements, the patterns of socialization and education, the established procedures of institutional life’.41 And such conversations can only go on and on, in part because domestic and international circumstances change and in part because the actions and omissions generated by these conversations generate more debates as things almost always turn out differently (and usually worse) than expected. The point of noting this is to put the contribution of ‘theoretical’ or historical work to these debates in some kind of perspective. It can only be one kind of contribution. There is no guarantee it will be heard, but nor should there be such a guarantee: theorists and historians of thought have ‘no special rights in the political community’.42 The best we can do is hold up our interpretations and arguments for the approval of readers, whomever they may be, and we have no particular cause for complaint if they are not read or not approved of.43 There is still the question, though, of what kind of contribution any theoretical work might even hope to make to these kinds of conversations. There are several possibilities, but the approach taken here is what we might call diagnostic and interpretive. A preference for this approach is underpinned by both positive and negative claims. The positive claim derives from the fact that these conversations, while indeed non-deliberative, contain certain characteristic tropes, claims, positions, and appeals. Contemporary arguments within liberal states about diverse others have

40 Ibid., 134. 41 Ibid., 36. See also Michael Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press 1987), 24–5. 42 Walzer, Thinking Politically, 19. 43 Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 30.

31892_Williams.indd 22

20-10-15 08:23



Introduction 23

a ‘lived in quality, like a home occupied by a single family over many generations, with unplanned additions here and there, and all the available space filled with memory-laden objects and artifacts’.44 They are comprised of a whole series of temporal, moral, and causal claims and arguments about relations between liberal societies and diverse others that shape the kinds of arguments that ‘make sense’ to enough people in liberal societies that certain kinds of policies sometimes follow. One thing we can try to do is describe, interpret, and, importantly, clarify what is at stake in these tropes, claims, positions, and appeals; to draw out their complexity, acknowledge the tensions and ambiguities that exist within them, and identify the commitments that generate these tensions and ambiguities in the first place. This kind of work is founded on a hope that the self-understanding of participants in these conversations could be better than it has been, although that hope is tempered by the recognition that these self-understandings are emphatically not the result only of rational deliberation.45 There are certainly no simple ‘answers’ for us to be drawn out of the arguments of these four thinkers, but we might be able to use their arguments to try to help clarify what is at stake in the arguments that people have today.46 It is precisely because they were aware of the problems associated with European colonialism yet at the same were drawn to its progressive possibilities that they help point in the direction of some of the key issues at stake in the way liberals and liberal societies today think about distant and diverse others. A preference for this kind of diagnostic and interpretive mode is also underpinned by a series of doubts about other ways of thinking about the contribution of theoretical work to arguments in contemporary liberal societies, especially the more prescriptive mode of political theorizing that so often characterizes contemporary liberal theory. The model of the Philosopher King (they are more rarely Philosopher Queens) looms over much of especially contemporary academic liberal

44 Ibid., 20. See also Michael Walzer, The Company of Critics: Social Criticism and Political Commitment in the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books 2002), xix. 45 Walzer, Company of Critics, 17. 46 John Dunn, ‘The Impact of Political Theory’, Political Studies Review 13, no. 4 (2015): 494–9.

31892_Williams.indd 23

20-10-15 08:23

24

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

theory.47 And some contemporary liberal theorists who have concerned themselves with the ways in which liberal states, and individuals within them, ought to relate to distant and diverse others represent the worst excesses of this model.48 This model raises a series of often-neglected questions about the role and self-understanding of the theorists, and particularly how they imagine the product of their theorizing in relation to the world they inhabit.49 The presumption that it is the job of the theorist to prescribe actions, commitments, and beliefs for individuals, whole societies, governments, and perhaps even the whole world implies a claim to authority that at the very least ought to be subject to critical scrutiny.50 The idea that conversations in liberal-democratic societies about relations with diverse others should be adjudicated upon by a theorist is either profoundly undemocratic or demonstrates an almost wilful refusal to engage seriously with the characteristics of modern democratic politics, as well as with what we know about the sociology (and psychology) of actions, commitments, and beliefs.51 These theorists also often seem to feel little need to explain what might be involved as a practical matter in actually making the world accord with their theories. While the defence of ‘ideal theory’ might be legitimate in some academic settings, as soon as one begins to ask about how any of this might be made real – what would have to be done to whom by

47 It is perhaps not the Philosopher King exactly that looms over this, but rather the philosopher with the ear of the king. For a discussion, see Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, chap 1. See also Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Present (London: Penguin 2006), 241. 48 These are most evident in work under the rubric of ‘global justice’. 49 For a discussion of this, see Kimberly Hutchings, ‘A Place of Greater Safety: Securing Judgment in International Ethics’, in A. Beattie and K. Schick, eds., The Vulnerable Subject: Beyond Rationalism in International Relations (London: Palgrave 2013), 25–42. 50 Many contemporary liberal theorists might reject the role of the Philosopher King. But if so then we are owed an account of what they think their relationship is to those to whom they profess to speak or speak for. 51 My point is not that theorists ought to become political scientists or sociologists (or psychologists). It is that we cannot think about what it is theorists say we ought to do without thinking about politics and sociology (and psychology), for only then we will be able to ask questions about what it would take to make these visions real. For one discussion, see Raymond Guess, Philosophy and Real Politics (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press 2008). See also Arendt, Between Past and Present, chap. 7.

31892_Williams.indd 24

20-10-15 08:23



Introduction 25

whom – the arguments start to look different.52 One of the reasons the thinkers examined in this book are potentially helpful is precisely that they often did think about these questions. And, while this generates a more complicated picture of the relationship between liberal ideals and the realities of a plural world, it seems to be an altogether more promising place to start to think than that presented in any ideal theory. This book, therefore, is situated ‘inside’ not ‘outside’, to use Michael Walzer’s terms.53 It is inside liberal thought – concerned with the ways in which some liberals have thought – and it is inside a place (a liberal state) where the languages of liberalism (its tropes, claims, positions, and appeals) have been an important part of the way in which the relationships with distant and diverse others have been debated. It is also ‘inside’ in the sense that, not only is it animated by the very evident problems faced by these states in their relations with diverse others, but it aims to contribute to thinking about how these relations might go a bit better. One thing that follows from this kind of diagnostic and interpretive approach is that this book does not concern itself with the ‘bad things’ that have happened in non-liberal societies past or present. It is all too easy to respond to doubts about the desirability of liberal intervention or the value of ‘liberal colonialism’ with examples of political brutality or seemingly barbaric practices in non-liberal societies. Such things inevitably raise important questions for those committed to liberal values and practices: questions about why these things happen, how they might be stopped, and what, if anything, liberal states should do to try to stop them. But, if the history of past thinking about these kinds of questions has anything important to tell us, it is that answering them involves consideration of the costs as well as the benefits, to us and to them, of different kinds of actions; it involves considerations about the appropriate vehicle for action; it involves questions about what external agencies can hope to change in distant places, and why this is a reasonable hope; and it involves a recognition of the inevitably ambiguous and uncertain character of any of the answers we might give to these questions. To fall 52 This is a point that contemporary ‘realists’ have made. For a helpful collection of essays, see Matt Sleat, ed., Politics Recovered: Realist Thought in Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press 2018). 53 Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, chap 2.

31892_Williams.indd 25

20-10-15 08:23

26

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

back on a moral righteousness is not just historically absurd given the record of violence and brutality perpetrated by European states, but also intellectually and, importantly, politically unhelpful. On the other side, of course, it is all too easy to dismiss liberalism, as some post-colonial and other critical theorists do, for its complicity in European colonialism and racism and for its continuing ‘colonial’ implications.54 I think this is a mistake. In the first place, we would do well to recognize the diversity and ambiguity within the history of liberal thought on these questions, and while in the end we might want to condemn it for its intellectual and political failings, we should at least try to understand that there are different ways of thinking about these issues within the liberal tradition, and that this tradition may have resources that can sensibly be put to use for our thinking today on these questions.55 Second, we would be well advised to recognize that some of the ways in which liberals have thought about these issues are shared by other ways of thinking about the world. To point out that a commitment to ideas of ‘progress’ has colonial implications (which it often does) cannot simply lead to a condemnation of this commitment, at least not for anyone with a progressive political vision.56 One might want to say that there non-liberal ways of thinking about ‘progress’ (which there obviously are), but it is hard to see how some of the questions the idea of progress raises for liberalism are to be avoided by these other ways of thinking about it (as Marxism most obviously illustrates): What makes it better? How does it happen? What might be done to help it along? What is the status of those places that have not achieved it? Who should do what to whom to make it real? And so on. The third reason for not simply condemning liberalism is that it is as much an identity as a philosophy; it provides some of the categories, concepts, and claims that some groups of people use to make sense of themselves in relation to others. It is a set of beliefs that people

54 It is remarkable that in some academic settings (usually those inside liberal states) the term ‘liberal’ has become almost a term of abuse. It is also notable that people who see it this way very often cling vociferously to certain liberal values and commitments. 55 See for one example Inder Marwah, Liberalism, Domination and Diversity: Kant, Mill and the Government of Difference (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2019). 56 See Duncan Ivison, Postcolonial Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002), 45.

31892_Williams.indd 26

20-10-15 08:23



Introduction 27

sometimes think they have good reasons to hold, but they do not hold these beliefs simply because of these good reasons, and still less because these beliefs and their supporting reasons are inherently superior to other beliefs.57 Liberals themselves (and liberal theorists) might do well to recognize this basic sociological and historical fact. But, while this casts the pretensions of some forms of liberal theory in a different light, what it means, of course, is that these beliefs are not something that individuals or societies can simply give up or cast off when they realize their theoretical or normative inadequacies. Identities, both individual and collective, are bound up precisely with certain liberal tropes, claims, positions, and appeals, especially perhaps about how they understand themselves in relation to others. The categories, concepts, and arguments liberal societies use to think about their relations with others sometimes cause them (and others) very significant problems, but liberal societies cannot in any easy way think without some part of this intellectual framework. The best we can hope for is that people might become more aware of the limits and possible consequences of their ways of thinking. Taking a diagnostic and interpretive approach from the ‘inside’ provides an orientation to the present within which the work takes place and towards which it is directed.58 But such an orientation raises important questions about the approach to the thought of the past that takes up most of this book. The arguments that follow are situated within a tension that exists in the study of the history of political thought between historical purity and moral engagement.59 The more one reads past liberal thinkers through our problems and concerns, searching for things that ‘make sense’ to us, the more one is in danger of historical anachronism and a debilitating normative authoritarianism (playing 57 Bernard Williams makes this point. See Williams, In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press 2005), 9. 58 The book is thus self-consciously ‘presentist’ in some respects, although I also think that most work in the history of political thought displays the same trait in various ways. For one discussion, see Darrin McMahon, ‘The Return of the History of Ideas?’ in McMahon and Moyn, eds., Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History, 13–31. 59 Paraphrasing Quentin Skinner. See Quentin Skinner, ‘On Encountering the Past: An Interview with Quentin Skinner’, Finnish Yearbook of Political Thought 6, (2002): 34–63.

31892_Williams.indd 27

20-10-15 08:23

28

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

‘Kant at the court of King Arthur,’ to use Bernard Williams’s phrase): on the one hand, not seeing past thinkers as historically situated figures, and thus running the risk of fatally misunderstanding what they were saying; and, on the other, castigating them for not living up to our current normative ideals.60 But the more we reduce these thinkers to their purely historical location and significance, the more we historicize them, and the more we see them as just answering their questions, the less they have to say to us in our context with our questions; the study of the history of political thought then runs the risk of descending into antiquarianism and cutting itself off from engagement with our presentday concerns.61 I do not think there is any final way out of this.62 But nor do I think we ought to be unduly bothered by that. We can worry less about the business of methodology and get on with engaging with these past thinkers, recognizing both their (and our) historical situatedness as well as the interest of their arguments for us, and using the inevitable tension between these two to good effect.63 This does not exactly mean ‘anything goes’, but rather that the test of any such engagement is whether other people find it interesting, helpful, 60 Williams, In the Beginning was the Deed, 66. 61 Paul Kelly, ‘Political Theory: The State of the Art’, Politics 26, no. 1 (2006): 47–53. Famously, Peter Laslett argued that the Two Treatises was an Exclusion Controversy pamphlet. See Peter Laslett, ‘The English Revolution and Locke’s “Two Treatises of Government”’, Cambridge Historical Journal 12, no. 1 (1956): 40–55. Given the subsequent trajectory of that book, it is not at all clear what we, here and now, should do on the back of such a claim. For a discussion of this, see Charles Tarlton, ‘The Exclusion Controversy, Pamphleteering, and Locke’s Two Treatises’, Historical Journal 24, no. 1 (1981): 49–68. And for some of the wider issues, see Mark Bevir, ‘Are There Perennial Problems in Political Theory?’ Political Studies 42, no. 4 (1994): 662–75. 62 And I do not think Skinner thought there was either. 63 Jeffrey Green, ‘Political Theory as Both Philosophy and History: A Defense against Methodological Militancy’, Annual Review of Political Science 18, (2015): 425– 41. It is difficult to imagine investing significant time and energy into uncovering the political arguments of a historical thinker without those arguments having some significance or other for the present, even if it is only to show that these arguments are not ones that we can meaningfully hold today or that they are being ‘misused’ in the present. Quentin Skinner and John Dunn clearly thought that thinkers such as Hobbes and Locke were being misused by Leo Strauss and C.B. MacPherson, for example; and part of the point of their engagement was not just to criticize Strauss and MacPherson’s readings as historically insensitive, but also to rob their respective political positions of the ‘support’ given to them by appeal to the ‘canonical’ thinkers.

31892_Williams.indd 28

20-10-15 08:23



Introduction 29

illuminating, and so on – what Mark Bevir calls ‘anthropological epistemology’.64 This is the implicit position taken by many participants in arguments about colonialism and the liberal canon who have tended not to be too concerned about methodological questions.65 The reading of the thinkers explored in this book tries to be sensitive to the ways in which their historical context helps makes sense of their thought, and in so doing it hopes to show, for example, what is at stake in holding on to some of their commitments in our very different context. But the reading has been drawn to those aspects of their arguments that seem relevant to our present-day concerns. And, while this will no doubt fall afoul of certain methodological strictures, I do not think that any of the engagements with liberalism and empire in the history of political thought are wholly free of this; and there is no reason for them to be so given how politically significant these issues have become over the last twenty years, and how significant they are likely to remain. The final point to note is that, while the focus here is on those thinkers who have become part of the canon of liberal thought, this book does not try to tell any particular causal or historical stories about them. It is not concerned to tell a historical story about the ‘influence’ of these individual thinkers on contemporary thinking and still less about how their arguments shaped the wider practices and discourses of colonialism and anti-colonialism in their day. I do think that it is possible to recognize some of the ways in which the arguments we find in these thinkers resonate with contemporary arguments (as I hope to show in chapter 5), but I do not claim that this is because of the influence of

64 Mark Bevir, The Logic of the History of Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999), 100–1. 65 The one partial exception here is the work of James Tully. The path-breaking discussion of Locke and colonialism in Tully, An Approach to Political Philosophy, is animated by the methodological concerns of the Cambridge School (as the subtitle Locke in Contexts suggests) and demonstrates the evident strengths of that approach. But even in that work his more recent concern with a historically sensitive ‘public philosophy’, explicitly animated by and directed towards a critical and emancipatory political project in the present, are foreshadowed. See James Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key: Vol. I: Democracy and Civic Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2008), especially chap. 1; and James Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key: Vol. II: Imperialism and Civic Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2008), esp. pt. 2.

31892_Williams.indd 29

20-10-15 08:23

30

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

these particular thinkers on our arguments.66 Nor do I claim that these thinkers are in some way or another ‘representative’ of what ‘liberals’ or other people and groups more widely thought. To show that they were would require a different kind of history, one that used a much wider range of evidence to demonstrate that what these canonical thinkers said was representative in some ways of the broader tenor of liberal thought.67 This book is simply an attempt to understand some past thinking on these questions in the hope that doing so might help to clarify what is at stake in ways of thinking today and perhaps, through a long and convoluted process, help this thinking to go a bit better.

66 For a discussion of some of the issues, see Mark Bevir, ‘On Tradition’, Humanitas 13, no. 2 (2000): 28–53. 67 For one example of this, see Gregory Claeys, Imperial Sceptics: British Critics of Empire, 1850–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010).

31892_Williams.indd 30

20-10-15 08:23

1

Adam Smith on Politics, Progress, and Judgement

adam smith has been a significant figure in the contemporary debate about the connections between liberalism and colonialism. He has recently been interpreted by Jennifer Pitts in particular as an exemplar of a line of anti-colonial liberal thought that developed during the eighteenth century.1 Pitts’s argument is not just that Smith was critical of European conquest and colonial rule but that he also demonstrated a ‘non-judgmental approach to non-European societies’. On this view, Smith combined an account of human progress with a belief that, on balance, commercial society was an improvement over previous forms of society, but he did not draw on this framework to support ‘civilizing European rule over other societies’.2 This, according to Pitts, marks Smith out from many nineteenth-century liberal thinkers, such as John Stuart Mill, who often drew on the assumed superiority of European states to justify rule over less ‘civilized’ others.

1 Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press 2005), chap. 2. For other related discussions, see Emma Rothschild, ‘Adam Smith in the British Empire’, in S. Muthu, ed., Empire and Modern Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012), 184–98; and Sankar Muthu, ‘Adam Smith’s Critique of International Trading Companies: Theorizing “Globalization” in the Age of Enlightenment’, Political Theory 26, no. 2 (2008): 185–212. For an earlier discussion, see Donald Winch, Classical Political Economy and Colonies (London: London School of Economics 1965). 2 Pits, A Turn to Empire, 25.

31892_Williams.indd 31

20-10-15 08:23

32

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

This reading of Smith as an ‘anti-colonial liberal’ is the latest in a long line of interpretations of Smith’s arguments about colonialism.3 Richard Cobden, for example, saw Smith as one of the originators of a free-trade anti-imperialism, and himself replicated some of Smith’s key criticisms of the mercantilist trade practices associated with colonialism.4 By the end of the nineteenth century, Smith had come to be seen by many as an advocate of at least some form of empire, largely as a result of his arguments about the desirability of an imperial federation as a solution to the problem of relations between Britain and its dominions.5 During the second half of the twentieth century, a strand of argument developed that wanted to see Smith as one of the intellectual forefathers of a free-trade imperialism that morphed into ­neo-colonialism in the period after formal independence.6 In this interpretation, Smith’s anti-colonialism and anti-mercantilism were related to a concern with achieving more wide-ranging practices of British economic domination. And in the contemporary period, as Pitts shows, arguments about Smith and colonialism have expanded beyond the specific question of his views about particular forms of European conquest and colonialism rule to encompass wider issues about the kinds of cultural judgements and hierarchies found in his works, as well

3 For a review, see Marc-Williams Palen, ‘Adam Smith as Advocate of Empire, c. 1870–1932’, Historical Journal 57, no. 1 (2014): 179–98. See also Donald Winch, Adam Smith’s Politics: An Essay in Historiographic Revision (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1978), 148. 4 See Richard Cobden, England, Ireland, and America (London: James Ridgway 1835), 29–30. For a discussion of Cobden’s thought, see Peter Cain, ‘Capitalism, War and Internationalism in the Thought of Richard Cobden’, British Journal of International Studies 5, no. 3 (1979): 229–47. 5 Palen, ‘Adam Smith as Advocate of Empire’. For a sense of the arguments at the time, see Joseph Nicolson, A Project of Empire: A Critical Study of the Economics of Imperialism with Special Reference to the Ideas of Adam Smith (London: Macmillan 1909). For a broader discussion of imperial federation, see Duncan Bell, The Idea of a Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860–1900 (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press 2007). 6 Bernard Semmel, The Rise of Free-Trade Imperialism: Classical Political Economy, the Empire of Free Trade and Imperialism, 1750–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1970), esp. chap. 2; and Bernard Semmel, The Liberal Ideal and the Demons of Empire: Theories of Imperialism from Adam Smith to Lenin (Baltimore, md: Johns Hopkins University Press 1993), chap. 2.

31892_Williams.indd 32

20-10-15 08:23



Smith on Politics, Progress, and Judgement 33

as the Eurocentric and imperial implications of his understanding of progress.7 A number of points are worth noting about this history. The first is that Smith’s status as a canonical thinker has meant that appeals to what he said carried, and still carry, an argumentative weight, even if such appeals do not always portray his thought very accurately. The second point is that what people have wanted to read into Smith’s arguments has often depended on the broader context and particular political purpose of the interpreter. During the crisis of British imperialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and in the context of a political backlash against Cobdenite trade policies, it is perhaps unsurprising that Smith’s brief discussions of an imperial union were increasingly emphasized.8 Similarly, in the contemporary period when there are increasing anxieties about the colonial or imperial implications of Enlightenment accounts of ‘progress’, Smith’s works have been interrogated in new ways.9 Even those approaches that have explicitly engaged with Smith’s thought through attention to his ‘contexts’ have often been animated by present-day concerns. For example, one of the objectives of Donald Winch’s Adam Smith’s Politics was to critique the interpretation of Smith as a proponent of laissez-faire economic policies. Winch was certainly right that this was a caricature of Smith’s arguments, but the political significance of this critical project in the context of late 1970s Britain is obvious.10 The diversity of interpretations of Smith’s arguments about colonialism also stems from the fact that, viewed in the round, Smith’s writings

 7 For example, see David Blaney and Naeem Inyatalluh, Savage Economics: Wealth, Poverty and the Temporal Walls of Capitalism (London: Routledge 2009), chap. 2.   8 Palen, ‘Adam Smith as Advocate of Empire’.  9 Blaney and Inyatalluh, Savage Economics, esp. chap. 2. See also Michael Shapiro, Reading Adam Smith: Desire, History and Value (London: Rowman and Littlefield 1993). 10 Winch, Adam Smith’s Politics. Winch drew explicitly on the methodological arguments of Cambridge School historians of political thought such as John Pocock, Quentin Skinner, and John Dunn; see esp. chap. 2. The ‘context’ of Winch’s own engagement is given in chap. 1. The political significance of his argument is illustrated by the founding in 1977 of the Adam Smith Institute, a pro-free-market think tank with close ties to the Thatcher government.

31892_Williams.indd 33

20-10-15 08:23

34

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

are ambiguous and uncertain in sometimes important places.11 Commentating on the Theory of Moral Sentiments, Alec Macfie said there is an ‘agonizing spread of meaning, at times amounting almost to selfcontradiction, in some of [Smith’s] strategic ideas such as nature, liberty, and a benevolent deity’.12 An earlier commentator put it more colourfully when he said that, on issues relating to imperialism, Smith ‘was somewhat like the man who … mounted his horse and rode off in different directions’.13 This chapter does not attempt to impose on Smith’s complex and sometimes opaque arguments about colonialism and related matters any single systematic order. Rather, the aim is to try to trace Smith’s varied arguments, to make some attempt to explain the ambivalences and tensions within them, and to point towards some of the ways in which Smith’s work might contribute to thinking more generally about liberalism and colonialism. The chapter begins by examining the basis of Smith’s opposition to aspects of European colonialism. In part, that opposition derived from his belief that colonial rule held back progress in the colonies, although, as we shall see, there are some uncertainties and ambivalences in Smith’s arguments here. But Smith’s primary objections to the colonial practices of his day related to their impact on the economics and politics of the

11 For some surveys, see Vivienne Brown, ‘“Mere Inventions of the Imagination”: A Survey of Recent Literature on Adam Smith’, Economics and Philosophy 13, no. 2 (1997): 291–312; Stephen Darwall, ‘Sympathetic Liberalism: Recent Work on Adam Smith’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 28, no. 2 (1999): 139–64; and Lisa Hill, ‘Adam Smith: The Man, the Mind, and the Troubled Soul’, Review of Politics 74, no. 2 (2012): 307–16. Issues of interpretation include, but are by means limited to, the so-called Adam Smith problem – the relationship between The Wealth of Nations and the Theory of Moral Sentiments. On this, see Laurence Dickey, ‘Historicizing the “Adam Smith Problem”: Conceptual, Historiographical, and Textual Issues’, Journal of Modern History 58, no. 3 (1986): 579–609. The difficulty of pinning Smith down is compounded by these factors: he never published a planned volume on politics and government, he had most of his papers burned after his death, and recourse to biographical information to resolve interpretative disputes is difficult as we know little about significant portions of his life. See Maureen Harkin, ‘Adam Smith’s Missing History: Primitives, Progress, and Problems of Genre,’ elh 72, no. 2 (2005): 429–51; and Nicolas Phillipson, Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life (London: Allen Lane 2010), 4–6. 12 Alec Macfie, The Individual in Society: Papers on Adam Smith (London: Allen and Unwin 1967), 58. 13 Donald Wagner, ‘British Economists and the Empire II’, Political Science Quarterly 47, no. 1 (1932), 74. I came across this wonderful phrase in Hill, ‘Adam Smith: The Man, the Mind, and the Troubled Soul’.

31892_Williams.indd 34

20-10-15 08:23



Smith on Politics, Progress, and Judgement 35

colonial metropole. Smith could certainly think that the natives had suffered dreadfully, but the costs of colonialism that really concerned him were those borne by European societies and the European settlers in the Americas. The chapter then explores the ambivalences we find in his arguments about colonialism by locating them within his wider accounts of ‘progress’ and cultural diversity. Smith’s account of progress generated a series of temporal hierarchies, as a number of modern commentators have argued, and in this sense Smith’s thinking has broadly imperial and certainly Eurocentric implications. But the implications of this for how we understand Smith’s view of colonialism depend on how we understand his general account of progress through time. On one reading, ‘progress’ was ‘natural’ and thus distant societies might be expected to ‘progress’ without European intervention. On the other hand, Smith’s writings reveal a very significant amount of ambivalence about whether this could really be expected, and at times he seemed to argue that colonialism would assist in the achievement of progress, and perhaps might even be necessary for any such progress to occur. The reading of Smith as non-judgemental about diverse others hinges on an account of his explanation for cultural diversity and the basis upon which he made (or thought it was possible to make) judgements about other cultures. Smith certainly recognized there was a great diversity of cultures across time and space, and, like other Enlightenment thinkers, he made some attempt to explain it, roughly speaking by seeing diverse forms of social life as produced by different and changing material contexts. Smith, though, always struggled to balance this explanation with a more universal moral framework. The more he did to explain diversity, the harder it was for him to sustain a commitment to a universal moral framework; and the more committed he was to such a framework, the more it operated to condemn diverse cultures as inferior in important ways to European societies.

Smith’s Anti-Colonialism Smith had a long-standing and deep-seated interest in the colonial affairs of his day, particularly relations with Britain’s North American colonies.14 He acted as a formal and informal adviser to successive

14 See Winch, Classical Political Economy and Colonies, chap. 2; and Winch, Adam Smith’s Politics, chap. 7.

31892_Williams.indd 35

20-10-15 08:23

36

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

British governments on policy towards the American colonies, in which capacity he wrote a memorandum for the British government on the American War of Independence, and in his collected correspondence there are extensive discussions of America, the American Revolution, and British colonial policy.15 Much of his reputation as an anti-colonial thinker rests on chapter VII of the Wealth of Nations, ‘Of Colonies’. In this chapter he surveyed the history of European colonization in the Americas and engaged in a sustained critique of the theory and practice of colonialism. His conclusion was clear: ‘Great Britain should voluntarily give up all authority over her colonies, and leave them to elect their own magistrates, to enact their laws, and to make peace and war as they might think proper’.16 It is important to note that, throughout this chapter, Smith was primarily concerned with the settler and plantation colonies in the Americas.17 In various places he discussed the possibility of an imperial union as an alternative to independence, particularly in the context of Britain’s relationships with its North American colonies.18 But, while Smith thought that this might provide a vehicle for preserving some kind of imperial relationship, he was never very optimistic that any such arrangement could actually be developed. He said that the obstacles to such a system ‘may be very difficult, perhaps altogether impossible to surmount’.19 A central claim in Smith’s argument against colonialism was that the colonies had ‘been a cause rather of weakness than of strength to their respective mother countries’: ‘Britain derives nothing but loss from the dominion which she assumes over her colonies’.20 This was so for two reasons. First, the colonies did not provide for their own military protection and were thus a drain on the resources of the colonizing states: ‘[I]n the different wars in which the mother countries have been engaged, the defence of their colonies has generally occasioned a very considerable distraction of the military force of those countries’.21 15 Adam Smith, Correspondence of Adam Smith, eds. A.S. Skinner and T. Wilson (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1977), 177–385, 196, 171. 16 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, eds. R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1976), 616. 17 Ibid., 556, 558, and 564, for example. 18 Ibid., 622–5, 933–6, and 943–4; Smith, Correspondence, 377–85. 19 Ibid., 934. 20 Ibid., 593, 616. 21 Ibid., 593.

31892_Williams.indd 36

20-10-15 08:23



Smith on Politics, Progress, and Judgement 37

Second, and famously, Smith argued that the supposed economic benefits that derived from control of the colonial trade were an illusion. He was careful to make a distinction between ‘the effects of the colony trade and those of the monopoly of that trade’. The former, he said, ‘was always and necessarily beneficial’, the latter ‘always and necessarily hurtful’.22 Monopoly trade ‘deranges’ the ‘natural and most advantageous distribution of stock’.23 Smith’s arguments here are familiar enough. He was arguing against the monopoly trade that dominated economic relations between European states and their American colonies.24 Compared to a policy of free trade, exclusive trade diminished the availability of goods and increased prices. This raised the question of why, then, colonialism was pursued at all. Smith provided three kinds of answers. The first pointed at human folly and the ‘absurd confidence which almost all men have in their own good fortune’, which propelled colonial ventures in the face of the ‘judgment of sober reason and experience’.25 Second, Smith said that emancipation of the colonies would be ‘mortifying to the pride of every nation’.26 These references to ‘folly’ and ‘pride’ are typical of Smith and evidence of a sober realism with regard to human motivations that characterized aspects of his thought. Third, and more specifically, Smith focused on the connections between monopoly trade and the corruption of politics and government in the metropole. As Iain McLean has argued, ‘for Smith, the enemy of freedom and prosperity was not government per se, but what we would now call rent-seeking government’ – that is, a government whose policies were ‘captured’ by particular economic interests.27 Smith thought that British commercial and ­colonial policy had been conducted for the benefit of ‘rich and powerful’ interests at the expense of the interests of the country as a whole, 22 Ibid., 607. 23 Ibid., 630. 24 Ibid., 606–14. 25 Ibid., 562–3. 26 Ibid., 617. For discussions of this, see Andrew Wyatt-Walter, ‘Adam Smith and the Liberal Tradition in International Relations’, Review of International Studies 22, no. 1 (1996): 5–28; and Lisa Hill, ‘Adam Smith in War (and Peace)’, in I. Hall and L.  Hill, eds., British International Thinkers from Hobbes to Namier (London: Palgrave 2009), 71–90. 27 Iain McLean, Adam Smith, Radical and Egalitarian: An Interpretation for the 21st Century (London: Palgrave 2006), 60.

31892_Williams.indd 37

20-10-15 08:23

38

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

including the ‘poor and indigent’.28 A primary concern here for Smith was the large trading companies that played such an important role in global commerce.29 These joint-stock companies were, he argued, generally inefficient and unable to compete successfully against ‘private adventurers’. Thus, they persistently lobbied for ‘exclusive privilege’. These privileges did not prevent, and probably contributed to, ‘folly, negligence and profusion … in the management of their affairs’.30 Time and again in the Wealth of Nations, Smith complains about the influence of these companies on British commercial and colonial policy.31 ‘By the establishment of colonies in distant countries, not only particular privileges, but a monopoly was frequently procured for the goods and merchants of the country which established them’.32 ‘Of the greater part of the regulations concerning the colony trade, the merchants who carry it on, it must be observed, have been the principal advisors. We must not wonder, therefore, if, in greater part of them, their interest has been more considered than either that of the colony or that of the mother country’.33 ‘This monopoly has so much increased the number of some particular tribes of them’, he added, ‘that, like an overgrown standing army, they have become formidable to the government, and upon many occasions intimidate the legislature’.34 In addition, the ‘governing part’ of European nations benefited themselves from monopoly trade because it enabled them to dispose of ‘many places of trust and profit’.35 The granting of independence and the securing of free trade would be ‘more advantageous to the great body of the people, though less so the merchants’.36 Smith, then, was especially concerned about the effects of monopoly trade with the colonies. Such trade was economically detrimental and it encouraged patronage and rent seeking. And the political power of those who benefited from this trade operated to block rational reform 28 Smith, Wealth of Nations, 644. 29 For a discussion of Smith’s arguments here, see Muthu, ‘Adam Smith’s Critique of International Trading Companies’. 30 Smith, Wealth of Nations, 746, 741, 745. 31 See ibid., 453, 453, 465, 469, and 494 for some examples. 32 Ibid., 451. 33 Ibid., 584. 34 Ibid., 471. 35 Ibid., 617. 36 Ibid., 617.

31892_Williams.indd 38

20-10-15 08:23



Smith on Politics, Progress, and Judgement 39

of Britain’s trade policies. Smith recast the colonial relationship in ways that pitted the interests of a few (political elites and monopoly traders) against the interests of the country as a whole. The fact that the chapter ‘Of Colonies’ in The Wealth of Nations is sandwiched between two other chapters that form the central part of his attack on mercantilism (‘Of Treaties of Commerce’ and ‘Conclusion of the Mercantile System’) strongly suggests that this provides a key basis for his critique: ‘[O]ne of the principle effects of these discoveries [of the Americas] has been to raise the mercantile system to a degree of splendor and glory which it otherwise could not have attained’.37 In places Smith did recognize the ‘injustices’ and ‘cruelties’ inflicted on the ‘natives’ by the European powers. In discussing colonization in the Americas, he said that ‘folly and injustice seem to have been the principles which presided over and directed the first project of establishing those colonies’. The ‘folly’, he said, was ‘hunting after gold and silver’. The ‘injustice’ was ‘coveting the possession of a country whose harmless natives, far from having even injured the people of Europe, had received the first adventurers with every mark of kindness and hospitality’.38 Smith was particularly scathing in his attack on the arbitrary and self-interested ‘governments’ established by the English and Dutch East India companies.39 He suggested that the policies pursued by the English East India Company had contributed to famine in Bengal, and he detailed the abuses perpetrated by the Dutch East Indian Company in the Spice Islands.40 He concluded that ‘such exclusive companies … are a nuisance in every respect … and destructive to those who have the misfortune to fall under their government.’41 Smith also argued that the economic restrictions occasioned by monopoly trade were ‘unjust’ towards the settlers themselves – ‘a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind’, and ‘impertinent badges of slavery imposed upon them, without any sufficient reason, by the groundless 37 Ibid., 627. See also Lisa Hill, ‘Adam Smith and the Theme of Corruption’, Review of Politics 68, no. 4 (2006): 636–62. 38 Smith, Wealth of Nations, 588. As we shall see in the next chapter, Kant made a similar argument. 39 Ibid., 635–41. For a discussion, see Muthu, ‘Adam Smith’s Critique of International Trading Companies’. 40 Ibid., 527, 636. Again there are similar arguments in Kant, including about the Spice Islands. 41 Ibid., 641.

31892_Williams.indd 39

20-10-15 08:23

40

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

jealousy of the merchants and manufacturers of the mother country’.42 Finally, Smith drew attention to the links between colonialism and real slavery: ‘[W]e are not to imagine the temper of Christian religion is necessarily contrary to slavery. The masters in our colonies are Christians, and yet slavery is allowed amongst them’.43 Although he argued that slavery was an economically irrational system of production, he claimed that it was the ‘love of domination and authority’ common to all men that allowed the great cruelties and injustices associated with slavery to continue in the colonies.44 Smith’s focus, therefore, was not only on the costs borne by the populations of the European states as a result of colonialism. He was well aware of the costs borne by the natives and the settlers themselves, and he no doubt sympathized with both groups on this score. The balance of the textual evidence, however, indicates that his primary concern was the impact of colonialism on domestic economic policy and political practices, and on the possibilities of economic and political reform. This view is reinforced if we look at the overall critical strategy of the Wealth of Nations, which was to argue for the desirability of economic reform within European states and especially Britain.

P r o g r e s s , A g e n c y, a n d C o n t i n g e n c y Smith certainly argued against colonialism on the basis of its economic and political impact on European states. Yet his arguments about the overall progressive impact of European expansion, and conquest and colonial rule in particular, reveal a different set of attitudes. Towards the end of the chapter ‘Of Colonies’ in the Wealth of Nations, there is a remarkable paragraph. It starts with the often-quoted remark that the ‘discovery of America, and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind’. They ‘united the most distant parts of the world’ and thus enabled them to ‘relieve one another’s wants, to increase one another’s enjoyments, and to encourage one another’s 42 Ibid., 582. 43 Adam Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, eds. R.L. Meek, D.D. Raphael, and P.G. Stein (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1978), 191. 44 Ibid., 178–93. See also Spencer J. Pack, ‘Slavery, Adam Smith’s Vision and the Invisible Hand’, History of Economic Ideas 4, nos. 1/2 (1996): 253–69.

31892_Williams.indd 40

20-10-15 08:23



Smith on Politics, Progress, and Judgement 41

industries’. He recognized that the ‘natives’ had suffered ‘dreadful misfortunes’ as a result. but, he said, this was a kind of ‘accident’, the consequence of the superior power of European states rather than anything in the nature of these events, and the ‘mutual communication of knowledge and of all sorts of improvements which an extensive commerce from all countries to all countries naturally, or rather necessarily brings’ might in due course lead to an equalization of this power.45 Here we find Smith using a series of temporal and spatial distinctions such that he could recognize the short-term misfortunes suffered by the natives but privilege the long-term benefits that accrued to ‘mankind’ as a result of European expansion. Smith’s ambivalences are also demonstrated by his arguments about the economic impact of colonialism on the colonies themselves. In his discussion of this issue, Smith made a series of important distinctions. The first distinction was between the impact of continued colonial rule on the economic prospects of the settler colonies, on the one hand, and the impact of conquest and settlement on previously unconquered territories, on the other. In terms of the first of these, Smith made a further distinction between British and other European colonies. He argued that the British colonies had experienced ‘greater prosperity’ than the colonies of other European states. This was so because they had ‘more liberty to manage their own affairs’ and because of certain political institutions.46 These included laws that imposed an obligation to improve land granted to the settlers, restrictions on the right of primogeniture, and moderate taxes.47 But, while some colonies progressed faster than others, Smith generally thought the existing practices of colonial rule, especially monopoly trade, were brakes on the course of progress in those colonies already settled: ‘The government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments … whatsoever’ as it leads to ‘languid and slow’ progress.48 When he turned to the overall impact of European conquest and colonization in the Americas, however, Smith made a different argument.

45 Smith, Wealth of Nations, 626. 46 Ibid., 527, 571–5. 47 These institutional considerations were more general concerns for Smith when it came to discussing improvement in Britain. For example, Smith was critical of the law of primogeniture as it operated there. See ibid., 423–5. 48 Ibid., 570.

31892_Williams.indd 41

20-10-15 08:23

42

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

He said that ‘the colony of a civilised nation which takes possession, either of a waste country, or of one so thinly inhabited, that the natives easily give way to the new settlers, advances more rapidly to wealth and greatness than any other human society’. Partly this is because of the plentiful availability of land. But it is also because ‘the colonists carry out with them a knowledge of agriculture and of other useful arts, superior to what can grow up of its own accord in the course of many centuries among savage and barbarous nations. They carry out with them too the habit of subordination, some notion of regular government … of the system of laws which support it, and of a regular administration of justice’.49 In other words, while colonial rule of settler or plantation colonies generally led to slower progress than would be the case if these had been released from mercantilist trading practices, this was a situation that nonetheless created far more progress than would have been possible without any form of colonialism at all: Before the conquest of the Spaniards there were not cattle fit for draught, either in Mexico or Peru … The plough was unknown among them. They were ignorant of the use of iron. They had no coined money, nor any established instrument of commerce of any kind … in this condition it seems impossible, that either of those empires could have been so improved or so well cultivated as at present … In spite of the cruel destruction of the natives which followed the conquest, these two great empires are, probably, more populous now than they ever were before: and the people are surely very different; for we must acknowledge, I apprehend, that the Spanish creoles are in many respects superior to the antient [sic] Indians.50

These quotes illustrate some of the important tensions within Smith’s arguments about colonialism. They suggest that Smith thought European colonialism was costly and cruel, but that he also recognized that the overall project of conquest and colonial rule had helped to produce certain goods (wealth, improvement, cultivation) in these territories which might not have been realized had these places remained unconquered. Smith’s arguments about the relationship between conquest, colonial rule, and ‘progress’ in the colonies can be helpfully seen in the context 49 Ibid., 564–5, 567. 50 Ibid., 568–9.

31892_Williams.indd 42

20-10-15 08:23



Smith on Politics, Progress, and Judgement 43

of the tensions and ambivalences that characterize his more general account of the course of ‘progress’ in different places. John Hobson has argued that, while Smith was a Eurocentric thinker, he was also an ‘anti-paternalist’.51 On this view, Smith’s stadial account of progress through history certainly understood previous stages in the development of human societies (the Age of Hunters, the Age of Shepherds, and the Age of Agriculture) through the lens of, and in comparison with, the Age of Commerce. This is indeed Eurocentric and it generates a series of hierarchies that typically cast previous ages as inferior in one way or another. But, Hobson argues, Smith nonetheless allowed that non-European societies ‘could spontaneously auto-generate’ and thus that commercial society is ‘immanent within the make-up of all societies’.52 If this interpretation is plausible, it means that while colonialism might speed up or slow down this process, societies could progress without direct external intervention. There is certainly some support for this interpretation. Smith is famously reported as having said that ‘little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things’.53 And, more generally, one of Smith’s most famous arguments was that there were mechanisms generating ‘progress’ that operated (if given the chance) ‘naturally’, most famously the so-called ‘invisible hand’. On closer examination, however, Smith’s arguments are more complex. In his discussions of progress, he worked in two registers, or with two ‘voices’ as one commentator has put it, and these two registers reflect his complex philosophical inheritance.54 The first register can be traced to Smith’s understanding of the purpose of philosophy that was explicitly indebted to the Newtonian search for the laws of nature. In one of his early essays, the ‘History of Astronomy’, Smith argued that 51 John Hobson, Eurocentric Conception of World Order: Western International Theory, 1760–2010 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012), 74–83. 52 Ibid., 82, emphasis in original. For Smith’s discussion of the ‘stages’, see his Lectures on Jurisprudence, 14–37 and 404–37. 53 Qtd. in Winch, Adam Smith’s Politics, 4. 54 Jerry Evensky, ‘The Two Voices of Adam Smith: Moral Philosopher and Social Critic’, History of Political Economy 19, no. 3 (1987): 447–68. See also A.D. Megill, ‘Theory and Experience in Adam Smith’, Journal of the History of Ideas 36, no. 1 (1975): 79–94.

31892_Williams.indd 43

20-10-15 08:23

44

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

philosophy was ‘the science of the connecting principles of nature’.55 Its aim was to represent ‘the invisible chains which bind together’ otherwise seeming disparate and discordant events.56 Working in this mode, Smith operated with a form of teleological explanation that was underpinned by a Deist theology.57 Belief in the immanence of ‘progress’ derived from the belief that there was some point or purpose to human existence that could be expected to manifest itself in the unfolding of a history that was itself underwritten by a benevolent God. ‘The idea of that divine Being, whose benevolence and wisdom have, from all eternity, contrived and conducted the immense machine of the universe, so as at all times to produce the greatest possible quantity of happiness is certainly of all the objects of human contemplation by far the most sublime’.58 Here, progress was produced by certain natural laws that were the product of God’s plan for mankind.59 Smith made a careful distinction between the role of God as ‘first cause’ and the ‘efficient cause’ to be found in the actions of men.60 It was the actions of people that actually generated historical change; but, as people’s aims and desires were themselves the product of God’s design for mankind, so they could be expected to act in ways that furthered God’s ‘original purpose,’ which was ‘happiness’.61 Even those commentators

55 Adam Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. W.P.D. Wightman (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1980), 45. While this is an early essay, it should be immediately clear that both Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations are in important ways indebted to the ideas expressed there. 56 Ibid., 45. 57 There are disputes about this. See Knud Haakonssen, The Science of a Legislator: The Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1981). One might be able to get to Smith’s conclusions without a commitment to his Deism, but I do not think Smith himself did without it. 58 Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, eds. A. L. Macfie and D.D. Raphael (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1975), 236. 59 Lisa Hill, ‘The Hidden Theology of Adam Smith’, European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 8, no. 1 (2001): 1–29; and Athol Fitzgibbons, Adam Smith’s System of Liberty, Wealth and Virtue: The Moral and Political Foundations of The Wealth of Nations (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995). See also James Alvey, ‘The Role of Teleology in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations’, History of Economics Review 40, no. 1 (2004): 137–44. 60 Hill, ‘The Hidden Theology of Adam Smith’, 7–11. 61 Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, 166; Smith, Wealth of Nations, 96. See also ibid., 11–12.

31892_Williams.indd 44

20-10-15 08:23



Smith on Politics, Progress, and Judgement 45

who reject the significance of Smith’s specifically theological teleology in underpinning the naturalness of progress have accepted that it is the ‘natural inclinations’ of persons that drive progress – the ‘propensity in human nature’ to ‘truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another’.62 In other words, we can think of progress as ‘natural’ and thus immanent for Smith in two ways: it is the result of God’s design for mankind, and/or it is generated by certain universal human traits. But Smith also discussed the course of progress in another, more historical and empirical register. This was one inherited from the tradition of empiricist philosophy that Smith and his contemporaries traced back to Locke.63 In this mode Smith was engaged not in philosophy (as he understood it) but in history and, importantly, political and social criticism.64 Once we put his arguments about the naturalness of progress alongside his discussions of actual historical processes, things become much more complex.65 The first issue here is the extent to which Smith deployed a kind of economic determinism to explain progress through the four stages of history, or, alternatively, the extent to which he allowed room for the ‘science of the legislator’ to shape economic and social outcomes.66 On the former account, it is, for example, the pressures of population growth that lead to the adoption of new economic practices that in turn generate new institutional and political arrangements.67 On the later view, Smith has a much more variegated account of the factors that shape economic and social outcomes, including ‘politics’ and ‘institutions’, as we have seen in his discussion of the difference between progress in British colonies and progress in other European colonies. What is more, it seems clear from the Wealth of Nations that he thought there was a significant need for institutional reform in modern commercial society if the full potential 62 Smith, Wealth of Nations, 25. 63 Megill, ‘Theory and Experience in Adam Smith’, 93. 64 Evensky, ‘The Two Voices of Adam Smith’, 447. 65 See John Salter, ‘Adam Smith on Feudalism, Commerce and Slavery’, History of Political Thought 13, no. 2 (1992): 219–41. 66 There is an extensive literature here. See, for example, Ronald Meek, Smith, Marx, and After: Ten Essays in the Development of Economic Thought (London: Chapman and Hall 1977); Winch, Adam Smith’s Politics; Haakonssen, The Science of a Legislator; and Andrew Skinner, ‘Adam Smith: The Origins of the Exchange Economy’, European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 1, no. 1 (1993): 21–46. 67 Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, 15.

31892_Williams.indd 45

20-10-15 08:23

46

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

of that society was to be realized; in other words, simply letting material factors shape outcomes was not enough. At the same time, and to complicate matters further, Smith was sharply critical of what he called the ‘man of system’ who he thought was apt to have a vastly inflated sense of his ability to arrange society according to his own plans.68 We are left with a rather analytically unclear, although perhaps sociologically ­sensible, set of considerations about progress: the pressures for institutional change that arise through its course; the importance of insti­ tutional arrangements in determining that course; and the limits of any attempt to subject progress to rational planning. A second issue has to do with the role of contingency in Smith’s accounts of ‘progress’ in economic and institutional arrangements. In his discussion of several historical examples, such as the rise of property laws (and thus government), the growth of popular participation in classical Rome, and the ending of slavery in Europe, Smith demonstrated an awareness of the complexity of the processes involved, as well as the unintended consequences of usually self-interested actions.69 Trying to summarize this, Pitts argues that, for Smith, ‘development through the four stages is at once a natural process and one pervaded with contingency and the unpredicted consequences of myriad individual actions’.70 The tensions within Smith’s general account of progress are well illustrated by his observations about progress in different parts of the world. First, as noted above, Smith said that progress under colonialism has been in some areas ‘superior to what can grow up of its own accord in the course of many centuries among savage and barbarous nations’. This suggests that, even if progress was immanent, it might lay dormant for a long time, needing some kind of initial spark or jolt provided by European contact to be set in motion. There were also parts of the world that seemed to have experienced no progress at all: ‘[A]ll the inland parts of Africa, and all that part of Asia which lies any considerable way north of the Euxine and Caspian seas … [s]eem in all ages of the world to have been in the same barbarous and uncivilized state in which we find them at present’.71 Here Smith stressed the contingencies 68 Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, 243. 69 Pitts, A Turn to Empire, 29–31; Winch, Adam Smith’s Politics, 78. 70 Pitts, A Turn to Empire, 32. 71 Smith, Wealth of Nations, 36.

31892_Williams.indd 46

20-10-15 08:23



Smith on Politics, Progress, and Judgement 47

of geographical location (distance from seas and navigable rivers) as an important condition for progress. Again, little ‘progress’ is to be expected in these places unless something happened to connect them to trading routes. The significance of the ‘discovery’ of America was precisely that it ‘united the most distant parts of the globe’.72 At the very least, this casts doubt on the idea that all societies have the capacity for spontaneous auto-generation. Smith also argued that some societies become ‘stuck’ at a certain stage. He said that ‘there are two great nations who have been merely shepherds as far back as we can trace them and still are so without the least of agriculture … that is the whole body of Tartars and 2ndly of the Arabians’.73 Here, too, Smith suggested that one reason for this was the ‘nature of their country, which is dry and raised above the sea’.74 The example of China also showed that ‘progress’ could be stalled. He said that, while China had not gone ‘backwards’, it had, ‘even long before this time, acquired that full complement of riches which the nature of its laws and institutions permits it to acquire’.75 One reason for this was the laws preventing foreign trade.76 Here it seems that ‘laws’ and ‘institutions’ played the most significant role, or at least that they overrode any ‘natural’ course of progress through the stages. Finally, there are also certain cyclical elements in Smith’s thought. The collapse of ancient Greek and Roman societies suggested that ‘civilization’ may not be permanent, and there are hints that Smith saw the collapse of these societies as partly the result of their very great achievements: as commerce grows in significance, so ‘the great body of the people becomes altogether unwarlike’, while the wealth of the state ‘provokes the invasion of all their neighbours’.77 This dual problem might be mitigated by ‘wise’ statesmanship, but even

72 Ibid., 626. 73 Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, 213. 74 Ibid., 220. 75 Smith, Wealth of Nations, 89. For a more general discussion of the place and understanding of China in Enlightenment thought, see David Harvey, The French Enlightenment and Its Others: The Mandarin, The Savage and the Invention of the Human Sciences (London: Palgrave 2012), chap. 2. 76 Smith, Wealth of Nations, 90. 77 Ibid., 697; see also 693.

31892_Williams.indd 47

20-10-15 08:23

48

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

that was no guarantee.78 Here again, there is an important role given to ‘laws’ and ‘institutions’ as well as the ‘science of the legislator’. Coming to a final conclusion about Smith’s account of progress is not straightforward, and Smith never completed (or allowed to be published after his death) work that might have clarified his understanding of processes of historical change. Yet we can see in Smith’s two ‘voices’ or registers exactly the kind of tension we have identified as characteristic of liberal patterns of thought. Smith argued at times that progress was in some sense ‘natural’ and immanent (the product of a benevolent deity and human nature), and therefore, as Hobson has argued, colonialism was not necessary for societies to experience progress; indeed, it might stall or warp the natural course of progress. At the same time, Smith also often saw progress (empirically) as contingent and determined by an array of geographical, institutional, and political factors. This generates a significant ambivalence about the possible impact of colonial conquest and rule on unconquered territories, because it is not clear in what sense Smith thought that all societies could ‘spontaneously auto-generate’. There is room here for an interpretation of Smith that sees him as recognizing the overall benefits in terms of progress that colonialism could bring, even if the actual practices associated with it prevented colonies from realizing their full economic potential. And for some parts of the world there was no real hope of ‘progress’ without some kind of external actions that would kick-start the process, perhaps by linking them to trade routes.

Judgements The second element of Smith’s work that bears on his reputation as an anti-colonial thinker concerns the kinds of judgements he made about other societies. It is important to say at the outset that, whatever we make of the complex issues involved in this, Smith did not argue that conquest and colonial rule were justified because other societies were ‘backward’ or had ‘abhorrent’ moral practices. Nonetheless, his status as an anti-colonial thinker rests in part on a reading of Smith that stresses his non-judgemental attitude towards other societies.79 The first point 78 Ibid., 697. See also James Alvey, ‘Adam Smith’s View of History: Consistent or Paradoxical?’ History of the Human Sciences 16, no. 2 (2003): 1–25. 79 Pitts, A Turn to Empire, 34–40.

31892_Williams.indd 48

20-10-15 08:23



Smith on Politics, Progress, and Judgement 49

to note is that Smith certainly did make what we might now take to be disparaging judgements about ‘backward societies’. He described America before Columbus as ‘a country quite covered with wood, uncultivated, and inhabited only by tribes of naked and miserable savages’.80 In a discussion of Africa he said that ‘many an African King’ is the ‘absolute master in the loves and liberties of ten thousand naked savages’.81 This is in the context of his argument that even the poorest person in commercial society is much better off than the richest African. He says in the Lectures on Jurisprudence that ‘[i]n Africa we find the most horrid disorders, their discipline not being severe enough’.82 Witness, too, his comments about the inferiority of the ‘antient indians’ noted above. One might say that Smith here was expressing the kinds of familiar attitudes, prejudices, and language of many of his Enlightenment peers. And Pitts suggests that at least some of the time Smith used terms such as ‘savage’ and ‘barbarous’ in an analytical rather than simply judgemental way.83 The significance of Smith’s judgements about ‘savage’ societies, however, transcends the question of whether his use of this kind of language is explicable or excusable given his context. Three issues are particularly important: first, the extent to which the stadial theory was also understood by Smith as a hierarchy; second, his explanation for cultural diversity; and finally, and most controversial of all, the kind of moral theory Smith developed and how this moral theory was or could be applied to judgements about other places and about colonialism itself. Smith certainly understood movement through the stages as ‘progress’. And on the reading of Smith that stresses the theological underpinnings of this theory, the Age of Commerce represented not only an improvement in terms of material comfort but also the instantiation of God’s original plan for mankind.84 The achievement of ‘commercial’ society was not just an historical accident; nor was commercial society

80 Smith, Wealth of Nations, 559. See the discussion in Blaney and Inyatalluh, Savage Economics, chap. 2. 81 Smith, Wealth of Nations, 24. 82 Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, 443. 83 Pitts, A Turn to Empire, 34. 84 Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, 166. See Hill, ‘The Hidden Theology of Adam Smith’. Thorstein Veblen also made this point in ‘Theory of the Leisure Class’. See M. Lerner, ed., The Portable Veblen (New York: Viking 1948), 258.

31892_Williams.indd 49

20-10-15 08:23

50

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

merely contingently different from other types – rather, it represented the highest existing instantiation of a plan for mankind underwritten by a benevolent deity. As is by now well known, Smith was critical of aspects of commercial society; for example, he was concerned about the impact commerce had on social and patriotic virtues and on the condition of the labouring classes.85 And he was highly critical of some of the laws and much of the actual practice of economic policy in Britain and its impact on domestic politics as part of his ‘attack on the whole commercial system of Great Britain’.86 In other words, he did not straightforwardly evidence the kind of triumphalism that characterized some nineteenth-century advocates of European colonialism. But Smith’s stadial account did nonetheless have the effect of positioning the ‘rude’ nations of America as representative of an earlier stage in European history.87 In doing so, he denied these societies any kind of equal claim as they simply represented something that had been superseded by more advanced societies.88 Smith argued, too, that commercial society was superior to ‘barbarous’ society not just in material terms but also in terms of the development of other goods. For Smith, commerce, manners, and morals were linked. As commerce and manufactures increased, so ‘the common people have better wages … and in consequence of this a general probity of manners takes place thro’ the whole country’.89 Manners come to a ‘greater degree of refinement, both with respect to persons and effects’ and especially in terms of the ‘delicacy which attends the sentiment of love’.90 The ‘probity and punctuality’ that accompany commerce are ‘almost unknown’ in a ‘rude and barbarous country’.91 And ‘[i]n some countries, the rudeness and barbarism of the people hinder the natural sentiments of justice from arriving at that accuracy and precision which, in more civilized nations, they naturally attain to. Their laws are, like their manners, gross and rude and undistinguishing’.92 Smith is careful

85 Winch, Adam Smith’s Politics, chap. 5. 86 Smith, Correspondence, 250. 87 Blaney and Inyatalluh, Savage Economics, chap. 2. 88 Hobson, Eurocentric Conception of World Order, 81. 89 Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, 487. 90 Ibid., 548, 439. 91 Ibid., 538–9. 92 Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, 341.

31892_Williams.indd 50

20-10-15 08:23



Smith on Politics, Progress, and Judgement 51

to state that ‘in no country do the decisions of positive law coincide exactly, in every case, with the rules which the natural sense of justice would dictate’, but, even if commercial society was morally deficient in some ways, it was superior to ‘rude’ and ‘barbarous’ societies in the sense of being more morally ‘developed’. Commercial society was also understood by Smith to be superior in terms of the progress of science and reason. In his essay ‘History of Astronomy’, Smith developed his understanding of the progress of science in contrast to the forms of reasoning characteristic of barbarous societies. He said that that savages are ‘guided altogether by wild nature and passion’ and ‘have little curiosity to find out those hidden chains of events’.93 ‘[C]owardice and pusillanimity’ are ‘natural to man in his uncivilized state’, and it is only material progress that allows societies to overcome ‘the lowest and most pusillanimous superstition’.94 At other times Smith seems less judgemental. In discussing the variety of views of beauty that characterize different societies, Smith not only accepted that other societies had their own standards of judgement, but he also said that Europeans are apt to overlook how their own standards have often occasioned ‘distortions and disease’ in the much the same way as those of more barbarous nations.95 He sometimes discussed the character of ‘savages and barbarians’ in ways that verge on admiration. In Theory of Moral Sentiments he says that savage men are characterized by a ‘heroic and unconquerable firmness’.96 One important consideration in assessing the kinds of judgements Smith made about other places relates to how the evident diversity of customs, mores, and moral codes was to be explained. Famously, Smith said, ‘[T]he different situations of different ages and countries are apt … to give different characters to the generality of those who live in them, and their sentiments concerning the particular degree of each quality, that is either blamable [sic] or praise-worthy, vary, according to that degree which is usual in their own country, and in their own times’.97 Seen in this light, the relatively less developed moral sense in

93 Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects, 48. 94 Ibid., 48, 50. 95 Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, 199. 96 Ibid., 205–8. For a more general discussion, see Sergio Cremaschi, ‘Adam Smith on Savages’, Revue de Philosophie Economique 18, no. 1 (2017): 13–36. 97 Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, 204.

31892_Williams.indd 51

20-10-15 08:23

52

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

rude nations was not the result of a failure of reason or any innate individual or collective traits, but instead stemmed from the particular circumstances that characterized different places: the ‘heroic and unconquerable firmness’ of the savage flows from the ‘necessity of his situation’.98 Not only are the savage’s values and practices explicable, but they may even be rational responses to their environment.99 In his discussion of infanticide, for example, Smith said that the practice is ‘more pardonable’ among the ‘rudest and lowest state of society’ because ‘the extreme indigence of a savage is often such that he himself is frequently exposed to the greatest extremity of hunger, he often dies of pure want, and it is frequently impossible for him to support both himself and his child. We cannot wonder, therefore, that in this case he should abandon it’.100 At the same time, Smith argued that it is only in these extreme kinds of cases that infanticide can be excused, for in general it is a ‘horrible practice’ and a ‘dreadful violation of humanity’.101 Teasing out of the overall character of Smith’s moral theory is difficult, and the debate has rumbled on since the Theory of Moral Sentiments was first published. Part of the difficulty is that again Smith seems to be working in two registers or with two ‘voices’. In a more sociological register, he was trying to explain how it was that people came to have a moral sense. This was in some sense an empirical question, and we can see this concern in the title and in the arguments of Theory of Moral Sentiments. It was not a theory of morality, but of how people come to think and act morally. Some commentators have focused on this and argued that Smith’s stress on explaining moral judgements, and on the social nature of such judgements, means we should read him as a sceptic about the possibility of developing objective moral rules, or even as a kind of ‘relativist’.102 Certainly, this was one response to the Theory of  98 Ibid., 203.  99 Ibid., 209. 100 Ibid., 210. 101 Ibid., 210–11. 102 See Tom Campbell, Adam Smith’s Science of Morals (London: Allen and Unwin 1971); and Charles Griswold, Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999). A more recent discussion is Samuel Fleischacker, ‘Adam Smith and Cultural Relativism’, Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 4, no. 2 (2011): 20–41. For a discussion of this issue in the context of contemporary moral philosophy, see David Golemboski, ‘The Impartiality of Smith’s Impartial Spectator: The Problem of Parochialism and the Possibility of Social Critique’, European Journal of Political Theory 17, no. 2 (2018): 174–93.

31892_Williams.indd 52

20-10-15 08:23



Smith on Politics, Progress, and Judgement 53

Moral Sentiments when it was first published.103 For example, one of the important motivations for ‘moral’ behaviour identified by Smith is the desire ‘to be beloved’.104 That is, our sense of what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ is shaped by what others around us see as good or bad, just or unjust. The ‘impartial spectator’ that develops as a way of guarding against our own partial judgements arises only out of interactions with the society around us. The implication of this is that, while the model of the impartial spectator might save us from judging badly according to the standards of our own society, it seems to provide little hope for judging the values and morals of that society as themselves unjust. Alongside this, however, is another, more universal register that connects with Smith’s understanding of natural law and his Deistic commitments.105 On this view, while it might be that case that what our ‘natural sense of justice would dictate’ is nowhere fully manifest, such a sense of ‘natural justice’ is implied by the existence of a deity with a benevolent plan for mankind. Here, moral progress consists of the gradual manifestation of what this natural sense of justice would dictate. It has also been stressed that Smith did at times express cosmopolitan sentiments and argued for the desirability of ‘universal benevolence’: ‘Though our effectual good offices can very seldom be extended to any wider society than that of our own country; our good-will is circumscribed by no boundary, but may embrace the immensity of the universe. We cannot form the idea of any innocent and sensible being, whose happiness we should not desire, or to whose misery, when distinctly brought home to the imagination, we should not have some degree of aversion’.106 One of the participants in this debate has argued that

103 Thomas Reid was one contemporary who made such a claim. He said: ‘It is evident that the ultimate Measure & Standard of Right and Wrong in human Conduct according to this System of Sympathy, is not any fixed Judgment grounded upon Truth or upon the dictates of a well informed Conscience but the variable opinions and passions of Men’. The quote is from ‘Thomas Reid on Adam Smith’s Theory of Morals’, ed. J.C. Stewart-Robertson and D. Norton, Journal of the History of Ideas 45, no. 2 (1984): 317–18. 104 Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, 41. 105 See Knud Haakonssen, Natural Law and Moral Philosophy from Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996); and Samuel Fleischacker, A Third Concept of Liberty: Judgement and Freedom in Kant and Adam Smith (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press 1999). 106 Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, 245. For a discussion, see Stephen Darwall, ‘Equal Dignity in Adam Smith’, Adam Smith Review 1, (2004): 129–34.

31892_Williams.indd 53

20-10-15 08:23

54

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

‘Smith is more sympathetic to the concerns of anthropologists than most philosophers have been, but still tries to uphold the possibility of moral judgments that transcend cultural contexts’, although ‘the tensions between these aspects of his thought are not easy to resolve’.107 I think this is right, but it is also important to recognize that this tension is in some ways wired into the ‘project’ character of Smith’s thinking. The question of how people actually come to have particular moral sentiments is a vital one if those sentiments are to be reformed. At the same time, as we have noted, appeal beyond the empirical is necessary to provide some grounding that avoids the problem of relativism. Both sides of this tension bear on how we think about Smith’s arguments about colonialism, however. An understanding of morality as socially constituted implies that any judgements that might be made about diverse others are conditioned by the established norms of the society within which people judge. Here, Smith’s disparaging comments about ‘savages’ reflect the particular commitments and prejudices of his time and place. In addition, on this understanding of Smith’s moral theory, it can only be that a moral condemnation of colonialism is possible insofar as it is understood to be wrong by the particular community engaging in it. Knowing that such moral attitudes are socially constructed provides hope for those who wish to change such practices (by finding strategies to change social attitudes). And we should read Smith as engaged in a task like this across a number of domains.108 But until such time as colonialism is in fact understood to be morally wrong by a large enough number of people to make such an understanding politically efficacious, it is not at all clear what kind of moral argument against colonialism could be generated out of this understanding of the form of Smith’s arguments. Where Smith does evidence more universal claims, he certainly does judge civilized societies to be more advanced, morally and scientifically as well as materially, than others, and he uses commercial society as a yardstick to measure the lack of progress in ‘rude and barbarous’ societies. And in this line of thought he rather more closely replicates other liberal thinkers who have been 107 Fleischacker, ‘Adam Smith and Cultural Relativism’, 20. See Also Pitts, A Turn to Empire, 43. 108 For a related discussion, see Charles Bazerman, ‘Money Talks: The Rhetorical Project of the Wealth of Nations’, in W. Henderson, T. Dudley-Evans, and R. Blackhouse, eds., Economics and Language (London: Routledge 1993), 173–99.

31892_Williams.indd 54

20-10-15 08:23



Smith on Politics, Progress, and Judgement 55

more forthright in their advocacy of colonialism. Furthermore, while claims about universal benevolence and cosmopolitan sentiments might operate to underpin an account of the injustice of European conquests, they themselves have potentially ‘colonial’ implications when practices (perhaps infanticide) do not live up to what is understood by these standards.

Conclusion Smith articulated some important and powerful critiques of European colonialism and its associated practices. He certainly recognized the injustices and cruelties that accompanied European conquest and colonial rule, but the primary grounds of his objections to continued European colonialism were the economic and political costs to European states themselves. In this sense, Smith’s project was to undermine some of the standard justifications for colonialism as a necessary part of economic and political reform within European states. Only when people stopped thinking that monopoly control of colonial trade was economically beneficial, and only when the power of the vested interests that controlled this trade was broken, would European states be able to enact more beneficial trade policies. At the same time, however, Smith’s overriding concern with progress led him argue that European expansion and colonialism had been in some important respects beneficial, both for mankind as a whole and for the course of progress in conquered and colonized places. His description of ‘progress’ suggested that in some places at least such progress would not have happened without European intervention. Finally, Smith did, sometimes, make disparaging judgements about other places, and his analysis clearly did position these places as in important respects inferior to European societies. His moral theory certainly holds out the possibility of a more respectful account of diverse cultural practices (by viewing such practices as the result of the material circumstances of different societies), but such an account leads to difficulties in condemning conquest and colonialism as any kind of moral wrong. The point of making these arguments is not to condemn Smith for not being anti-colonial enough – any attempt to label Smith one way or another is unlikely to do justice to the complexity and sometimes opacity of his arguments, and is in any case not especially helpful for us today. Rather, in line with the overall project of this book, the goal

31892_Williams.indd 55

20-10-15 08:23

56

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

is to tease out of Smith’s arguments some of the broader issues at stake in liberal thinking about diverse others. The first is the stress on the costs the colonizers bear. Asking about what costs the colonizers bear, how these might be reduced, and what alternative courses of action and forms of relationship are possible ought to be important questions for colonizing states.109 Smith, for example, was at pains to argue that the mercantilist policies associated with European colonialism were damaging to the population of European states and stood in the way of further economic development. This kind of argument can seem distasteful to (some) modern ears because of its Eurocentrism – it is the costs the European states bear that are really important – and because of the way it downplays the moral status of the ‘dreadful misfortunes’ suffered by the ‘natives’. But, while both of these criticisms are true, the argument that the experiences of the ‘natives’ ought to play a significant role in our moral accounting can also easily lead to the view that we have a duty to eradicate those cultural practices that fail to live up to the standards of our ‘natural sense of justice’. Second, Smith’s recognition of the role that human folly plays in colonial ventures, as well as the ‘absurd confidence’ that people have in the face of the ‘judgment of sober reason and experience’, can stand as a salutary warning to those tempted not just by gold and silver but also by the prospect of using colonialism as a vehicle for a civilizing mission. So, too, Smith’s warnings about the ‘man of system’: The man of system … is apt to be very wise in his own conceit … He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board … but … in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously … If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.110

109 These were important question in debates about colonialism within European states. See, for example, Jack Greene, Evaluating Empire and Confronting Colonialism in Eighteenth Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013). 110 Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, 243–4.

31892_Williams.indd 56

20-10-15 08:23



Smith on Politics, Progress, and Judgement 57

The kind of moderate political and sociological realism Smith sometimes evidences may be a useful contribution to our thinking today about the problems and possibilities of liberal imperialism. Third, Smith’s complex arguments also underline the importance of the idea of ‘progress’ as well as its attendant ambiguities and tensions. What we can glean from Smith, I think, is the central question of what can be expected to happen in distant places without colonialism. Smith was committed to certain goods. The possibility that some form of progress towards these goods can be expected without colonialism makes it much easier to argue against colonialism. But, when there are uncertainties or ambiguities about this, or where in fact there are good reasons to think that progress towards these goods will not take place ‘naturally’, it becomes much more difficult to condemn colonialism outright. If there are ‘liberal’ goods, or perhaps more generally if there are ways of life that are ‘better’ than others (and Smith certainly thought that there were), and if no progress towards them can reasonably be expected without external intervention, then it is hard to see how those committed to these goods, or to the view that some ways of life are better than others, can avoid thinking about the role that more ‘civilized’ societies can make to the achievement of these goods or ways of life in other places. It might be judged that the domestic costs outweigh any possible movement towards liberal goods in other places, or that colonialism would not in fact assist in the achievement of these goods (perhaps because of human folly or overconfidence); but, unless the idea of certain goods or of ways of life as being better than others is abandoned, the question of the potential contribution of external intervention cannot be easily avoided. The final issue relates to the question of diversity and the connection between an explanation for cultural pluralism and the grounds for judgements about plural others. As we have seen, Smith was only sometimes judgemental about diverse others, and, more importantly, he explained diversity as the result of the particular circumstances of different peoples. This seems sociologically sensible, and it is also culturally charitable, as well as being in some important ways egalitarian – people in different societies respond in perfectly explicable ways to the circumstances they find themselves in (just as people in European societies do). But it also raises the problem evidenced by Smith’s own moral theorizing: how to explain diversity while holding on to some fulcrum of judgement that transcends a particular time and place. For Smith,

31892_Williams.indd 57

20-10-15 08:23

58

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

‘progress’, both material and in terms of morals and manners, often did provide such a fulcrum, ultimately guaranteed by a benevolent deity; and when it was used by Smith in this way, it evidently does operate to cast ‘rude nations’ as less advanced than civilized ones (although Smith also thought that European societies themselves were deficient in important respects). To the extent that universal moral frameworks and/or visions of progress are avoided, another dilemma appears. It might be hard to argue coherently against colonialism (as a breach of some universal moral code), and a more substantially ‘social’ moral framework that might underpin a more culturally tolerant approach risks falling into a kind of relativism that could undermine some of the universalist claims that have tended to characterize many forms of liberal thinking.

31892_Williams.indd 58

20-10-15 08:23

2

Kant on Universal Right, Universal History, and the European State

over the last twenty years or so, Kant’s arguments about European conquest and colonial rule have been extensively contested.1 In particular, controversy has surrounded the attempt by certain scholars to link some of Kant’s arguments to the interventionist foreign policies pursued by Western states, particularly the United States, after the end of the Cold War. Michael Desch, for example, has argued that of, all liberal philosophers, Kant ‘has had the greatest influence on U.S. foreign policy, primarily through the theory of the “democratic peace”’.2 One reading of this theory provides a justification for liberal intervention via the claim that non-republican states are more war-prone and thus that republican (democratic) states have a right to force such states to embrace republican forms of government.3 Critics of this kind of argument have insisted that such a view is a dramatic simplification of Kant’s

1 The arguments are reviewed in what follows. For an introduction to the debate, see Katrin Flikschuh and Lea Ypi, ‘Introduction: Kant on Colonialism – Apologist or Critic?’ in K. Flikschuh and L. Ypi, eds., Kant and Colonialism: Historical and Critical Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2014), 1–18. 2 Michael Desch, ‘America’s Liberal Illiberalism: The Ideological Origins of Overreaction in us Foreign Policy’, International Security 32, no. 3 (2007/8): 11. On the democratic peace, see M. Brown, S. Lynn-Jones, and S. Miller, eds., Debating the Democratic Peace (Cambridge, ma: mit Press 1996). 3 Desch, ‘America’s Liberal Illiberalism’. This is an idiosyncratic reading not just of Kant but also of the Democratic Peace Theory. Michael Doyle’s original presentation and discussion in his two-part essay is altogether more thoughtful. See Michael Doyle, ‘Kant, Liberal Legacies and Foreign Affairs’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 12, no. 3 (1983): 205–35; and Michael Doyle, ‘Kant, Liberal Legacies and Foreign Affairs, Part 2’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 12, no. 4 (1983): 323–53.

31892_Williams.indd 59

20-10-15 08:23

60

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

thought – which it surely is – and that, whatever superficial similarities there may be between U.S. foreign policy and some of Kant’s arguments, Kant in fact provides the resources for a thoroughgoing critique of such interventions.4 There has also been an equally polarized debate about Kant and European imperialism more generally. One reading sees Kant as the embodiment of the colonial or imperial aspirations of liberal thought, and perhaps Enlightenment thought as a whole.5 On this view, Kant’s account of universal history, for example, is thought to embody the Eurocentrism of liberal thought by privileging the particular historical experience of European states, and by providing a fulcrum of judgement that consistently casts other peoples and cultures as inferior to those of Europe. There is also in some of Kant’s works a clear racialized hierarchy which seems to imply that certain groups are permanently excluded from what is the proper end for the rest of humanity.6 Native Americans, Kant said, ‘were incapable of culture’.7 The Eurocentric development story combined with Kant’s seemingly exclusion of large groups of people from the ‘kingdom of ends’ obviously has some very troubling implications for how we read Kant today, and for those who work within the legacies of his thought.8 On the other side of the

4 Most explicitly, see James Wilson and Jonathan Monten, ‘Does Kant Justify Liberal Intervention?’ Review of Politics 73, no. 4 (2011): 633–47. See also John MacMillan, ‘Immanuel Kant and the Democratic Peace’, in B. Jahn, ed., Classical Theory in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2006), 32–73. 5 Most particularly, see Thomas McCarthy, Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009). For a similar argument, see James Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key: Vol. II: Imperialism and Civic Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2008), chap. 1. See also Gayatri Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Towards a History of the Vanishing Present (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press 1999). 6 Emmaunuel Eze, ‘The Color of Reason: The Idea of “Race” in Kant’s Anthropology’, Bucknell Review 38, no. 2 (1995): 200–41. See also Walter Mignolo, ‘The Darker Side of the Enlightenment: A Decolonial Reading of Kant’s Geography’, and Eduardo Mendieta, ‘Geography Is to History as Women Is to Man’, both in S. Elden and E. Mendieta, eds., Reading Kant’s Geography (Albany, ny: suny Press 2011). 7 Immanuel Kant, ‘On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy’, in Immanuel Kant, Anthropology, History, and Education, eds. G. Zoller and B. Louden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007), 211. 8 McCarthy, Race, Empire and the Idea of Development, 66; Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key: Vol. II, 148.

31892_Williams.indd 60

20-10-15 08:23



Kant on Universal Right, Universal History, and the European State 61

debate are those who maintain that Kant articulated a series of arguments that provided a critique of European colonialism and its justificatory discourses and asserted the intrinsic worth of all humans. Sankar Muthu, for example, has argued that Kant’s writings on cosmopolitan right have as their ‘primary critical purpose’ the condemnation of European imperialism.9 And, as regards the issue of race, it has been argued that in many of his writings Kant did not operate with a hierarchy of cultural forms and that the racialized hierarchies we find in some of his ‘early’ works drop out of his mature writings as he came to embrace a more inclusive cosmopolitanism.10 On one side, then, we have Kant as the embodiment of liberal Eurocentrism and racism, and on the other Kant as cosmopolitan critic of colonialism. Part of the dramatic difference between these readings can be explained by the interpretive difficulties one has to contend with in any engagement with Kant on these issues. Kant wrote a huge amount and he wrote a lot of different kinds of things. There are the early lectures on anthropology and geography, some of which were never intended for publication but which have become key pieces of evidence for those who stress Kant’s ‘racism’. There are the short speculative essays that include some of his most famous arguments, notably ‘Towards Perpetual Peace’ and ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim’, but their length and depth stand in sharp contrast to the more highly developed Critiques. Finally, there are all kinds of more ‘practical’ engagements (in the common-sense use of that word – not the more technical one associated with Kant’s works), such as the Lectures on Pedagogy.11 These different kinds of works were written for different purposes and audiences, and Kant’s arguments about colonialism and   9 Sankar Muthu, Enlightenment against Empire (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press, 2003), 188. 10 Ibid., chaps. 4 and 5; Sankar Muthu, ‘Conquest, Commerce and Cosmopolitanism in Enlightenment Political Thought’, in S. Muthu, ed., Empire and Modern Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012), esp. 220–31; Pauline Kleingeld, Kant and Cosmopolitanism: The Philosophical Ideal of World Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012); Pauline Kleingeld, ‘Kant’s Second Thoughts on Colonialism’, in Flikschuh and Ypi, eds., Kant and Colonialism, 43–67; and Lea Ypi, ‘Commerce and Colonialism in Kant’s Philosophy of History’, in Flikschuh and Ypi, eds., Kant and Colonialism, 99–126. 11 Wherever possible I have used the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant in Translation.

31892_Williams.indd 61

20-10-15 08:23

62

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

related matters have to be assembled from fragments across all of them. And selecting which bits to stress has a significant bearing on the plausibility of particular readings. This issue is compounded by the fact that some of Kant’s arguments changed and developed over time. At the broadest level there is the division of Kant’s works into ‘pre-critical’ and ‘critical’ phases, with the obvious implication that it is the more mature works that reflect his considered assessment of key questions, and, as already noted, there is evidence of Kant changing his mind on certain important subjects relating to both race and colonialism.12 Another source of the great difference in assessments of Kant on issues of colonialism and race arises precisely from the politics of interpretation that Kant’s status as one of the canonical figures of Western thought invites. For some people, what Kant said on these issues matters, not because it was especially novel or insightful, but precisely because he said it, and because in some way or another what he said can be taken to ‘stand for’ or indicate broader patterns or trends in liberal or Enlightenment thought – whether problematic (Eurocentric and racist) or praiseworthy (cosmopolitan critic of colonialism). Kant’s racial hierarchies are certainly striking to modern ears, but ‘racist’ philosophers are not uncommon (we might think of Hume, for example, who was cited by Kant, or Hegel).13 The critical point of stressing Kant’s ‘racism’, I take it, is to condemn Kant and sometimes by implication Enlightenment or European philosophy in its totality, by implying not just that Kant was ‘racist’ but that these patterns of prejudice and exclusion are hard-wired into his thought.14 On the other side, defenders of Kant have wanted to do more than say there is much of value in Kant’s thought despite these unpalatable elements.15 Their objective has often been to rescue Kant by arguing that he actively criticized colonialism and abandoned his racialized hierarchies, thereby insulating or de‑­contaminating the progressive elements of his thought. As 12 See Pauline Kleingeld, ‘Kant’s Second Thoughts on Race’, Philosophical Quarterly 57, no. 229 (2007): 573–92. The debate has continued. For a rejoinder, see Robert Bernasconi, ‘Kant’s Third Thoughts on Race’, in Elden and Mendieta, eds., Reading Kant’s Geography, 291–318; and also Kleingeld, ‘Kant’s Second Thoughts on Colonialism’. 13 Flikschuh and Ypi, ‘Introduction’, 2. 14 Eze, ‘The Color of Reason’. 15 For a discussion of this, see Patrick Frierson, What Is the Human Being? (London: Routledge 2013), 104–7.

31892_Williams.indd 62

20-10-15 08:23



Kant on Universal Right, Universal History, and the European State 63

with many canonical thinkers, there is obviously more at stake here than simply questions of textual interpretation. The diverse interpretations of Kant’s arguments about colonialism and related matters are also, however, the product of a series of tensions, ambiguities, and uncertainties we find across his works, and these provide the focus for this chapter. Kant did make a series of criticisms of European colonialism and the discourses that justified it. The form and style of his critique sets him apart from the other thinkers examined in this book. In the first place, Kant was generally less concerned with the impact of colonialism on the economies and politics of the European colonial states. This may be explained by the fact that Germany was not itself a significant colonial power, although the issues surrounding colonialism were much debated in Germany at the time.16 Second, Kant more explicitly rejected a number of the standard rationalizations for European colonialism, including settler colonialism, as well as the paternalism that, particularly in the nineteenth century, became an important part of European justifications for colonial rule.17 Third, Kant comes closest to articulating a fully developed anti-colonial argument based on universal cosmopolitan right. This involved asserting the intrinsic value of all humans and recognizing the significance of the cultural life of different societies. In this mode Kant’s arguments seem to chime more with the language and concepts of contemporary liberal discussions of global justice and the specific injustice of colonialism. As with all the other thinkers examined here, however, there are ambivalences and tensions. The point of identifying these is not to say that Kant is really a ‘colonial’ thinker; rather, it is to show how Kant’s other commitments raise important questions about the possibilities and limitations of his anti-colonial arguments. This chapter explores three areas where we find these ambivalences and tensions: first, the potential contribution of European conquest and colonial rule to ‘progress’ both at the level of humanity and at the level of individual societies; second, human diversity and specifically the issue of race and how (if

16 Russell Berman, Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1998); and Susanne Zantop, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870 (Durham, nc: Duke University Press 1997). 17 See, for example, Don Habibi, ‘The Moral Dimensions of J.S. Mill’s Colonialism’, Journal of Social Philosophy 30, no. 1 (2002): 125–46.

31892_Williams.indd 63

20-10-15 08:23

64

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

at all) this can be understood within Kant’s broader philosophy; and finally, the connections between what Kant took to be the nature of moral reasoning and the kinds of institutional conditions that might assist in (or perhaps even be necessary for) the moral development of individual persons. While an exploration of these issues is necessary in order to get a sense of the ambiguities and tensions in Kant’s thought, it is important to acknowledge that they touch on some of the areas where the difficulties of interpretation have been especially acute. This is most evident in the issue of how we should understand Kant’s teleological account of history – that is, the grounds upon which Kant thought that such a view was justified – and in the relationship between this account and certain features of his moral theory.18 Very roughly, the crux of the matter is this: Kant clearly did think that a teleological view of history was justified (even if it is a bit less clear exactly why this was the case), yet at the same time there are aspects of his moral theory that posit universal and timeless maxims of morality. The historical process is at least partly defined by the movement of the actual moral commitments of persons towards these universal maxims, and it helps to produce the institutions and educational conditions (the culture) under which these maxims increasingly guide actual human actions. Yet, while this latter position – that our moral actions are the result of inhabiting a particular time with a particular set of institutions and conditions that shape our conduct – seems sociologically sensible (we are cultural beings), it stands in some contrast to the idea of a universal and timeless morality that derives from an account of the nature of moral reasoning itself.19 If the nature of moral reasoning is itself universal, why does it need an historical process to instantiate it? In turn, this set of tensions is related to larger issues in Kant’s philosophy about the relationship between the noumenal and phenomenal world, and the worlds of causation and

18 I have found the following very helpful in illuminating what is at stake here: Pauline Kleingeld, ‘Kant, History, and the Idea of Moral Development’, History of Philosophy Quarterly 16, no. 1 (1999): 59–9; Paul Stern, ‘The Problem of History and  Temporality in Kantian Ethics’, Review of Metaphysics 39 (2004): 505–45; Alex Honneth, ‘The Irreducibility of Progress: Kant’s Account of the Relationship between Morality and History’, Critical Horizons 8, no. 1 (2007): 1–17; and Frierson, What Is the Human Being? 19 Frierson, What Is the Human Being? chap. 2.

31892_Williams.indd 64

20-10-15 08:23



Kant on Universal Right, Universal History, and the European State 65

free will. There are parallels here with the two registers or ‘voices’ that characterize Smith’s arguments about progress and morality. Both thinkers exhibit a rather typical liberal tendency to move between a more empirical mode where the question is about how certain goods or ends are actually instantiated, and a more abstract or sometimes universal mode that establishes those goods or ends as vital for all persons. All of this points to, I think, some of the enduring and abiding issues in liberal thinking about colonialism and about distant and diverse others more generally, particularly the tensions between the demands of justice or morality and the demands of progress or development; and the relationship between some kinds of universal moral claims that derive from certain universal features of human nature, and a ‘sociological’ or contextual account of the actual moral commitments of ­individual persons. I return to these issues in the conclusion to this chapter.

Kant’s Anti-Colonialism Some of Kant’s most explicit and rhetorically effective criticisms of European states in their dealings with distant and diverse others come in his discussion of cosmopolitan right in ‘Towards Perpetual Peace’.20 Having set out the positive claim of universal hospitality, Kant launches into a fierce attack on the ‘inhospitable conduct’ of the European states. He said that the injustice which these states displayed in ‘visiting foreign countries (which in their case is the same as conquering them)’ was ‘appallingly great’: ‘America, the Negro countries, the Spice Islands, the Cape etc. were looked upon at the time of discovery as ownerless territories; for the native inhabitants counted as nothing’.21 He went on: ‘In the East Indies (Hindustan) they brought in foreign soldiers under the pretext of merely proposing to set up trading posts. This led

20 Immanuel Kant, ‘Towards Perpetual Peace’, in Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, ed. M. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996), 317–51. Kant was sometimes critical of rhetoric as essentially deceitful, but in this case at least he used its powers fully. See Robert Dostal, ‘Kant and Rhetoric’, Philosophy and Rhetoric 13, no. 4 (1980): 223–44; and Scott Stroud, Kant and the Promise of Rhetoric (University Park, pa: Penn State University Press 2014). 21 We noted in the last chapter that Smith also used the example of the Spice Islands in his criticisms of European states.

31892_Williams.indd 65

20-10-15 08:23

66

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

to the oppression of the inhabitants, incitement of the various Indian states to widespread wars, famine, rebellions, treachery, and the whole litany of troubles that oppresses the human race’.22 The cruelties and injustices associated with European colonization were made all the worse, according to Kant, by three things. The first was the fact that ‘the commercial states do not even benefit by their violence’. In an argument that paralleled that of Smith, Kant said that ‘the Sugar Islands, that stronghold of the cruelest and most calculated slavery, do not yield any real profit’, and he noted that the European trading companies were on the ‘point of collapse’.23 Second, as Ines Valdez has argued, Kant was particularly concerned about the role that colonialism played in multiplying and exacerbating rivalries between European states, and also about the barbaric violence that accompanied colonialism.24 Kant said of the Sugar Islands that ‘they serve only a mediate and indeed not very laudable purpose, namely training sailors for warships, and so, in turn, carrying on of wars in Europe’.25 Finally, the behaviour of the colonial states was made worse by the hypocrisy associated with colonialism: ‘[A]nd this for powers that make much ado about their piety, and, while they drink wrongfulness like water, want to be known as the elect in orthodoxy’.26 For Kant, hypocrisy was not just a common human failing but a breach of the ‘Categorical Imperative,’ and so in an important sense fundamentally immoral.27 Sankar Muthu has argued that Kant went further and sanctioned a positive right of resistance to colonial encroachment on the part of native peoples.28 Kant was clear that a stranger had a right to hospitality only ‘as long as he behaves peaceably where he is’, and that the ‘natural right of hospitality’ did not ‘extend beyond the conditions which make

22 Kant, ‘Towards Perpetual Peace’, 329. 23 Ibid., 330. 24 Inez Valdez, ‘It’s Not about Race: Good Wars, Bad Wars and the Origins of Kant’s Anti-Colonialism’, American Political Science Review 111, no. 4 (2017): 819–34. 25 Kant, ‘Towards Perpetual Peace’, 330. 26 Ibid. 27 For a discussion of Kant and hypocrisy, see Bela Szabados and Eldon Soifer, Hypocrisy: Ethical Investigations (Peterborough, on: Broadview Press 2004), chap. 6. 28 Sankar Muthu, ‘Productive Resistance in Kant’s Political Thought: Domination, Counter-Domination, and Global Unsocial Sociability’, in Flikschuh and Ypi, eds., Kant and Colonialism, 68–98.

31892_Williams.indd 66

20-10-15 08:23



Kant on Universal Right, Universal History, and the European State 67

it possible to seek commerce with the old inhabitants’.29 He then defended the actions of the Chinese and Japanese, for example, when they tried to restrict the activities of European trading companies.30 Although such restrictions could be interpreted as breaches of cosmopolitan right, Kant endorsed them because they were attempts to avoid the ‘litany of troubles’ that accompanied the actions of these companies. In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant again seemed to defend the right of resistance: ‘[C]an two neighboring peoples (or families) resist each other in adopting a certain use of land, for example can a hunting people resist a pasturing people or a farming people, or the latter resist a people that wants to plant orchards, and so forth? Certainly’.31 Muthu suggests that we should locate these arguments within Kant’s more general account of the productive possibilities of ‘unsocial sociability’.32 Conflict within and between societies is generated (in part) by the desire of all people to be recognized as equal and accorded respect by others – and this desire is driven by man’s ‘self-love’. While this kind of selflove can manifest itself in attempts to dominate and impose upon others – as evidenced by European colonial expansion – it could also be the source of productive resistance – a resistance that aims for the achievement of ‘equal worth’ and is driven by the injunction not to ‘let others tread with impunity on your rights’.33 Kant also quite specifically rejected some of the standard justifications for European colonialism. In the first place, Kant argued that colonialism was not justified on the basis of victory in a war: ‘[A] defeated state or its subjects do not lose their civil freedom through the conquest of their country, so that the state would be degraded to a colony and its subjects to bondage’. Still less ‘can bondage and its legitimacy be derived from a people’s being overcome in war’.34 Second, Kant seemed to 29 Kant, ‘Towards Perpetual Peace’, 329, emphasis in original. 30 Ibid., 329–30. 31 Immanuel Kant, ‘Metaphysics of Morals’, in Kant, Practical Philosophy, 417. 32 Kant describes this as the tendency of people ‘to enter into society, which, however, is combined with a thoroughgoing resistance that constantly threatens to break up this society’. See Immanuel Kant, ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim’, in Kant, Anthropology, History and Education, 111. This is a productive tension because it eventually drives people towards the resolution found in a republican constitution. 33 Kant, ‘Metaphysics of Morals’, 558. 34 Ibid., 486.

31892_Williams.indd 67

20-10-15 08:23

68

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

reject some of the common arguments in favour of settler colonialism. He specifically addressed the claim that European settlers had a right to appropriate what they thought of as ‘vacant lands’ in the Americas. This was an important question, ‘since nature itself (which abhors a vacuum) seems to demand it, and great expanses of land in other parts of the world, which are now splendidly populated, would otherwise have remained uninhabited by civilized people, or, indeed, would have to remain forever uninhabited, so that the end of creation would have been frustrated’. Kant said this argument was ‘to be repudiated’.35 Similarly, he rejected the kind of argument sometimes attributed to Locke that justified the appropriation of Amerindian lands on the basis of ‘improvement’.36 He observed that the ‘first working, enclosing, or in general transforming of a piece of land can furnish no title of acquisition to it’.37 ‘In order to acquire land is it necessary to develop it (build on it, cultivate it, drain it and so on)? No … When first acquisition is in question, developing land is nothing more than an external sign of taking possession’.38 Kant went on: ‘[I]t can still be asked whether when neither nature or chance but just our own will brings us into the neighbourhood of a people that holds out no prospect of a civil union with it, we should not be authorized to found colonies by force if need be in order to establish a civil union with them and bring these men (savages) into a rightful condition.’ Kant’s answer to this question was unequivocal: ‘[I]t is easy to see through this veil of injustice (Jesuitism) which would sanction any means to good end’.39 He said that there was a right to establish settlements where they are ‘so far from where that people reside that there is no encroachment on anyone’s use of his land’, but that if the nation involved is a pastoral or hunting people who rely upon large tracts of land, ‘settlement may not take place by force, but only by contract, and indeed by a contract that does not 35 Ibid., 418. This quote also starts to illustrate some of the ambiguities in Kant’s position that we will explore in the next section. 36 This is a much-debated issue. On one reading, Locke did justify this; see esp. James Tully, An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993), chap. 5. Whether Locke actually made this kind of argument is uncertain, but Tully shows that it was widely used. 37 Kant, ‘Metaphysics of Morals’, 419. 38 Ibid., 417. 39 Ibid., 417–18.

31892_Williams.indd 68

20-10-15 08:23



Kant on Universal Right, Universal History, and the European State 69

take advantage of the ignorance of those inhabitants with regard to ­ceding their lands’.40 Third, Kant was scathing about the idea that conquest was justified on the basis that ‘crude peoples will become civilized’. He called this argument ‘specious’ and said ‘all these supposed good intentions cannot wash away the stain of injustice in the means used for them’.41 Such a justification was obviously in stark contrast to what Kant saw as the realities of colonialism, but it also chimes with Kant’s scepticism about paternalistic forms of government and the paternalistic impulse more generally that could be used to justify European colonial rule. Kant pointed in several places to the abuses that often follow from the assumption of paternalistic powers. He said in Perpetual Peace that the ‘possession of power unavoidably corrupts the free judgment of reason’, and he described paternalistic sovereigns burdening their people like animals and using ‘human beings as mere machines or tools’ in the prosecution of wars.42 On this view, even if some kind of paternalistic government might be justified in principle, a more sober assessment of what actual happens reveals the political dangers of this kind of rule. Kant also seemed to reject the idea that we have any duty to ‘improve’ others, and raised at least some doubt about the possibility of even doing so.43 ‘So too, it is a contradiction for me to make another’s perfection my end and consider myself under obligation to promote this. For the perfection of another human being, as a person, consists just in this: that he himself is able to set his end in accordance with his own concepts of duty; and it is a contradiction to require that I do (make it my duty to do) something that only he himself can do’.44 Kant explicitly linked this general argument to his endorsement of a right of resistance: ‘Since as long as they [neighbouring peoples] keep within their boundaries the way they want to live on their own land is up to their discretion’.45 Although

40 Ibid., 490. This indicates that Kant knew these kinds of practices were widespread. 41 Ibid., 490. 42 Kant, ‘Towards Perpetual Peace’, 338, 318. 43 I say ‘some doubt’ because below we will discuss the institutional conditions under which man might actually fulfil his highest ends. 44 Kant, ‘Metaphysics of Morals’, 517–18, emphasis in original. 45 Ibid., 417.

31892_Williams.indd 69

20-10-15 08:23

70

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

there is a good deal of debate about these anti-paternalist arguments within the literature on Kant’s moral theory, they do seem to directly counter any paternalist justification for colonialism on the grounds that there was no duty to ‘civilize’ others, that in the end such an objective is not something that can be done for others, and that the power to attempt such a thing is very likely to be abused.46 More broadly, Kant’s anti-colonial arguments can be linked to his claims about the intrinsic worth of all persons. There are some tricky interpretive issues here surrounding Kant’s idea of ‘humanity’ and exactly what the Categorical Imperative enjoins us to do.47 But one obvious reading of Kant’s arguments is that all persons, by virtue of their shared humanity, are entitled to be treated with respect and dignity. In Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals, Kant formulates the Categorical Imperative in this way: ‘Act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely a means’.48 In another formulation, Kant said that a person can ‘claim to be an end in himself, to be accepted as such by all others, and not to be used by anyone else simply as a means to other ends’.49 As he put it in Metaphysics of Morals, ‘a human being regarded as a person, that is as the subject of a morally practiced reason, is exalted above any price; for as a person he is not to be valued merely as a means to the end of others or even to his own ends, but as an end it itself, that is, he possesses a dignity (an absolute inner worth) by which he exacts respect for himself from all other rational beings in the world’.50 Kant’s identification of characteristic traits of our humanity (a certain kind of freedom and rationality) that deserve respect can obviously operate to condemn much of colonial practice, which most evidently did not treat

46 Muthu, Enlightenment against Empire, makes this argument (esp. in chap. 5). 47 For a helpful discussion, see Thomas Hill, ‘Humanity as an End in Itself’, Ethics 91, no. 1 (1980): 84–99. 48 Immanuel Kant, ‘Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals’, in Kant, Practical Philosophy, 80. 49 Immanuel Kant, ‘Conjectural Beginning of Human History’, in Kant, Anthropology, History, and Education, 168. 50 Kant, ‘Metaphysics of Morals’, 557.

31892_Williams.indd 70

20-10-15 08:23



Kant on Universal Right, Universal History, and the European State 71

people in diverse societies as ends in themselves and even, in important ways, denied them their humanity.51 The final part of Kant’s broader philosophy that seems to have anticolonial implications is his discussion of the conditions for establishing a ‘universal and lasting peace’. While such a peace was a long way from reality, some of what Kant said about this would seem to rule out conquest and colonial rule: ‘[F]or the condition of peace is alone that condition in which what is mine and what is yours for a multitude of human beings is secured under laws living in proximity to one another, hence those who are united under a constitution; but the rule for this constitution, as a norm for others, cannot be derived from the experience of those who have hitherto found it to be to their advantage; it must, rather be derived a priori by reason from the ideal of a rightful association of human beings under law’.52 In other words, while states ought to ‘give up their savage and lawless condition’ and establish a ‘rational’ form of coexistence, such a peace cannot be the result of the powerful states imposing themselves upon other societies (Kant does not justify the use of force by liberal states to promote republican or democratic forms of government in other places). In addition, Kant was clear that, when such a peace was established, there would be a prohibition on ‘interference in the constitution and government of another state’. And this prohibition extends even to those states that cause ‘scandal or offence’. Rather than being offended or scandalized, we should take such states as a ‘bad example’ of the ‘great troubles that a people has incurred by its ‘lawlessness’.53 And we might tie this argument back to Kant’s anti-paternalistic claims that we cannot ‘perfect’ others and should not try to do so. It is clear, then, that Kant does provide a critique of European conquest and colonial rule. He argued that colonialism as actually practised was cruel and unjust, and he thought the hypocrisy associated with it

51 As we shall see later, there are some obvious difficulties squaring this claim with some of the racialized hierarchies Kant also used (at times). But it may provide evidence that Kant abandoned these hierarchies and embraced a more far-reaching cosmopolitanism in the mature works, signalled first in the ‘Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals’. 52 Kant, ‘Metaphysics of Morals’, 491. 53 Kant, ‘Toward Perpetual Peace’, 319.

31892_Williams.indd 71

20-10-15 08:23

72

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

was immoral. He seems to have endorsed a right of resistance to European expansion on the part of native people, and he specifically rejected some of the standard justifications for European colonialism. Finally, his arguments about the intrinsic worth of all persons and his understanding of the conditions for the development of a perpetual peace all provide avenues for arguing against European conquest and colonial rule. Certainly, the example of Kant shows that not all liberal thinkers supported some version of a civilizing mission as a justification for European colonialism.

Colonialism and Universal History Yet to read Kant simply as an anti-colonial thinker does not really do justice to the ambivalences we find in his thought. The first of these ambivalences relates to the place of European conquest and colonial rule in the course of a progressive history, and, despite the rather different conceptual apparatus Kant used, we can see some similarities with Smith on this issue. Within Kant’s thought there seem to be at least three ways in which he justified taking human history as a ‘purpose directed process of progress’.54 The first two relate to specific human needs (or interests). One is a cognitive interest of our reason in unifying the law-governed realm of appearance with our own free will and selfdetermination. Our reflective judgement utilizes the concept of ‘purposiveness’ to make sense of what would otherwise simply be the ‘nonsensical course of things human’.55 This is something we are driven to do by our nature as reasoning beings. The other answers to what we might call a moral need. A belief in the moral law presupposes its realizability, and in turn this implies that moral agents in the past also took this view. With this Kant can claim that the actions of these past persons (motivated by the moral law) cannot have been entirely fruitless, and will have left a moral trace that following generations can build on. This also answers to a larger existential need for some kind of ‘hope’ that man’s destiny can be fulfilled here on earth.56 54 The phrase is from Honneth, ‘The Irreducibility of Progress’, 3. In what ­follows I draw from this article. 55 Immanuel Kant, ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim’, in Kant, Anthropology, History, and Education, 109. 56 Ibid., 119.

31892_Williams.indd 72

20-10-15 08:23



Kant on Universal Right, Universal History, and the European State 73

As we shall see later, there are some important questions we can ask about these attempts to link universal traits of human reasoning to the idea of a progressive history. For now, though, Kant’s ambivalences about the role of European expansion in the course of progress can be seen through a third way in which he grounds a commitment to a progressive history. Kant does not appeal to a purposive nature exactly but rather to an emerging moral consciousness that he associated with the process of enlightenment itself.57 ‘If it is now asked whether we at present live in an enlightened age, the answer is: No, but we live in an age of enlightenment … the hindrances to universal enlightenment, or to humankind’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity, are gradually becoming fewer’.58 Here a progressive history is given an empirical and historical reality as a process of cumulative development.59 This provides a particular role for philosophers (including himself, of course) in explicating, and indeed encouraging, the development of enlightened consciousness, and thus we can read some of Kant’s work as explicitly embodying a kind of political project. Importantly, though, this view also opens up another way of thinking about what might otherwise be immoral or unjust events and processes. In this mode we can ask of the events of history how they themselves contribute to the development of enlightenment and the achievement of man’s ultimate ends.60 In other words, and to put it rather bluntly, we can ask of events and process not simply whether they are right or wrong but whether they contribute to ‘progress’. A classic example is the French Revolution.61 Kant not only prohibited ‘rebellion’ as a tool for overthrowing an oppressive ‘tyrant’, but he condemned the ‘miseries’ and ‘atrocities’ associated with the French

57 Honneth, ‘The Irreducibility of Progress’, 7–10. 58 Immanuel Kant, ‘An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?’, in Kant, Practical Philosophy, 21. 59 The classic interpretation here is Yimiyahu Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy of History (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press 1980). As noted above, Kant’s historicization of reason creates significant tensions for his moral philosophy. See Honneth, ‘The Irreducibility of Progress’, n.10. 60 McCarthy, Race, Empire and the Idea of Human Development, 62. 61 Jeremy Waldron, ‘Kant’s Theory of the State’, in Immanuel Kant, Towards Perpetual Peace and Other Writings on Politics, Peace and History, ed. P. Kleingeld (New Haven, ct: Yale University Press 2006), 179–200.

31892_Williams.indd 73

20-10-15 08:23

74

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

Revolution.62 On the other hand, he also argued that the tumultuous events had drawn out or encouraged the development of the ‘moral character of man’ and that this was evidence that mankind was improving.63 What is more, anyone committed to the ideals of the French Revolution could interpret it only from within a progressive account of history – the past has led to this present, which is superior in important respects to that past, and, in turn, the present stands as a stepping stone towards a still better future.64 War was another example. While Kant was not a pacifist, he clearly saw war as the source of a whole litany of ills. But Kant also gave war a particularly important role in the development of a perpetual peace (at least in Europe).65 As he put it, ‘at the stage of culture where humankind still stands, war is an indispensable means of bringing culture still further’.66 In the Critique of Judgment Kant argued that war demonstrated ‘a deeply hidden and perhaps intentional effort of the supreme wisdom, if not to establish, then at least to prepare the way for lawfulness’.67 When it comes to colonialism, this way of thinking about progressive history suggests that Kant’s condemnation of many of the practices of European conquest and colonialism as unjust is not quite the end of the matter. Indeed, if we look at the section in Perpetual Peace where Kant produces some of his most emphatic condemnations of colonialism, we find that he says immediately afterwards that ‘the … community of the nations of the earth has now gone so far that a violation of right in one place of the earth is felt in all’. This historical development was important for Kant as it demonstrated that the idea of cosmopolitan right was not ‘fantastic and exaggerated’. Indeed, the actual empirical

62 Immanuel Kant, ‘Contest of the Faculties’, in Immanuel Kant, Political Writings, ed. H.S. Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991), 183. For a discussion, see Katrin Flikschuh, ‘Reason, Right and Revolution: Kant and Locke’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 36, no. 4 (2008): 375–404; and Sidney Axinn, ‘Kant, Authority, and the French Revolution’, Journal of the History of Ideas 32, no. 3 (1971): 423–32. 63 Kant, ‘Contest of the Faculties’, 181–2. 64 Ibid., 182–5. Again see Honneth, ‘The Irreducibility of Progress’. 65 Kant, ‘Towards Perpetual Peace’, 331–7. For a discussion, see Valdez, ‘It’s Not About Race’. 66 Immanuel Kant, ‘Conjectural Beginning of Human History’, in Kant, Anthropology, History, and Education, 173. 67 Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. E. Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002), 300.

31892_Williams.indd 74

20-10-15 08:23



Kant on Universal Right, Universal History, and the European State 75

existence of some form of universal community was, according to Kant, a ‘necessary’ part of the achievement of universal right.68 Kant then condemned the actions of colonizers as ‘contrary to right’ but also said that colonialism had been part of the process of bringing ‘the human race ever closer to a cosmopolitan constitution’.69 On this interpretation, European expansion is actually itself part of the progressive course of human history. European conquest and colonialism had occasioned much cruelty, and been accompanied by injustice and hypocrisy, but it had also been part of the process whereby humanity was increasingly united; and in turn such unity was a necessary condition for the recognition of a ‘universal right of humanity’ that was a central part of what Kant saw as the providence of man.70 Of course, for Kant, colonialism was only a waypoint on a longer journey and the crucial task was the development of ‘peaceful mutual relations’ between states; however, as part of this journey, colonialism could be both contrary to right and progressive. But there is more to it than this because Kant saw colonialism as playing a vital role not only in the development of a truly cosmopolitan consciousness but also in stimulating progress in conquered and colonized societies. Kant never argued that the places he mentioned (America, the ‘Negro countries’, the Spice Islands) should not have been ‘discovered’ and brought into contact with European states. As noted, Kant seems to defend the rights of the peoples of some of these places, at least in terms of the legitimacy of their resistance to European conquest and the appropriation of their land. But, even if we see this resistance as sanctioned by right and ‘productive’, it is only so because of European expansion. Without such expansion, societies would not be forced to assert their rights and demand dignity and respect. European expansion had been a mechanism for joining them to a progressive historical process.71 This is clear in Kant’s famous remark

68 Kant, ‘Towards Perpetual Peace’, 330. 69 Ibid., 329. 70 Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France, c.1500–1800 (New Haven, ct: Yale University Press 1998), 62; and Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key: Vol. II, 146. 71 Anthony Pagden, ‘The Law of Continuity: Conquest and Settlement within the Limits of Kant’s International Right’, in Flikshuh and Ypi, eds., Kant and Colonialism, 19–42.

31892_Williams.indd 75

20-10-15 08:23

76

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

about Tahiti in a review of Johann Gotfried von Herder’s Ideas on the Philosophy of History of Mankind: ‘[D]oes he [Herder] mean that, if the happy inhabitants of Tahiti never visited by more civilized nations, were destined to live in their peaceful indolence for thousands of centuries it would be possible to give a satisfactory answer to the question of why they should exist at all, and of whether it would not have been just as good if this island had been occupied by happy sheep and cattle as by happy human beings who merely enjoy themselves?’72 The people of Tahiti may have been ‘happy’ before their ‘discovery’ by Europeans, but for Kant being ‘happy’ is not what humans are destined for.73 Left ‘undiscovered’, the people of Tahiti would be outside of the processes of progressive history and thus have no reason to ‘develop’ themselves. Contact with ‘more civilized nations’ might provide the jolt they need – otherwise, they would be destined to remain forever in ‘peaceful indolence’.74 To be sure, being ‘visited by more civilized nations’ is also and obviously (as Kant knew) the cause of all kinds of cruelties and injustices, but it is also productive not just of a cosmopolitan consciousness, itself a vital part of a progressive history, but also of the impulse to progress on the part of individual societies. Seen in this way, European colonialism, and European expansion more generally, is part of the answer to the question of how desirable goods and ends actually get instantiated in the world.

Human Diversity and the Question of Race Kant’s attitude towards Tahiti, as well as his judgements about the Tahitians (happy sheep), raises the more general and more fraught 72 Immanuel Kant, ‘Review of Herder’s Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind’, in Kant, Political Writings, 219–20. 73 McCarthy, Race, Empire and the Idea of Human Development, 61. See also Sonia Sikka, ‘On the Value of Happiness: Herder Contra Kant’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37, no. 4 (2007): 515–46. 74 This was far from the only way in which Europeans thought about Tahiti. For discussions of the varied Enlightenment responses to the ‘discovery’ of Tahiti, see David Harvey, The French Enlightenment and Its Others: The Mandarin, the Savage and the Inventions of the Human Science (London: Palgrave 2012), chap. 4; and, more generally, Anne Salmond, Aphrodite’s Island: The European Discovery of Tahiti (Berkeley: University of California Press 2011).

31892_Williams.indd 76

20-10-15 08:23



Kant on Universal Right, Universal History, and the European State 77

question about how Kant accounted for cultural pluralism. As Kant put it at the beginning of ‘Determination of the Concept of a Human Race’, ‘[t]he knowledge which the new travels have disseminated about the manifoldness in the human species so far have contributed more to exciting the understanding to investigation on this point than to satisfying it’.75 As we have seen with Smith, Kant was far from alone in wresting with this subject.76 But the issue of the ‘manifoldness’ of the human species is especially acute in the case of Kant because universal claims about human beings seem to play such a central role within his philosophy and especially his moral theory.77 The underpinning of Kant’s Categorical Imperative, for example, is the claim that all persons are entitled to be treated as ends because of their shared humanity. We can identify at least three ways in which Kant tried to account for different kinds of human diversity, each of which has its own implications for how we understand his attempt to mediate between various forms of universalism and the realities of cultural pluralism. The first attempt was, broadly speaking, a biological explanation for certain racial characteristics, notably skin colour. The origin of different skin colours was much debated at the time. At the heart of the debate was a dispute between those who explained these differences as the result of several distinct acts of creation (polygenesis) and those who attributed them to divergence following a single act of creation (monogenesis).78 Kant was firmly in the monogenesis camp.79 He was quite clear that ‘the class of whites is not distinguished from that of blacks as a special kind within the human species, and there are no different kinds of human

75 Immanuel Kant, ‘Determination of the Concept of a Human Race’, in Kant, Anthropology, History, and Education, 145. 76 See Harvey, The French Enlightenment and Its Others; Berman, Enlightenment or Empire; and Henry Vyverberg, Human Nature, Cultural Diversity and the French Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1989). 77 Frierson, What Is the Human Being? chap. 1. I discuss aspects of Kant’s moral theory in the next section. 78 Lord Kames (friend of Smith) was a leading advocate of polygenesis. See Henry Home, Lord Kames, Sketches on the History of Man, ed. J. Harris (Indianapolis, in: Liberty Fund 2007 [1776]). 79 For a discussion, see Alix Cohen, Kant and the Human Sciences: Biology, Anthropology and History (London: Palgrave 2009), 25–34.

31892_Williams.indd 77

20-10-15 08:23

78

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

beings’.80 Kant justified this position by appealing to ‘Buffon’s rule’ that ‘animals which produce fertile young with one another … belong to the same physical species’.81 Kant’s arguments about skin colour relied on the idea of ‘germs’ or ’seeds’ planted in all humans that were ‘developed’ in different climatic or environmental conditions. Once these germs had ‘developed’, they were inherited. Much of this theory was highly speculative, as was pointed out at the time.82 But such an explanation for a form of physical difference has by itself no implications for the potentialities of human reason among different groups. It only suggests that there are adaptive physical changes. It is also not hard to see that such a biological argument was in fact essential for the moral claim that there was something called ‘humanity’ that encompassed all humans and in turn the claim there was a universal right – and essential, too, for Kant’s judgements about the cruelties and injustices of colonialism itself. In other words, this kind of biological explanation was a way of holding on to the politically powerful claim about the essential unity of the human race while also explaining some aspects of diversity. Finally, it is important to realize that Kant’s choice of skin colour as a key marker of difference was related to his view that skin colour was a sign of adaptation to different climatic and environmental conditions, and that this was itself evidence of nature’s purposiveness – the possibility of this adaptation was implanted by nature so that humans could inhabit all parts of the world.83 And this in turn created a world of diverse communities that formed the basic conditions for the unfolding of a process towards a universal and perpetual peace.84 The second form of explanation that Kant at times employed, however, did suggest that there were important cognitive differences between the races and thus that some groups would be more or less permanently excluded from his understanding of what it meant to be a fully

80 Kant, ‘Determination of the Concept of a Human Race’, 153, emphasis in original. See also Immanuel Kant, ‘Of the Different Races of Human Beings’, in Kant, Anthropology, History, and Education, 86. As Frierson has argued, in some respects Kant’s race theory was deeply anti-racist; see What Is the Human Being? 108. 81 Kant, ‘Of the Different Races of Human Beings’, 84. 82 Flikshuh and Ypi, ‘Introduction’, 5–6. 83 Kant, ‘Determination of the Concept of a Human Race’, 156–9. See also Frierson, What Is the Human Being? 109–10. 84 Kant, ‘Towards Perpetual Peace’, 332–4.

31892_Williams.indd 78

20-10-15 08:23



Kant on Universal Right, Universal History, and the European State 79

developed human person.85 There are tricky areas of interpretation here and the debate continues.86 Nonetheless, there is considerable evidence for Kant’s use of racial hierarchies and their exclusionary implications. ‘Humanity’, Kant said, ‘is at its greatest perfection in the race of the whites. The yellow Indians do have a meager talent. The Negroes are far below them and at the lowest point are a part of the American People’.87 For Kant, this hierarchy was primarily related to what he saw as differences in the mental capacities of these races. ‘The Negroes of Africa have by nature no feeling that rises above the ridiculous. Mr Hume has challenged anyone to adduce a single example where a Negro has demonstrated talents … So essential is the difference between these two human kinds, and it seems to be just as great with regard to the capacities of mind as it is with respect to colour’.88 The ‘essential difference’ between the character of ‘oriental nations’ and that of Europeans was, he said, related to the ‘capacity to act in accordance with concepts and principles’. ‘[O]riental nations’ are not in a position to explain a single property of morality or of justice through concepts; rather, all their morals are based on appearances.89 Kant said that the ‘savages’ of North America were ‘too weak for hard labour, too indifferent for industry, and incapable of any culture – although there is enough of it as example and encouragement nearby’.90 This last quote is important because it was not here a question of never having been exposed to ‘example and encouragement’, as was the case with the 85 Frierson, What Is the Human Being? 105. 86 See McCarthy, Race, Empire and the Idea of Human Development, chap. 2. For reviews, see Pauline Kleingeld, ‘Kant’s Second Thought on Race’; and Mark Larrimore, ‘Antinomies of Race: Diversity and Destiny in Kant’, Patterns of Prejudice 42, nos. 4–5 (2009): 341–63. Robert Bernasconi has done the most to focus attention on the racial elements of Kant’s thought. See esp. ‘Who Invented the Concept of Race? Kant’s Role in the Enlightenment Construction of Race’, in R. Bernasconi, ed., Race (Oxford: Blackwell 2001), 11–36; ‘Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Racism’, in T. Lott and J. Ward, eds., Philosophers on Race (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002), 145–66; and ‘Kant’s Third Thoughts on Race’. 87 Immanuel Kant, ‘Physical Geography’, in Immanuel Kant, Natural Science, ed. E. Watkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012), 576. 88 Immanuel Kant, ‘Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime’, in Kant, Anthropology, History, and Education, 59. 89 Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Anthropology, eds. A. Wood and R. Louden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012), 197–8. 90 Kant, ‘On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy’, 211.

31892_Williams.indd 79

20-10-15 08:23

80

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

people of Tahiti, but of simply being incapable of moral development even when so exposed. Here Kant seems to say that, while there might be some basic biological unity to the human species (the different races can procreate), there are in fact profound differences in the capacities and potentialities of the races that explain the different forms of life among them, with the clear implication that some groups will simply never be capable of the kind of moral development that Kant considered as man’s proper end.91 A third form of explanation that we might tease out of Kant is not so explicitly racial but is instead temporal/institutional. This links up with Kant’s account of history and the ‘unsocial sociability’ that drives the ‘progress towards perfection’ that is the ‘destiny’ of the human species.92 In a long footnote to Conjectural Beginning of Human History, Kant suggested that ‘nature’ had endowed humans with two distinct abilities for two distinct purposes’, ‘namely that of man as an animal species and man as a moral species’. There is thus ‘conflict between man’s aspiration towards his moral destiny on the one hand and his unchanging obedience to laws inherent in his nature and appropriate to a crude an animal condition on the other’.93 Sometimes Kant explains differences in the attitudes and behaviours of different human groups based on the relative weight or strength of these human impulses within particular groups. So, for example, he talks of the ‘lawless freedom’ of primitive peoples.94 ‘We see this also among savage nations … with them, however, it is not the noble love of freedom which Rousseau and others imagine, but a kind of barbarism – the animal so to speak, not having yet developed its human nature’.95 Here there are very broad temporal distinctions that explain differences in the attitudes and behaviours of particular groups. At other times, Kant comes much closer to Smith by identifying the specific ways in which the story (albeit ‘conjectural’) of human development through various

91 As many commentators have pointed out, such a claim creates all kinds of problems for Kant’s moral philosophy, and, for some, that is why it drops out of the later works. See, for example, Kleingeld, ‘Kant’s Second Thoughts on Race’. 92 Kant, ‘Conjectural Beginning of Human History’, 169. 93 Ibid., 169–70. 94 Kant, ‘Towards Perpetual Peace’, 333. 95 Immanuel Kant, Kant on Education (Wokingham, uk: Dodo Press 2009), 3.

31892_Williams.indd 80

20-10-15 08:23



Kant on Universal Right, Universal History, and the European State 81

steps is associated with different institutional and cultural arrangements.96 So the development of settled agriculture leads to the development of larger human communities and ‘mutual exchange’, which in turn gives rise to civil constitutions, culture, and art.97 Either way, the differences between human groups are accounted for in terms of the story of human development. This generates a kind of temporal hierarchy whereby European states are more ‘developed’, and it is in this context, Kant said, that these states ‘will probably legislate for all other continents’, though the story itself is driven by the ‘germs implanted by nature’.98 In short, humans are cultural beings: the morals manners and institutions of human groups reflect their particular ­developmental circumstances. There is no easy way of reconciling these different accounts of human diversity.99 In one version certain groups simply are excluded from the ultimate ends of the human species, while the other versions are either agnostic on this question or in fact presuppose some essential unifying characteristics that drive humanity towards its destiny. In some versions the differences between human groups are explained biologically, while at other times they are explained by the ways in which human impulses play out in the development of different social and cultural arrangements. Sometimes Kant’s use of racial hierarchies and the exclusions he associated with them is very clear, but at other times he does not seem to employ these hierarchies at all. Sometimes the unity of the human race is simply a question of human reproduction, and sometimes it is attributed to a shared human nature. We are left, I think, with a revealing set of tensions and ambiguities. The obvious fact of human diversity had to be accounted for in some way. Either human diversity was such that some groups were simply excluded from certain ends, but that threatened the universalism that underpinned both the teleological

96 For a discussion, see John Zammito, Kant, Herder and the Birth of Anthropology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2002), chap. 7. 97 Kant, ‘Conjectural Beginning of Human History’, 171–3. 98 Kant, ‘Idea for a Universal History’, 229. 99 Daniel Carey and Sven Trakulhun, ‘Universalism, Diversity and the Postcolonial Enlightenment’, in D. Carey and K. Fetsa, eds., The Postcolonial Enlightenment: Eighteenth Century Colonialism and Postcolonial Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013), 261–3.

31892_Williams.indd 81

20-10-15 08:23

82

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

account of history (driven by universal human traits) and the morality that operated to condemn colonialism as unjust (a shared humanity). Alternatively, human diversity had to be accounted for in such a way that it was made compatible with both the teleology and the morality, but this then generated a temporally inflected hierarchy of human societies.

M o r a l i t y, M o r a l A n t h r o p o l o g y, a n d   t h e   E u r o p e a n S tat e It is possible to make a bit more analytical progress if we turn specifically to the issue of Kant’s moral theory and the process of moral development in the context of the ‘manifoldness’ of the human species. We noted above that one of Kant’s explanations for human diversity was that humans were cultural beings. This might make sense, but it also created certain problems (as it did for Smith) since it raised the issue of the relationship between culturally conditioned forms of human diversity and a commitment to a universal account of the structures of human reasoning and morality. There are two ways out of this, and both of them bear on how we might think about Kant’s understanding of the relationship between European states and diverse others. The first of these relates to Kant’s understanding of morality, and more specifically the nature of moral reasoning.100 Kant quite explicitly aimed to develop a universal and ahistorical account of moral experience. He did so by appealing not to the content of particular moral rules but to the character of moral thinking itself.101 Only by avoiding reference to empirical matters could a truly universal morality be developed (which could then be applied to empirical matters). And it is in following this method that Kant develops the Categorical Imperative as a way of bringing conceptions of moral duties under a single formula.102 Kant also sometimes makes the stronger claim that consciousness of the moral law is a fact of ‘pure reason’.103 His moral theory thus involves two ahistorical (universal) claims: first, that is it possible to

100 Here I am especially indebted to Stern, ‘The Problem of History and Temporality in Kantian Ethics’. 101 See, for example, Kant, ‘Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals’, 44. 102 Stern, ‘The Problem of History and Temporality in Kantian Ethics’, 508. 103 See, generally, Immanuel Kant, ‘Critique of Practical Reason’, in Kant, Practical Philosophy, 139–271.

31892_Williams.indd 82

20-10-15 08:23



Kant on Universal Right, Universal History, and the European State 83

identify some common form of moral reasoning; and second, that there is a common and fundamental experience of moral obligation.104 As Paul Stern has argued, however, this account of morality and some of its most significant features are most certainly not ones that could reasonably be thought actually to be (empirically) universal. In particular, Kant’s account of the unconditional character of the moral ‘ought’ is ‘internally connected’ to the modern idea of autonomy. That is, Kant’s ‘ought’ implies that ‘the agent is morally obligated to obey only those principles that pass the test of his own reason, which is now construed as an independently validated standard’.105 Far from identifying a universal morality, Kant in fact produces a highly stylized account of a particularly modern idea of autonomous reasoning, with the implication that alternative ways of understanding ‘ought’ – that it is socially prescribed or reflects the will of God – are in some important respects deficient.106 Here the identification of a form of moral reasoning beyond the ‘manifoldness’ of the human species actually happens by inscribing one form of this manifoldness (modern Europe) as a universal condition. This does not by itself imply that Kant’s moral theory is not ‘true’, but it does suggest that he was employing a temporal sleight of hand. The kind of reasoning characteristic of the end of the historical process (obedience to the principles arrived at through our autonomous reasoning) is smuggled in as a universal human trait that serves to underpin the account of universal morality (the Categorical Imperative, for example) and to judge the morality and reasoning of others (such as the people of Tahiti) as defective in some way. A second way out of the tension between cultural pluralism and universalism is provided by Kant’s moral anthropology. And here we can see particularly clearly some of the parallels with Smith. Kant was asking the same kind of question as Smith asked in Theory of Moral Sentiments – How do people actually come to have particular moral commitments? – and his answer was not dissimilar. Kant left no doubt that making the claims of Kantian ethics ‘effective in concreto’ was not at all easy.107 This

104 Stern, ‘The Problem of History and Temporality in Kantian Ethics’, 512. 105 Ibid., 519–20. 106 Pauline Kleingeld calls this is the ‘moral equality problem’ – some groups are more morally advanced than others. See Kleingeld, ‘Kant, History and the Idea of Moral Development’. 107 Kant, ‘Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals’, 45.

31892_Williams.indd 83

20-10-15 08:23

84

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

process was a struggle: ‘[T]he love of freedom is naturally so strong in man, that when once he has grown accustomed to freedom he will sacrifice everything for its sake … undisciplined men are apt to follow every caprice’.108 Kant’s ‘moral anthropology’ was concerned with how to make human beings ready to follow moral laws.109 How is it, Kant asked, that man can come to accustom himself to ‘yield to the commands of reason’ and have the courage to use his own understanding?110 For Kant, two processes were central and both hinge on the fact that humans are cultural beings. The first is the role of education. Kant said that without proper education children are ‘like the inhabitants of Tahiti, who remain children all their lives’.111 And in several places Kant stressed the centrality of education to the development of man’s ‘original capacities’: ‘The human being is capable of, and in need of, an education in both instruction and training (discipline)’;112 ‘Man can only become man by education. He is merely what education makes of him’;113 ‘We animal creatures are made into human beings only by education’.114 Kant’s writings demonstrate that he thought much of the education provided at the time was inadequate, but he also held out the hope that the path of universal history would be much assisted by improving education: ‘It may be that education will be constantly improved, and that each succeeding generation will advance one step towards the perfecting of mankind; for with education is involved the great secret of the perfection of human nature’.115 Already this suggests 108 Kant, Kant on Education, 2. 109 For a discussion, see Frierson, What Is the Human Being? 121–4; and Robert Louden, ‘Applying Kant’s Ethics: The Role of Anthropology’, in G. Bird, ed., A Companion to Kant (Oxford: Blackwell 2006), 350–63. 110 Kant, Kant on Education, 3; Kant, ‘What Is Enlightenment?’ 17. 111 Kant, Kant on Education, 17. 112 Immanuel Kant, ‘Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View’, in Kant, Anthropology, History and Education, 418. 113 Kant, Kant on Education, 4. 114 Immanuel Kant, ‘Essays regarding the Philanthropinum’, in Kant, Anthropology, History, and Education, 102. 115 Kant, Kant on Education, 4. This explains his particular admiration for the Philanthropinum Institute; see Kant ‘Essays regarding the Philanthropinum’. It was founded on Enlightenment principles in 1774 in Dessau. Kant called the school the ‘greatest phenomenon which has appeared in this century for the perfection of huma­ nity’: Robert Louden, Kant’s Human Beings: Essays on His Theory of Human Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2011), 142.

31892_Williams.indd 84

20-10-15 08:23



Kant on Universal Right, Universal History, and the European State 85

that Kant’s understanding of the conditions for the ‘perfecting of ­mankind’ are related to processes of (a reformed) formal education in European states. The second process is the development of a wider set of political and institutional structures that enabled people to fulfil their duty to improve themselves. Everything Kant had to say on this issue suggests that he understood the (perhaps nascent) institutional conditions of European states as providing the best framework for the achievement of enlightened and disciplined freedom. The idea that people can achieve enlightenment and culture only under certain kinds of institutional conditions is, of course, confirmed by Kant’s argument that it is only within a state with a republican constitution that human beings can fulfil their destiny to live in freedom with others under universal laws created by themselves. But even before European states had reached this ‘end’, the ‘imperfect’ practices of European government assisted in the process of moral development. The ‘veneer of morality’ created by the enforcement of the law, for example, itself helped the development of moral capacities, and the promotion of ‘prosperity, strength, health, and well-being in general’ was important not in itself but as ‘a means to removing obstacles’ to morality.116 As Bonnie Honig has argued, without the stability of the state’s institutions and the security of its ethical and juridical practices (and the violence of its maintenance), the species would have little hope of ever redeeming itself’.117 Or as Spivak has argued, Kant saw ‘raw man’ as awaiting the beneficial effects of culture.118 In this account Kant saw the development of moral commitments as ultimately the result of living within particular institutional structures. And this development was possible only because, like Smith, Kant saw people as cultural beings. Get the ‘culture’ right (through education and institutions) and the appropriate (‘enlightened’) form and style of moral reasoning will follow. Again, this provides an answer to the question of how certain ends are actually made real in the world. Indeed, such is the very message of ‘An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?’119

116 Kant, ‘Towards Perpetual Peace’, 343; Kant, ‘Metaphysics of Morals’, 519– 20. For a discussion, see Bonnie Honig, Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1993), 34–8. 117 Ibid., 38 118 Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, 14. 119 Kant, ‘What Is Enlightenment?’

31892_Williams.indd 85

20-10-15 08:23

86

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

For Kant, then, human beings could fulfil their destiny only within a certain kind of political and institutional structure that provided the conditions for the disciplined use of autonomous reasoning. Such a structure was very imperfectly expressed in the European states of Kant’s time, but it is clear that, for him, places such as Tahiti were a very, very long way from achieving these conditions. Whatever Kant’s objections to the practices of European colonialism, he most certainly could not imagine that the form of life of those colonized was in itself valuable as a way for humans to live. But there is also a temporal instability in Kant’s arguments here that risks the same kind of relativism some have seen in Smith. A timeless universal is set up as the grounds for a series of universal moral claims, but this same universal actually manifests itself only through the process of human development and in particular institutional settings. This relationship between the noumenal and the temporally inflected phenomenal worlds reflects, perhaps above all, Kant’s attempts to avoid the despair that would come from thinking there was nothing beyond the ‘senseless course of human events’.

Conclusion There are an important series of anti-colonial arguments in Kant. Many of Kant’s condemnations of European rule, especially the actions of European trading companies, have a powerful rhetorical force, particularly in exposing the hypocrisies of European states, and he engaged with, and rejected, some of the common justifications for European settler colonialism. In his anti-paternalist and cosmopolitan mode, Kant’s arguments clearly condemned conquest, colonial rule, and many of the practices associated with that rule as unjust. In that sense, Kant is certainly an anti-colonial thinker. But there are also ambivalences about the overall impact of European expansion on both the development of humanity as a whole and the possibilities of progress in previously ‘undiscovered’ places. And Kant’s discussions of race and the processes of human development all suggest he thought that the fulfillment of man’s destiny could take place only under certain political and institutional conditions that were best expressed (albeit imperfectly) in European states. What we see in Kant’s arguments about colonialism, and European expansion more generally, are some of the profound tensions that characterize forms of liberal thinking about relations with diverse

31892_Williams.indd 86

20-10-15 08:23



Kant on Universal Right, Universal History, and the European State 87

others. First, it is certainly possible to argue against colonialism on the basis that it is unjust and illegitimate. But, as Kant demonstrates, the commitment to a substantive concept of the good entails an assessment of the contribution of perhaps morally questionable practices to the achievement of that good. The instantiation of liberal ends in the actual institutions and practices of diverse societies requires much more than just an account of what might be unjust about the particular ways Europeans relate to plural others. It requires an account of how particular goods might be actually be promoted. And, like Smith, Kant did think that European conquest and colonial rule, for all their cruelties, had operated to advance certain goods – they had contributed to the emergence of a cosmopolitan community and jolted societies out of their indolence, forcing them through their productive resistance to develop their own moral faculties. Without this, people are destined to live ‘as children all their lives’. In other words, Kant points us particularly clearly to a tension within liberalism between the standpoint of justice and the standpoint of progress. European conquest and colonialism might be unjust, but they can also be conducive to progress. To claim that the standpoint of justice is all we need to judge colonialism is to suggest either that progress can take place without it (as in one reading of Smith), or that the achievement of justice is not dependent upon progress. Kant’s teleological view of history might give some grounds for accepting the former (although what Kant actually says about colonialism suggests otherwise) but it most certainly rejects the latter – the story of the development of the human race is a story of the development of justice ‘in concreto’. This points towards the second set tensions and ambiguities about universalism and cultural pluralism that are again characteristic of liberal thinking more generally. Much of Kant’s philosophy hinges on the idea that there are certain universal basic mental faculties and uncovering these is in fact the place where philosophy has to start.120 In turn, such an idea helps to provide the grounds for a particular account of morality that produces concepts such as the Categorical Imperative that can be put to use to condemn European colonialism. On one view, these are in important respects timeless. Yet, at the same time, they are also mostly not at all evident in actual societies, and only perhaps increasingly so

120 Frierson, What Is the Human Being? 13.

31892_Williams.indd 87

20-10-15 08:23

88

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

in Kant’s own time and place. So they are both true, but also not manifest; they are grounded in a universal appeal that has little actual empirical content, except insofar as they reflect a highly parochial account of what certain Europeans at a certain time and in a certain place took to be the basic forms of moral reasoning. Kant enshrined a particular end for humanity, and judged diverse others past and present in terms of that end, but it turns out not only that this end reflected a particular time and place, but that the only way of actually making that end manifest is for people to live within particular institutional structures. Finally, when Kant turns to talk about actual human societies, he leaves us with two options. One is that some groups of people will be simply excluded from man’s destiny by virtue of certain racial or cultural traits. If this is right for some groups, then any kind of liberal imperialism is a nonstarter: they do not have a full share of humanity and thus cannot come to have certain goods or end. The other alternative is that all peoples can indeed achieve man’s destiny, but in order to do so they must come to live within the framework of what are essentially European institutions and practices.

31892_Williams.indd 88

20-10-15 08:23

3

Jeremy Bentham, Utilitarianism, and Empire

as with smith and kant, Jeremy Bentham’s arguments about European colonialism have been the subject of extensive debate. For many years it was common to read Bentham’s own position through the arguments of some of his utilitarian followers, particularly James Mill and Thomas Macaulay, and especially in the context of British (East India Company) rule in India.1 James Mill was (in)famously enthusiastic about the progressive possibilities of British colonialism in India and (in)famously dismissive of Indian cultural traditions and institutions, and, along with Macaulay, he was one of the principle architects of the utilitarian reform program enacted in India in the early nineteenth century.2 Eric Stokes argued that Bentham both influenced and endorsed this utilitarian program.3 Bentham is reported to have said that ‘[James] Mill will be the living executive, I will be the dead

1 See, for example, Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1959). Donald Winch is a partial exception: see his Classical Political Economy and the Colonies (London: London School of Economics 1965). For a recent general exploration, see B. Schultz and G. Varouxakis, eds., Utilitarianism and Empire (Banham, uk: Lexington Books 2005). The point about reading Bentham through his utilitarian heirs is made by Stephan Engelmann and Jennifer Pitts in ‘Bentham’s “Place and Time”’, Tocqueville Review 32, no. 1 (2011): 43–66. For a discussion of James Mill’s arguments about India, see Javed Majeed, Ungoverned Imaginings: James Mill’s The History of British India and Orientalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1992). 2 Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India, is the classic study. For a more nuanced discussion, see Kartik Raman, ‘Utilitarianism and the Criminal Law in Colonial India: A Study of the Practical Limitations of Utilitarian Jurisprudence’, Modern Asian Studies 28, no. 4 (1994): 739–91. 3 For example, Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India, xiv.

31892_Williams.indd 89

20-10-15 08:23

90

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

legislative of British India’.4 In many ways, this reading has done a disservice to Bentham’s actual arguments about colonialism, however, and in recent years alternative lines of interpretation have emerged. One line goes beyond the case of India to explore Bentham’s arguments about European colonialism (and its associated mercantile practices) in the Americas. Peter Cain, for example, has argued that ‘Bentham made what was arguably the single greatest contribution to a radical critique of colonialism that began to emerge in the mid-eighteenth century and culminates in the work of J.A. Hobson’.5 On this reading, Bentham melded Smith’s arguments against mercantilist justifications for European colonialism with an increasingly radical political critique that sharpened some of Smith’s points about the ‘interests’ that lay behind such practices.6 A second line has approached Bentham’s arguments about India on their own merits, refusing to collapse them into the views of later utilitarians. Jennifer Pitts has argued that ‘[n]ot only did Bentham denounce the Spanish, French, and British Empires … but he also largely resisted the judgmental stance later utilitarians took towards non-European cultures, as well as their civilizing aspirations’.7 She suggests that the ‘dead legislative’ quote is to be seen not as an enthusiastic endorsement of British rule but rather as a resignedly ironic assessment of James Mill’s enthusiasm for radical reform in India that Bentham himself did not share.8 Pitt’s argues, along with Cain, that if Bentham’s arguments are to be assimilated to any tradition, it is to that of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment-inspired scepticism towards European conquest and colonial rule.9

4 Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham (Edinburgh: William Tait 1838–43), vol. x, 450. These were published under the superintendence of John Bowring, and so henceforth they will be referenced as Bowring Works with volume and page number. 5 Peter Cain, ‘Bentham and the Development of the British Critique of Colonialism’, Utilitas 23, no. 1 (2011): 1. 6 Ibid. Cain shows that Bentham was also indebted to Josiah Tucker and James Anderson. 7 Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press 2005), 103. See also Engelmann and Pitts, ‘Bentham’s “Place and Time’”. 8 Pitts, A Turn to Empire, 105. 9 Ibid., 121. See Sankar Muthu, Enlightenment against Empire (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press 2003), for one discussion of this tradition. An alternative picture is presented in David Harvey, The French Enlightenment and Its Others: The Mandarin, the Savage and the Invention of the Human Sciences (London: Palgrave 2012).

31892_Williams.indd 90

20-10-15 08:23



Bentham, Utilitarianism, and Empire 91

The fact that Bentham’s arguments about colonialism can be understood in such divergent ways is a sign of the interpretive difficulties that his life and corpus present.10 First of all, Bentham’s views about colonialism have to be extracted from his scattered and fragmentary writings over a period of fifty years, beginning with his first significant engagement with the issue in the early 1780s and continuing until his death in 1832. Second, Bentham’s long life (he was eight-four when he died) has encouraged uncertainty about where to situate his work: Should it be seen as part of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment tradition, which, as we have seen with Smith and Kant, evidenced some scepticism about European colonialism, or as part of nineteenth-century utilitarian liberalism, which was typically much less sceptical, as both James and John Stuart Mill demonstrate?11 Third, through his long life Bentham engaged with a variety of different kinds of colonialism, from European colonial rule of settler and plantation colonies in the Americas, to penal colonialism in Australia, through to British (East India Company) rule in India. As we shall see, his views about these very different forms of colonialism were rather different.12 In addition, many of Bentham’s pronouncements on the issues surrounding European colonialism were driven by ongoing political developments such as the French Revolution or the Spanish colonial crisis, and many of them were of an obviously rhetorical cast which can make it difficult to draw out a clear set of principles. There are several further difficulties. Given his long life, it is perhaps inevitable that Bentham’s thought changed and developed over time.13 This issue is exacerbated by the sheer size of Bentham’s

10 Winch, Classical Political Economy and the Colonies, 25. See also David Winch’s essay ‘Bentham on Colonies and Empire’, Utilitas 9, no. 1 (1997): 147–54. 11 For discussions of the influence of Enlightenment thought on Bentham, see, for example, Douglas Long, ‘Bentham as Revolutionary Social Scientist’, Man and Nature 6, (1987): 115–45; and Matthias Hoesch, ‘From Theory to Practice: Bentham’s Reception of Helvetius’, Utilitas 30, no. 3 (2018): 294–316. For a discussion of the assimilation of Bentham to nineteenth-century liberal thought, see Stephen Engelmann’s ‘Introduction’ in S. Engelmann, ed., Selected Writings: Jeremy Bentham (New Haven, ct: Yale University Press 2011), 7. 12 A point made by Lea Boralevi in Bentham and the Oppressed (Florence: European University Institute 1984), 134. 13 There are some lifelong concerns, notably with legal reform, but in other areas there are significant changes. Perhaps the most important shifts in his thought relate to politics. See Philip Schofield, Utility and Democracy: The Political Thought of Jeremy Bentham (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006).

31892_Williams.indd 91

20-10-15 08:23

92

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

corpus. The original English collected works edited by John Bowring (1838–43) ran to eleven volumes; the modern Bentham Project may run to eighty volumes.14 Finally, as the Bentham Project has shown, there are sometimes important differences between the Bentham presented by his original publishers and the ‘historical Bentham’ revealed by his manuscripts.15 As will be discussed later in this chapter, this is particularly the case with the essay ‘The Influence of Time and Place in Matters of Legislation’, which has an important bearing on how we read Bentham’s views on British rule in India.16 The interpretive task is thus rather daunting. Nonetheless, the aim of this chapter is to explicate Bentham’s arguments about different kinds of European colonialism and to locate them within some of the features of his thinking more generally.17 It begins by drawing attention to the tensions that exist within three aspects of Bentham’s utilitarianism. First, it suggests that we should see much of his work as concerned with what we will call the ‘art of government’ rather than as ‘theory’ or ‘philosophy’. Bentham was overridingly concerned with why and how to reform, and this shaped his attitude towards questions of colonialism. At the same time, at least in places, Bentham quite specifically rejected the idea of a benevolent paternalism as the basis for reform in the name of others. Second, the chapter identifies the tensions within Bentham’s account of human psychology. This account was in principle egalitarian and inclusive, and it also provided an account of cultural pluralism as the result of the perfectly explicable human responses to different institutional and cultural conditions. But this account also had obviously ‘imperial’ implications and it suggested that reform be directed precisely at those institutional and cultural conditions that 14 The website can be accessed at www.ucl.ac.uk/bentham-project/. The Bentham Papers consist of about 60,000 folios. Anyone working on Bentham owes a huge debt to the work of the Bentham project, but it is sometimes hard to know whether this massive archive is a blessing or a curse for modern Bentham scholarship. 15 In addition, the archive has thrown up some fascinating new perspectives on Bentham and his utilitarianism. See, for example, the writing collected as ‘Sex’ in Engelmann, ed., Selected Writings, 33–100. 16 The essay with this title was first published in the Bowring Works, vol. 1, 169–92. The newly edited version is entitled ‘Place and Time’ and is in Engelmann, ed., Selected Essays, 152–219. 17 This claim is similar to that made by Boralevi in Bentham and the Oppressed, 121–34, and Schofield in Utility and Democracy, 202.

31892_Williams.indd 92

20-10-15 08:23



Bentham, Utilitarianism, and Empire 93

shaped people’s conduct. Third, Bentham did not employ (at least not so obviously) the kinds of developmental schemas we have seen with Smith and Kant (and will see with Hobhouse), and this meant that cultural hierarchies played a much less significant role in his thought. At the same time, the absence of any kind of universal history meant that ‘progress’ could take place only as a result of deliberate human action. These tensions play out in Bentham’s complex and sometimes ambivalent arguments about varied forms of colonialism. The chapter then turns to Bentham’s critique of European colonialism, particularly in the Americas. As with Smith, this stressed the costs of continued colonial rule to European states themselves, and particularly the ways in which colonialism and its associated practices stood in the way of a more rational program of domestic and international reform. The third part of the chapter explores four areas that demonstrate the complexity of Bentham’s arguments about colonialism. First, he did at times argue that European colonialism had brought benefits to mankind (it had contributed to progress) and his plans for a reformed form of colonization in New South Wales reflect this kind of stance. Second, we should take seriously the description of Bentham as the ‘legislator of the world’.18 Bentham tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to influence the political and especially the legal systems of many countries around the world. He did not advocate colonial rule as a vehicle for these reform efforts, but, even so, he clearly wanted to channel and contain the political possibilities of sovereign statehood through the instantiation of a utilitarian legal system. Third, the chapter notes that, within Bentham’s writings on the Americas and Australia, there is very little concern with the impact of colonialism on indigenous peoples, and this raises a question about whether, and to what extent, Bentham did at least sometimes operate with a series of civilizational or cultural hierarchies that place him somewhat closer to his later utilitarian followers (and that complicate the cosmopolitan and egalitarian premises of his utilitarian philosophy). Finally, and the subject of much dispute, are Bentham’s scattered remarks on India. Bentham did express a desire to legislate for India and we also find at least some endorsement of British rule there, a position that seems to be partly based on his views

18 See Philip Schofield, ‘Jeremy Bentham: Legislator of the World’, Current Legal Problems 51, no. 1 (1988): 115–47.

31892_Williams.indd 93

20-10-15 08:23

94

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

about Indian culture and religion. Bentham was certainly well aware of how bad colonial rule could be, but he provided some guidance on how it could be improved. His arguments about reform in India are in fact rather close to those of J.S. Mill: the issue was not so much whether reform in India should be attempted, but rather how it should be conducted. The chapter concludes by identifying those aspects of Bentham’s thinking that seem important to how we approach relations with plural others today.

Bentham’s Utilitarianism There is an important sense in which Bentham’s own work is rather different from much of modern utilitarian philosophy. Bentham’s utilitarianism is not really a ‘moral philosophy’ in the modern sense of that term and it was also not primarily designed as a system of personal ethics.19 Bentham’s overriding concern was not with how individuals ought to act, but with why and how it was that the institutional context within which people acted ought to be reformed. As J.S. Mill noted, once Bentham had laid down the principle of utility, most of his intellectual efforts were devoted to ‘practical ethics and legislation’.20 Bentham’s utilitarianism is better understood, then, as an ‘art of government’ – a way of thinking about how human affairs should be reformed.21 This obviously placed significant stress on the role of reformers themselves and on the relationship between those reformers and the people 19 Engelmann, ‘Introduction’, 2–3. 20 John Stuart Mill, ‘Remarks on Bentham’s Philosophy’, in J. Robson, ed., Collected Works of John Stuart Mill: Vol. X: Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1985), 7. I take it that this was roughly Foucault’s view of Bentham. There remain controversies about his interpretation. See in particular Janet Semple, ‘Bentham and Foucault: A Defence of Panopticism’, Utilitas 4, no. 1 (1992): 105–20. If we look at Foucault’s lectures at the Collège de France, however, it is possible to see him working with the idea of liberalism as an art of government. See in particular Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College de  France, 1975–76 (London: Penguin, 2004); Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France 1977–78 (London: Palgrave 2009); and Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France 1978–1979 (London: Palgrave 2010). 21 Bentham was above all a reformer, and an increasingly radical one at that. See  Long, ‘Bentham as Revolutionary Social Scientist’. Schofield traces Bentham’s increasing political radicalism in Utility and Democracy.

31892_Williams.indd 94

20-10-15 08:23



Bentham, Utilitarianism, and Empire 95

in whose name reform was undertaken. Some have read into Bentham an ‘authoritarian’ and paternalist project, based on the supposed epistemic superiority of the reformers whose job it was to design and construct rational institutions aimed at producing individual and collective well-being.22 It is this picture that has often informed the reading of Bentham as endorsing British rule in India – as a project of reform on behalf of the Indian people. Moreover, Bentham’s consequentialist logic suggests that the only way in which European colonialism, and indeed political independence, could be rationally assessed was in terms of its effects. To the extent that it was (or could be) a vehicle for reform, it is hard to see how it could be condemned. Yet, while this is not entirely implausible, such a picture is certainly one-sided.23 Bentham sometimes expressed extreme scepticism about benevolent paternalism. In the 1834 edition of ‘Deontology’, he said that ‘vast masses of misery have been poured out upon the world, and that with the most benevolent intention … the groundwork of the mischief is this. A man fancies that he knows what is best for other men … that he has the most appropriate knowledge, that he can turn his knowledge to good account of their behalf … yet despotism never comes in a worse shape that when it comes in the guise of benevolence’. He went on to say that ‘to this source, to the pretension of doing good to others in spite of themselves, may be traced the worst of religious persecutions’.24 This would seem to cast doubt on Bentham’s commitment to any kind of benevolent colonial project. There is a tension here that is not easy to resolve, and may not be resolvable given the size and diversity of Bentham’s writings, but both sides of it play out in different ways within his arguments about different kinds of colonialism.25 There was, of course, a normative drive to Bentham’s project. The principle of utility showed why reform was necessary – to reduce the pain and increase the happiness experienced by individuals. This led to the famous principle that it is the ‘greatest happiness of the greatest

22 Hayek read Bentham this way, perhaps not entirely fairly. For a discussion, see Allison Dube. ‘Hayek on Bentham’, Utilitas 2, no. 1 (1990): 71–87. 23 For one review, see James Crimmins, ‘Contending Interpretations of Bentham’s Utilitarianism’, Canadian Journal of Political Science 29, no. 4 (1996): 751–77. 24 Jeremy Bentham, Deontology, ed. J. Bowring (London: William Tait 1834), 388–9. 25 Crimmins, ‘Contending Interpretations of Bentham’s Utilitarianism’.

31892_Williams.indd 95

20-10-15 08:23

96

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

number that is the measure of right and wrong’.26 In turn, the account of individual psychology that underpinned this principle also provided a way of thinking about what ought to be done and how any such reform should be undertaken.27 As Bentham famously put it at the beginning of Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ‘nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure … They govern us in all we say, all we do, all we think’.28 Importantly, in some of Bentham’s formulations, there was a clear universalist cast to his account of human psychology29: ‘It has already been shown, that the end and business of every good law may, for shortness’ sake, be reduced to this universal expression: the prevention of mischief. Now mischief, of whatever kind, is ultimately reducible to pain, or, what may be deemed equivalent to it, loss of pleasure. What, then? Have different countries different catalogues of pleasures and of pains? The affirmative, I think, will hardly be maintained: thus far at least, human nature may be pronounced to be every where the same.’30 This account of human psychology was in important ways egalitarian and certainly inclusive. In ‘Deontology’, for example, Bentham said that ‘the happiness of the worst man of the species is as much an integrant of the whole mass of human happiness as is that of the best man’.31 That is, all people were to count equally in any calculation of how to maximize utility. This kind of argument also operated (some of the time) to collapse distinctions between Europeans and diverse others, as all people responded in the same basic ways to the world around them.32 It also provided an account of cultural pluralism that was rather

26 Jeremy Bentham, A Fragment on Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988), 3. 27 This individual psychology was more complex and nuanced than is sometimes suggested. See especially his ‘Table of the Springs of Action’ in Bentham, Deontology, 79–86. 28 Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, eds. J.H. Burns and H.L.A. Hart (London: Athlone Press 1970), 11, emphasis in original. 29 For a discussion of this and the debate, see J.H. Burns, ‘Happiness and Utility: Jeremy Bentham’s Equation’, Utilitas 17, no. 1 (2005): 46–61. See also Peter Nielsen, ‘Bentham’s Cosmopolitanism: Theory and Practice’, paper presented to the International Society for Utilitarian Studies Conference, New York, 2012. 30 Bentham, ‘Place and Time’, in Engelmann, ed., Selected Essays, 155. 31 Bentham, Deontology, 268. 32 For a useful discussion of Bentham’s cosmopolitanism, see Nielsen, ‘Bentham’s Cosmopolitanism’.

31892_Williams.indd 96

20-10-15 08:23



Bentham, Utilitarianism, and Empire 97

similar in its basic structure to that of Smith. All humans were fundamentally the same, driven by the same motivations, and cultural differences were accounted for in terms of the ways people responded to the particular circumstances in which they found themselves. At the same time, Bentham’s account of human motivations had potentially imperial implications. It was because individuals were in some important respects the same that reformers would know what to do.33 As Bentham said, his legislative reform program, based upon such an account, was applicable almost everywhere.34 Writing in the third person, Bentham described ‘[h]is empire – the empire he aspires to – [as] extending to and comprehending the whole human race, in all places … Limits it has no other than those of the earth’.35 The foundations of Bentham’s utilitarianism for his thinking about European colonialism, then, point in different directions. On the one hand, they are egalitarian and inclusive, perhaps even cosmopolitan, but, on the other, they seem to inform and underpin Bentham’s imperial drive. The final element of Bentham’s utilitarianism that is important for how we understand his arguments about colonialism relates to the place and significance of ‘progress’ within his thought. As we have seen with Smith and Kant, whatever their other objections to colonialism and its associated practices, a commitment to progress over time provided some of the most obviously colonial aspects of their thought. Bentham’s arguments are altogether less imbued with developmentalist suppositions than those of either Smith or Kant and indeed the later utilitarians.36 For J.S. Mill, the central weakness of Bentham’s philosophy was precisely that it did not consider the ‘greater social questions’, such as ‘the theory of organic institutions’, the formation of ‘national character’, and how the ‘members of a community’ might be carried ‘towards perfection’.37 As Bentham said, when discussing the view that history is a history of ‘improvement’, ‘[s]ense, which is the basis of every idea, is so of every enjoyment; and so long as man remains man, the stock of sources …

33 Engelmann and Pitts, “Bentham’s “Place and Time”’. 34 Jeremy Bentham, ‘Codification Proposal’, in Jeremy Bentham, ‘“Legislator of the World”: Writings on Codification, Law and Education, eds. P. Schofield and J. Harris (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1998), 244. 35 Jeremy Bentham, ‘From Bentham’s Memorandum-Book, 1831’, in Bowring Works, vol. xi, 72. 36 Pitts, A Turn to Empire, 115–21. 37 Mill, ‘Remarks on Bentham’s Philosophy’, 9. See also 16–17.

31892_Williams.indd 97

20-10-15 08:23

98

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

of every thing than can be called enjoyment, can never increase’.38 Bentham’s thoroughgoing individualism meant that he also rarely used the idea of ‘society’ or ‘culture’ as a central analytical unit.39 As he said at the start of Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ‘the community is a fictitious body, composed of the individual persons who are considered as constituting as it were its members’.40 In short, Bentham usually (but as we shall see not always) avoided the kinds of cultural generalizations that are a feature of the thinking of James and John Stuart Mill.41 His individualism also meant that, in principle at least, Bentham’s thought could be more attuned to the costs that individuals might bear in the here and now in the pursuit of ‘long-term’ social goals in a way that more developmental approaches struggle to do, since the latter sometimes excuse present costs on the grounds of future benefits to society. At the same time, however, Bentham could not really escape from thinking in terms of progress. The whole point of his project was to improve the world, and some of what he says about what progress consists of is entirely familiar, unsurprisingly given Bentham’s acknowledged debts to Smith. What is more, unlike Smith, Bentham did not embrace any kind of universal history. If there was to be progress or improvement, it could come only from the arrangement of the institutions of society. Again, there is a tension within Bentham’s project here that is not at all easy to resolve, but we will see that both sides play out in Bentham’s sometimes ambivalent arguments about colonialism.

Opposition to Colonialism The bulk of Bentham’s anti-colonial arguments were concerned with the economic and social costs of continued colonial rule to the European states, and the ways in which colonialism stood in the way of reform of international and domestic politics and institutions. He did at times point towards other arguments. In ‘Emancipate Your Colonies’, he said that ‘justice’ demands the colonies’ emancipation and asked: ‘[Y]ou

38 Bentham, ‘Place and Time’, in Engelmann, Selected Essays, 204. See also 202 and 208. 39 Engelmann and Pitts, ‘Bentham’s “Place and Time”’, 56. 40 Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 12, emphasis in original. 41 Engelmann and Pitts, ‘Bentham’s “Place and Time”’, make this point on 46.

31892_Williams.indd 98

20-10-15 08:23



Bentham, Utilitarianism, and Empire 99

choose your own government: why are not other people to choose theirs?’42 He talked of the ‘oppressive power’ exercised by colonial rulers.43 When addressing the French in the aftermath of the Revolution, he said that ‘if the happiness of mankind is your object, and the declaration of rights your guide, you would set them free’.44 He also argued that the sheer fact of distance was enough to render colonial rule unjustifiable: ‘[W]hat care you, or what can you care, about them? … What conception can you frame to yourselves of manners and modes of life so different from your own?’45 But as with Smith, the weight of the textual evidence suggests that it was the impact of colonialism on the international and domestic politics of European states that was his primary concern. Bentham’s reforming zeal had the widest possible application, and he wrote ‘Plan for a Universal and Perpetual Peace’ (1789) as part four of his Principles of International Law.46 Bentham was not a pacifist, but he did argue that war was, at least as usually practised, ‘mischief on the largest scale’.47 Part of his opposition was what we might now call humanitarian – he decried the ‘loss of … limbs, wounds and rape’ associated with war and called it ‘murder on the largest scale’.48 More generally, Bentham pointed to the costs of war to the European states. He denied that war could ever be economically profitable; he criticized both the increase in taxation and the increase in political power, including the power of patronage, of kings and executives that accompanied it, and pointed out that those who prosecuted wars rarely experienced

42 Jeremy Bentham, ‘Emancipate Your Colonies’, in Bowring Works, vol. iv, 408. 43 Jeremy Bentham, Constitutional Code, vol. 1, eds. F. Rosen and J.H. Burns (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1983), 143. 44 Jeremy Bentham, Rights, Representation and Reform: Nonsense on Stilts and Other Writings on the French Revolution, eds. P. Schofield, C. Pease-Watkin, and C. Blamires (Oxford: Clarendon 2002), 312. 45 Bentham, ‘Emancipate Your Colonies’, 409. 46 Jeremy Bentham, ‘Plan for a Universal and Perpetual Peace’, in Bowring Works, vol. ii, 543. This is essay iv of ‘Principles of International Law’, Bowring Works, vol. ii, 535–60. As Bentham said at the start of his ‘Plan for a Universal and Perpetual Peace’, ‘the Globe is the Dominion to which the author aspires’, 546. 47 Jeremy Bentham, ‘Of War’, Bowring Works, vol. ii, 544. For a very useful discussion of Bentham’s arguments, see Stephen Conway, ‘Bentham on War and Peace’, Utilitas 1, no. 1 (1989): 82–101. 48 Quoted in Conway, ‘Bentham on War and Peace’, 88–9.

31892_Williams.indd 99

20-10-15 08:23

100

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

its costs.49 The benefits of Bentham’s ‘Plan’ would be ‘simplicity of government; national frugality and peace’. The basis of the Plan was two ‘fundamental propositions’: ‘the reduction and fixation of the force of several nations that compose the European System’, and ‘the emancipation of the distant dependencies of each state’.50 He argued that the holding of distant dependencies enhanced the chances of war between European states: it increased the number of possible subjects of dispute; there was a ‘natural obscurity of title’ in the cases of new settlements; there was a ‘particular obscurity’ of evidence resulting from the distance between the colony and the metropole; men cared less about war when the ‘scene is remote’; and ‘jealousy [was] produced by the apparent power they [colonies] confer’. As well as reducing the incidence of war, getting rid of the colonies would have other benefits. It would save on the expense of civil and military establishments used to defend them, it would get rid of the means of corruption they afforded, and it would simplify the ‘whole frame of government’. In his discussion of the links between colonialism and reform of international politics in ‘Plan for a Universal and Perpetual Peace’, part of Bentham’s concern was with domestic affairs – frugality, simplicity of government, and political corruption. And it was the pernicious influence that colonialism had on the politics and economics of European states that drove the bulk of his anti-colonial arguments. Emancipation, he said, would mean ‘getting rid of the means of corruption afforded by patronage’ and would help simplify the ‘whole frame of government’, thereby ‘rendering a competent skill in the business of government more attainable’.51 He argued that ‘bad government results to the mother country from the complication of interests, the indistinct views and the consumption of time, occasioned by the load of distant dependencies’.52 In other words, the possibilities for more rational domestic politics depended on ending colonialism. These themes are also evident

49 Conway, ‘Bentham on War and Peace’. See also Gunhild Hoogensen, International Relations, Security and Jeremy Bentham (London: Routledge 2005), chap. 7, Constitutional Code. 50 Bentham, ‘Plan for a Universal and Perpetual Peace’, 543. 51 Ibid., 548. 52 Ibid.

31892_Williams.indd 100

20-10-15 08:23



Bentham, Utilitarianism, and Empire 101

in some of his other writings.53 The subtitle of ‘Emancipate Your Colonies’ makes Bentham’s primary concern clear: ‘Shewing the Uselessness and Mischievousness of Distant Dependences to a European State’. ‘Think not’, he said, ‘that because I mentioned them [the colonies] first, it is for their sake in the first place that I wish to see them free. No. It is the mischief you do to yourselves by maintaining this unnatural domination’ that was his main preoccupation.54 In a letter sent to Jose Tomas in 1822, Bentham said he wanted to ‘help satisfy the mother country [Spain] of the impossibility of keeping the daughter country under subjection at such a distance under a constitution that has any the least spark of freedom in it’.55 Colonial rule with its corruption and expense was inimical to domestic political liberty and rational government. Bentham also argued that colonies were ‘seldom if ever, sources of profit to the mother country’.56 In his economic arguments about colonialism, Bentham mirrored Smith almost exactly.57 He argued that the monopoly trade associated with colonialism was ‘an aristocratic abomination’, because ‘the liberty, property and equality’ of the colonists were violated by preventing them from trading freely, and because ‘the people of France are taxed to raise money to maintain by force the restraints so imposed’: ‘the poor, who are after all unable to buy sugar – the poor in France taxed in order to pay the rich for eating it’.58 His conclusion was clear: ‘[G]ive up your colonies: because you have no right to govern them, because they had rather not be governed by you, because it is against their interests to be governed by you, because you get nothing by governing them, because you cannot keep them, because the expense of continuing to keep them would be 53 For a general discussion, see Cain, ‘Bentham and the Development of the British Critique of Colonialism’. 54 Bentham, ‘Emancipate Your Colonies’, 410. 55 Jeremy Bentham, ‘Bentham to Jose Tomas’, in Bowring Works, vol. xi, 69–70. See, more generally, Jeremy Bentham, ‘Emancipation Spanish’, in Jeremy Bentham, Colonies, Commerce and Constitutional Law, ed. P. Schofield (Oxford: Clarendon 1995), 187–267. 56 Bentham, ‘Plan for a Universal and Perpetual Peace’, 547. 57 See, for example, ‘Manual of Political Economy’, in Jeremy Bentham, Writings on Political Economy, Vol. 1, ed. M. Quinn (Oxford: Clarendon 2016), chap. 3. For a discussion, see Cain, ‘Bentham and the Development of the British Critique of Colonialism’. 58 Bentham, ‘Emancipate your Colonies’, 411–12.

31892_Williams.indd 101

20-10-15 08:23

102

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

ruinous, because your constitution would suffer by your keeping them, because your principles forbid you keeping them’.59 Elsewhere he summed up the reality of colonial rule in a few words: ‘uncertainty, inconsistency, complication, delay, vexation and expense, all factitious and enormous’.60 Like Smith, Bentham needed some kind of explanation for why colonial rule continued when it was so evidently detrimental to economic and political life. His answer was expressed with particular rhetorical force: ‘In such is the understanding of the subject many, with such deplorable effects have they been dazzled and fascinated by that phantasmagoria of power; with which their oppressors, corruptors and deluders have never ceased to ply them with – so effectually have they been persuaded to ascribe to this drain the opulence derived from real sources – that, while bent to the ground with burthen, they have as yet scarce begun to consider it in any light than that of a benefit’.61 In other words, the ‘many’ had been deluded by the few who had an interest in the continuation of colonial rule. Bentham’s stressed here the dangers posed to domestic politics, and to domestic political reform, by ‘sinister’ or ‘particular’ interests’ that acted ‘in opposition to the common interest’.62 One way to counter these dangers was through a political program that included reform of Parliament and increased transparency in governmental decision making, which would provide an increased role for the ‘tribunal’ of public opinion.63 The link between colonialism and Bentham’s reform plans can also be seen in the special case of his opposition to the Botany Bay penal colony.64 The American Revolution ended the transportation of convicts

59 Ibid., 417. As with Smith, it is worth stressing that here Bentham is talking about European settler colonies in the Americas. 60 Jeremy Bentham, ‘Emancipation Spanish’, in Bentham, Colonies, Commerce and Constitutional Law, 153. 61 Jeremy Bentham, ‘Rid Yourselves of Ultramaria’, in Colonies, Commerce and Constitutional Law, 52. 62 Qtd. in Schofield, Utility and Democracy, 111. Generally, see esp. chap. 5. 63 See the discussion in Jeremy Bentham, Political Tactics, eds. M. James, C. Blamires, and C. Pease-Watkins (Oxford: Clarendon 1993). 64 For a discussion, see R.V. Jackson, ‘Bentham vs. New South Wales: The Letters to Lord Pelham’, Institute of Commonwealth Studies Australian Studies Centre Working Paper no. 25 (London, 1987); and R.V. Jackson, ‘Theory and Evidence: Bentham, Collins and the New South Wales Penal Settlement’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 39, no. 3 (1993): 318–29.

31892_Williams.indd 102

20-10-15 08:23



Bentham, Utilitarianism, and Empire 103

to the American colonies, and as a result the British government established a new penal colony at Botany Bay in New South Wales in 1786.65 It was over the next few years that Bentham embraced the idea of the panopticon penitentiary, and he saw the new colony as standing in the way of his plans for reform of the British penal system.66 Bentham’s strenuous (but ultimately fruitless) efforts to get the British government to build a prison system based on the panopticon were accompanied by extensive criticisms of the policy of transportation and the Botany Bay penal colony.67 He argued that transportation did not effectively serve any of the primary ends of penal policy – it did not act as an example to the wider population because convicts were transported, it did little to reform the convicts themselves, and it was expensive. The panopticon, of course, was the solution to these problems. The penitentiaries would stand as a stark warning to the surrounding population, the convicts themselves would have their conduct reformed through a system of surveillance (or so Bentham thought), and the cost involved would be considerably less than transportation. Finally, in his more general observations about the New South Wales penal colony, Bentham articulated a series of criticisms of this form of colonialism. He complained of the prevalence of ‘general depravity’ among the civilians resident there, including arson, theft, bribery, drunkenness, and the ‘profligacy of the women’.68 He put this down to the character of the population. It was composed, he complained, of ‘a set of brutes in human shape – the very dregs of even savage society – a species of society beyond comparison less favorable to colonization than utter solitude; a set of living nuisances, prepared at all times for all sorts of mischief … [O]ther inhabitants, none but the very profligates themselves, who were sent by thousands from British gaols, to be turned loose to mix with one another in this desert.’69 In making these arguments, 65 For background, see David Mackay, ‘Far-Flung Empire: A Neglected Imperial Outpost at Botany Bay 1788–1801’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 9, no. 2 (1981): 125–45. 66 Jeremy Bentham, ‘Panopticon; or, the Inspection House’, in Bowring Works, vol. iv, 37–172. Bentham’s failure to have his scheme adopted also convinced him of the pernicious influence of ‘sinister interests’. See Schofield, Utility and Democracy, 109–11. 67 Jeremy Bentham, ‘Panopticon Versus New South Wales’, in Bowring Works, vol. iv, 173–248. See also Jackson, ‘Bentham vs. New South Wales’. 68 Bentham, ‘Panopticon versus New South Wales’, 214–24. 69 Ibid., 182.

31892_Williams.indd 103

20-10-15 08:23

104

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

Bentham was articulating a common criticism of some settler colonies: that they were often composed of the worst elements of society who had failed to make a legitimate living in the metropole.70 But the important point for Bentham was that, given this mix of people, it was not to  be expected that such colonies would flourish economically; rather, they would be a breeding ground for habits and attitudes wholly antithetical to economic progress and rational government,

Beyond Anti-Colonialism It is clear, then, that Bentham did make a series of arguments against European colonialism. But there are also a series of ambiguities and ambivalences in his writings. Here I identify four. First, Bentham advocated a reformed type of colonialism in Australia and this was linked to some of his more general claims about the benefits that colonialism could bring. Second, Bentham really did want to be a legislator for the world. Third, Bentham’s neglect of the fate of the indigenous populations of the Americas, combined with his remarks about the characteristics of the indigenous peoples of Australia (‘a set of brutes in human shape – the very dregs of even savage society’), raises questions about how egalitarian and cosmopolitan his utilitarian commitments really were.71 Finally, Bentham’s writings on India do seem to endorse British rule, and, while he was aware that programs of improvement in the colonies had limits, he was not entirely averse to them. A Reformed Colonialism In 1831 Bentham wrote an essay entitled ‘Colonization Proposal, Being a Proposal for the Formation of a Joint Stock Company by the Name of the Colonization Company on an Entirely New Principle Intitled the

70 See Jack Greene, Evaluating Empire and Confronting Colonialism in EighteenthCentury Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013), chap. 2. 71 For a sense of the early-nineteenth-century debates about Australian aborigines, see Elizabeth Elbourne, ‘The Sin of the Settler: The 1835–36 Select Committee on Aborigines and Debates over Virtue and Conquest in the Early Nineteenth Century British White Settler Empire’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 4, no. 3 (2003), from project Muse database, www.muse.jhu.edu/article/50777, retrieved 18 June 2019.

31892_Williams.indd 104

20-10-15 08:23



Bentham, Utilitarianism, and Empire 105

Vicinity Maximising or Dispersion-Prevention Principle’.72 This was the culmination of a line of Bentham’s thinking that stretched back to at least the early 1800s.73 It had both general and more specific elements. The general element was Bentham’s claim that colonialism could, under some circumstances, bring significant benefits, at least if viewed from the broadest perspective.74 In 1801 he argued that ‘taking futurity into the scale, the well-being of mankind appears to have been promoted upon the whole by the establishment of colonies’.75 He said that ‘it is desirable for mankind that offsets should be taken from the most flourishing and soundest root: that the races propagated every where in parts of the earth as yet vacant, should be races whose habits of thinking in matters of government … and habits of acting in the sphere of domestic economy and morals should be taken from the society which, in these respects, is in the most improved as well as improving state.’76 The parallels here with Smith are striking and they demonstrate that Bentham, like Smith, did think that beneficial ‘improvement’ might result from colonization. They also make it plain that, sometimes at least, Bentham did think in broadly developmental terms about European colonialism, even if he did not combine that with a form of universal history. The narrower element derived from Bentham’s thinking about political economy. He had become concerned about the growth of population in Britain, possibly as a result of the influence of Malthus.77 Bentham thought that colonialism might provide some mechanism for the ‘efflux’ of population, and on the other side colonization would also allow for the efflux of surplus capital. Thus, Bentham did think that under some circumstances there might be economic benefits to

72 This is forthcoming in the Bentham Project volume Writings on Australia. At  the time of writing, the text was available at: www.discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/ eprint/10055306/1/7.%20Colonization%20Company%20Proposal.pdf. 73 As Schofield argued in Utility and Democracy, 220. 74 For a recent discussion, see Annie Cot, ‘Entre Expertise et Utopie: Jeremy Bentham et la Question des Colonies’, Tocqueville Review 32, no. 1 (2011): 67–88. 75 Bentham, ‘Manual on Political Economy’, Bowring Works, vol. iii, 53. 76 Ibid. 77 This is Schofield’s suggestion in Utility and Democracy, 216. For some evidence, see Bentham, ‘Manual on Political Economy’, 53. For a different perspective on Bentham’s schemes for dealing with the poor, and his relation to Malthus, see Gertrude Himmelfarb, ‘Bentham’s Utopia: The National Charity Company’, Journal of British Studies 19, no. 1 (1970): 80–125.

31892_Williams.indd 105

20-10-15 08:23

106

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

be derived from colonization, both for mankind as a whole and for the colonizing states. It was these arguments that informed Bentham’s scheme for colonization in Australia. Bentham was not the only person to advocate such a scheme. Indeed, it seems that Bentham’s proposal was offered in support of one developed by Edward Wakefield, who offered his plan as a solution precisely to the kinds of problems that Bentham had identified with the Botany Bay colony.78 Bentham’s scheme was designed to offer benefits to the emigrants as well as to the stockholders and the mother country. The mother country would benefit from the efflux of indigent inhabitants, stockholders would benefit from an increased rate of return on their capital, and emigrants would benefit by being given ‘vacant land’ and education.79 This latter point was especially important as the provision of land and schooling was the best way to ensure that settlement actually produced improvement and well-being.80 But Bentham’s scheme also envisioned a ‘reformed’ colonization. The colony would be administered by a charter company and governed initially by a governor appointed by the company (this would avoid the problem of government patronage), but in a relatively short time it would become self-governing. Despite Bentham’s fierce criticisms of many aspects of European colonialism, he did not abandon the idea that, potentially at least, European colonialism could play a progressive role, both in individual places and from the perspective of all of humanity. Legislator of the World Bentham’s colonization scheme was just one among a myriad schemes and plans he developed over his lifetime. These ranged from ‘frigidariums’ for preserving food to ‘conversation tubes’ for use in government offices, the panopticon, and a proposal for an interoceanic canal across

78 See Winch, Classical Political Economy and the Colonies, 31–8; Edward Kittrell, ‘Bentham and Wakefield’, Economic Inquiry 4, no. 1 (1965): 28–40; and Edward Kittrell, ‘Wakefield’s Scheme of Systematic Colonization and Classical Economics’, American Journal of Economics and Sociology 32, no. 1 (1973): 87–112. 79 Schofield, Utility and Democracy, 220. 80 See Cot, ‘Entre Expertise et Utopie’.

31892_Williams.indd 106

20-10-15 08:23



Bentham, Utilitarianism, and Empire 107

Venezuela.81 This mania for planning is evident most obviously in Bentham’s life-long concern with legal reform, and especially his vision of a pannomion – an ‘all-comprehensive collection of law’ encompassing, in a logical relationship with one another, the penal code and constitutional law. For Bentham, such a code would embody and instantiate his utilitarian commitments. He saw it as the central vehicle for reform around the world. Elie Halevy was exaggerating only slightly when he said that Bentham was ‘possessed by one fixed idea: to secure the drawing up and promulgation of his entire code, everywhere, somewhere, no matter where’.82 Bentham tried (without much success in the end) to get his code enacted in countries as varied as the United States of America, Russia, Greece, Spain, and Guatemala. This project certainly reflected Bentham’s particular personality but it also reflected the genuinely universal political vision embedded in his utilitarian thinking. Bentham’s concern with legal reform is evident right from the start of his career. His earliest published works, A Fragment on Government and Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, articulate his criticisms of the English common law (‘that fictitious composition which has no known person for its author, no known assemblage of words for its substance’) and his argument that this system ought to be transformed both in its principles and in its substance.83 For Bentham, of course, the overriding principle was that it is ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong’.84 The substance of reform would be a new codified body of law that expressed and instantiated this principle. Neither of these two books represented anything like a complete legal code, but Bentham returned to this project in the early 1800s and continued to work on codification,

81 For the frigidarium, see David Cohen, ‘Bentham’s Frigidarium: Utilitarianism and Food Preservation’, Journal of Bentham Studies 1, no. 1 (1997): 1–8; for ‘conversation tubes’, see, for example, Bowring Works, ix, 327; for the canal, see Miriam Williford, Jeremy Bentham on Spanish America: An Account of His Letters and Proposals to the New World (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press 1980), chap. 6. 82 Elie Halevy, The Growth of Philosophical Radicalism, trans. M. Morris (New York: Macmillan 1929), 149. 83 Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 8 (Preface). For a discussion, see Gerald Postema, Bentham and the Common Law Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon 1986). 84 Bentham, A Fragment on Government, 3.

31892_Williams.indd 107

20-10-15 08:23

108

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

including the monumental (but unfinished) Constitutional Code, until the end of his life.85 While Bentham’s original inspiration for this project was reform of English common law, right from the start it had an international dimension.86 An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation was the product of Bentham’s efforts at drawing up a penal code in response to a prize offered by the city of Berne.87 But it was in the period from 1810 until his death that Bentham devoted most energy to constitutional and legal reform schemes around the world. Between 1811 and 1817 he tried to have his codification project adopted in the United States;88 in 1814–15 he offered to draw up constitutional codes for Russia and Poland89; and in 1823 he offered his services to Greek legislators in the aftermath of the Greek War of Independence, and drafted a number of legal texts.90 These efforts were most extensive in two related cases: that of Spain and Portugal and that of a number of Central and South American states. In both sets of cases Bentham saw, as he had with Greece, a particularly propitious opportunity to influence these states. The political crisis in Spain in early 1820 was the inspiration for some of Bentham’s most famous anti-colonial arguments, particularly ‘Emancipation Spanish’ and ‘Rid Yourselves of Ultramaria’. But it was also an opportunity to try to influence Spain’s domestic legal system. In response to requests from the Spanish government, Bentham drafted an extensive critique of the country’s ‘liberal’ constitution and suggested he should write one to replace it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this offer was

85 See Schofield, Utility and Democracy, chap. 9. 86 Robert Loring, ‘The Role of Universal Jurisprudence in Bentham’s Legal Cosmopolitanism’, Revue Etudes Benthamiennes 13 (2014), Open Edition, www.journals. openedition.org/etudes-benthamiennes/749, retrieved 28 June 2019. 87 See James Burns, ‘“From a Good Scheme to a Better”: The Itinerancy of Jeremy Bentham, 1769–1789’, Utilitas 24, no. 2 (2012): 443–66. 88 Schofield, Utility and Democracy, 244–5. 89 Ibid., 245–6. 90 These are collected in Jeremy Bentham, Securities against Misrule and Other Constitutional Writings for Tripoli and Greece, ed. P. Schofield (Oxford: Clarendon 1990). For a discussion of the Greek case, see D. Penna, ‘Some Notes on Jeremy Bentham’s Involvement in Greek Legal Affairs in the Early Years of the Formation of the Greek State (1821–1824), Groninger Opmerkingen en Madedelingen 22 (2005): 1–19, www.rug.nl/research/portal/publications/pub(98537bda-ac68-45d1-b6316e7f44386a4c).html.

31892_Williams.indd 108

20-10-15 08:23



Bentham, Utilitarianism, and Empire 109

not taken up. Bentham had a bit more luck in Portugal. In 1821 he volunteered his services to the new liberal government in Lisbon.91 This offer was accepted and Bentham began work on a constitutional code. The significance of this for him personally can be seen in a portrait painted in 1829. He is pictured seated with three books: Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding; his own Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation; and the Diaros das Cortes, the papers and proceedings of the Portuguese government, which included the resolution to accept Bentham’s offer to draw up a code of laws.92 Unfortunately for Bentham, the liberal government in Portugal was overthrown in 1823 and his efforts came to nothing. Bentham’s involvement in Central and South American political and legal affairs was extensive and multifaceted.93 One commentator has argued that Bentham saw Spanish America as an opportunity to create a political utopia based on his utilitarian principles, and Bentham apparently made plans to emigrate to Mexico in 1808.94 In the same year Bentham drafted a ‘Proposed Law for the Establishment of the Liberty of the Press in Venezuela’.95 This was just the first of many efforts to have his plans for legal reform accepted by states in the region. As well as Venezuela, these included Chile, Columbia, Mexico, and Guatemala. He is said to have fantasized about being the ‘legislator of Mexico’, and he wrote of ‘the necessity of an entire new body of law for Venezuela’.96 He had extensive correspondence with Simon Bolivar, among other politicians and activists.97 He hosted ambassadors and emissaries in London and he drafted numerous texts that outlined the necessity for

91 For details, see Catherine Fuller, ‘“Primeiro e Mai Antigo Constitucional do Europa”: Bentham’s Contact with Portuguese Liberals, 1820–32’, Journal of Bentham Studies 3, no. 1 (2000): 1–13. 92 Fuller has drawn attention to this picture. It hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London. 93 For a review, see Williford, Jeremy Bentham on Spanish America. 94 Ibid., 1. His plan was thwarted by the Spanish government. 95 For a discussion, see ibid., chap. 5. 96 Ibid., 4, 17. 97 For a discussion of individual cases, see Jonathan Harris, ‘Bernadino Rivadavia and Benthamite “Discipleship”’, Latin American Research Review 33, no. 1 (1988): 129– 49; and Theodora McKenna, ‘Jeremy Bentham and the Columbian Liberators’, Americas 34, April (1978): 460–75.

31892_Williams.indd 109

20-10-15 08:23

110

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

a new legal code and his own offer to draw one up.98 In 1826 Bentham was also asked to assist in drafting a legal code for Guatemala.99 As was the case with Greece, Bentham was wholly supportive of the independence of these states, and some of his attempts to influence them resulted from requests to Bentham for his assistance. Bentham most emphatically did not advocate any kind of colonial project in these states as a vehicle for implementing his schemes.100 All these attempts to be the ‘legislator of the world’ illustrate a number of important points about Bentham’s thought. First, and fairly obviously, they demonstrate an ‘epistemic imperialism’ that derived in large part from some of his basic theoretical commitments. Bentham really did think he knew best how societies should organize their political legal affairs. Second, and more importantly, they show that for Bentham there was a point and purpose to political independence – it was a necessary, but by no means sufficient, condition for the pursuit of the right kind of political reform. Bentham imagined political independence as of a sort of disciplined freedom. Political independence was important (in these cases) but for Bentham such independence was to be contained and constrained within the boundaries of his utilitarian reform project. Indigenous Peoples and Cultural Hierarchies There is an additional important point that emerges out of Bentham’s writings on Spanish America. As Miriam Williford has remarked,

 98 Williford, Jeremy Bentham on Spanish America, chap. 2.  99 Ibid., 127–30. 100 Only in one case did he come close to doing so. He drafted a letter to then U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams attempting to enlist his support for military action against the ‘monstrous’ ruler of Tripoli. See Jeremy Bentham, ‘Letter to John Quincy Adams,’ in Bentham, Securities against Misrule, 143–79. This was only one part of his attempts to promote his legal code in Tripoli, but here at least Bentham was prepared to contemplate ‘regime change’ as a vehicle for his projects. For details of his involvement, see Duncan Cumming, ‘Consultations on a Constitution for Tripoli between Jeremy Bentham and Hassuna D’Ghies’, Libyan Studies 3, (1972): 21–35; and L.J. Hume, ‘Preparations for Civil War in Tripoli in the 1820s: Ali Karamanli, Hussuan D’Ghies and Jeremy Bentham’, Journal of African History 21, no. 3 (1980): 311–22. Adam Roberts has noted the similarities between Bentham’s involvement in Tripoli and contemporary practices. See Adam Roberts, ‘Induction 2011’, Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (winter 2012): 8–9.

31892_Williams.indd 110

20-10-15 08:23



Bentham, Utilitarianism, and Empire 111

‘Bentham virtually ignored the great mass of Indians that were actually a majority in many of these states’.101 In only one place does he seem to acknowledge their existence, and then only to note that this population was not to be counted in any scheme for colonial representation.102 This neglect stands in some contrast to some of his more egalitarian commitments, and it raises an important question about whether, and how far, Bentham made distinctions between groups of persons based on how ‘civilized’ they were. There are some examples where he does make such judgements. We noted earlier his description of the indigenous peoples of Australia – ‘a set of brutes in human shape – the very dregs of even savage society’. In an early sketch for a proposal for an Indian legal code, Bentham says that ‘as the Bramin [sic] is by nature superior to the Souder, so is the European to the Bramin: so is the Englishman to another European’.103 He also suggested, for example, that Egypt was subject to a religion ‘of which incurable barbarity and ignorance seem to be inseparable features’ and that British rule could bring ‘universal and perpetual security’.104 These examples suggest that Bentham did sometimes seem to think in terms of cultural and developmental hierarchies, and that he did occasionally take a highly judgemental stance towards diverse others. It is not easy to come to any settled conclusion on this issue. It is certainly possible to generate a deeply problematic reading of Bentham here. Given that he sometimes extended his utilitarian calculus to animals, his failure to recognize the political claim of indigenous peoples looks like an even more shocking omission. On the other hand, some of his other arguments, and some of his basic utilitarian principles, cut against such a reading. And, as Stephen Engelmann and Jennifer Pitts have argued, his use of civilization hierarchies in the proposal for an Indian legal code is not characteristic of much of his other writing.105 Of course, it may just be that we should not expect strict consistency across his vast corpus, nor try to impose it. The important point for us

101 Williford, Jeremy Bentham and Spanish America, 139. 102 Bentham, ‘Rid Yourselves of Ultramaria’, in Bentham, Colonies, Commerce and Constitutional Law, 3–194. 103 Jeremy Bentham, ‘Exordium’, qtd. in Engelmann and Pitts, ‘Bentham’s “Place and Time”’, 48. 104 Qtd. in Pitts, A Turn to Empire, 112. 105 Engelmann and Pitts, ‘Bentham’s “Place and Time”’, 46.

31892_Williams.indd 111

20-10-15 08:23

112

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

is that what we might take away from Bentham’s arguments about colonialism depends on the extent to which such civilizational hierarchies are kept out. Bentham is different from the other thinkers examined in this book for not embracing a full-blown developmentalist account of progress across time that generates a temporal hierarchy of different societies. But Bentham is also committed to progress of a kind and in this way his utilitarianism can start to look a lot more judgemental about diverse others. India There has been considerable debate about Bentham’s attitude towards East India Company rule in India, and about the extent to which he justified such rule on the grounds of ‘civilizational’ hierarchies. Apart from the usual problems of drawing out a consistent position from Bentham’s writings on India, there is an additional issue that relates to the interpretation of one of his most famous essays, ‘The Influence of Time and Place on Matters of Legislation’. Engelmann and Pitts have argued that the version of this essay reproduced in the Bowring Collected Works owes much to the interventions of Richard Smith, who originally edited the essay.106 They suggest that these interventions exaggerated Bentham’s view of the superiority of British culture and institutions, and that the more accurate version (entitled ‘Place and Time’) demonstrates Bentham’s cultural sensitivity. Before discussing this argument, it is important to note that in places Bentham did give some kind of endorsement to British rule in India. In the 1829 postscript to ‘Emancipate Your Colonies’, Bentham said that ‘as a citizen of Great Britain and Ireland, he is confirmed in the same opinions … But as a citizen of the British Empire, including the sixty millions already under its government in British India … his opinions … are the reverse’.107 In the same essay he expressed some doubt about the capacity of Indians for self-government: ‘[W]ould the tree of liberty grow there if planted? … If not you may find some difficulty in giving them to themselves … If it is determined they must have masters, you will then look out for the least bad ones that could

106 Ibid. 107 Bentham, ‘Emancipate your Colonies’, 417.

31892_Williams.indd 112

20-10-15 08:23



Bentham, Utilitarianism, and Empire 113

take them’.108 There is also evidence that Bentham saw British rule as an opportunity to implement his schemes for legal reform.109 He certainly offered his services as someone who could draft legislation for ‘Hindostan’.110 It is in the essay ‘Place and Time’, written the year before this offer, that Bentham discussed the principles that should underlie any such legal code. The essay was framed in terms of a discussion of how English laws might be transplanted to Bengal. It certainly includes comments and arguments that suggest a degree of cultural sensitivity that is absent in Bentham’s utilitarian heirs. For example, Bentham says that ‘the changing of a custom repugnant to our own manners and sentiments … for no other reasons than such repugnancy … is not to be reputed as a benefit’.111 And this included widow burning, so long as it was ‘voluntary’. And Bentham certainly did not think that British laws and institutions either could or should simply be transplanted wholesale. Indeed, the essay, particularly in its new form, includes some very pointed criticisms of British laws, institutions, and prejudices that are entirely in tune with many of Bentham’s other writings. In addition, the essay draws out equivalences between Britain and British society and India and India society that are certainly different from anything found in the later utilitarian thinkers. For instance, he thought that Hinduism and Christianity were equally characterized by religious superstition.112 Engelmann and Pitts are surely right, then, that this essay is evidence for some of Bentham’s egalitarian and cosmopolitan commitments. But I also think that, in drawing attention to these aspects of the essay, revealed especially in its new form, they have underplayed what seems to be Bentham’s central argument – which was that the transplantation of laws had to be pursued carefully, not that it should not be attempted. 108 Ibid. 109 Jeremy Bentham, ‘Bentham to Rammohun Roy’, in Bowring Works, vol. x, 589–90. For Bentham and Roy, see Lynn Zastoupli, Rammohun Roy and the Making of Victorian Britain (London: Palgrave 2010), esp. 156–7. This is Stokes’s argument in particular in The English Utilitarians and India. 110 Jeremy Bentham, ‘Bentham to Mr. Dundas’, in Bowring Works, vol. x, 292. 111 Bentham, ‘Place and Time’, in Engelmann, ed., Selected Essays, 174. Sometimes, though, the cultural generalizations are not too far from the surface. As he says at one point, ‘take an intelligent Mahometan, if an intelligent Mahometan to be found.’ Ibid., 197. 112 Ibid., 159.

31892_Williams.indd 113

20-10-15 08:23

114

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

Viewed in this light, the attention Bentham pays to local customs and practices reflects not so much his egalitarian impulses as his concern with the ‘art of government’. While the experience of pain and pleasure is the same everywhere, the ‘circumstances influencing sensibility’ are different, and it is a ‘catalogue’ of these that is to serve as a guide to the transplanting of laws.113 Bentham was critical of bold and impatient reformers, and was at pains to point out that in any reform program the ‘evils’ it produces have to be balanced against an often uncertain assessment of the ‘evils’ it aims to eradicate.114 At the same time, Bentham was also critical of many of the arguments used to justify conserving existing laws and institutions.115 As he said, ‘prejudices that appear unsurmountable at first view may be got over with a little management’, and that ‘indirect legislation should be preferred to direct: gentle means to violent: example, instruction and exhortation should precede, or follow or if possible stand in the place of law’.116 Here Bentham is rather closer in some respects to J.S. Mill, and Mill explicitly praised ‘Time and Place’ for its recognition of the ‘different exigencies of different nations with respect to law’.117 Mill, too, was acutely aware of the difficulties involved in reforming Indian society. He was also, like Bentham, critical of British policy when it failed to understand the dynamics of Indian society and simply imposed particular institutions and practices.118 Mistakes were made, he said, because of the ‘extreme difficulty which persons nurtured only in English ideas and institutions, have in correctly apprehending a state of facts so entirely unlike anything which ever existed in England, as the whole framework of Indian society presents’.119 Indeed, one of Mill’s key defences of East India Company

113 Ibid., 155; also 163. This would include an account of the ‘moral, religious, sympathetic and antipathetic biases of the people’ (156–7). 114 Ibid., 168–9. 115 Ibid., 196–8. 116 Ibid., 175, 174. 117 Mill, ‘Bentham’, 105. 118 See, for example, John Stuart Mill, ‘Memorandum of the Improvements in the Administration of India during the Last Thirty Years’, in J. Robson, M. Moir, and Z. Moir, eds., The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill: Vol. XXX: Writings on India, eds. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 91–174. For a discussion, see Mark Tunick, ‘Tolerant Imperialism: John Stuart Mill’s Defense of British Rule in India’, Review of Politics 68, no. 4 (2006): 586–611. 119 Mill, ‘Memorandum’, 120.

31892_Williams.indd 114

20-10-15 08:23



Bentham, Utilitarianism, and Empire 115

rule was that the ‘knowledge necessary for governing a foreign country, and in particular a country like India, requires as much special study as any other profession, and cannot possibly be possessed by any one who has not devoted a considerable portion of his life to the acquisition of it’.120 Mill’s point here was to defend a particular vision of the kind of enlightened agency necessary for successful colonial rule.121 Bentham’s support for British colonial government in India was never unconditional, however. He was critical of aspects of East India Company rule in India and he supported the impeachment of Warren Hastings.122 He also supported Fox’s East India Bill (which would have transferred power from the East India Company to a group of government-appointed commissioners) on the grounds that government by a company of merchants is the ‘worst constituted species of government conceivable’.123 And, according to Pitts, he gave only ‘grudging support’ to James Mill’s proposed reforms for India, on the basis that it was preferable to some other far worse British policy.124 Yet it is plain nonetheless that Bentham’s attitude towards British rule in India was rather different from his attitude towards European control of settler colonies in the Americas. In the latter case he clearly favoured a kind of disciplined emancipation. It is not easy to explain this difference without reference to cultural or civilizational distinctions Bentham was making between European settlers (who should be free) and non-European dependencies where the issue was not so clear, and without some kind of implicit argument that British rule was ‘developmentally’ desirable for India. That is, the question of how reform might actually happen was answered in different ways in different places. In the end it is unclear exactly what Bentham thought about British rule in India.125 He does seem to have endorsed it occasionally, even if 120 John Stuart Mill, ‘Petition of the East India Company.’ In Robson, M. Moir, and Z. Moir, eds., The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill: Vol. XXX: Writings on India, 112. 121 See David Williams, ‘John Stuart Mill and the Practice of Colonial Rule in India’, Journal of International Political Theory, www.journals.sagepub.com/toc/iptb/0/0. 122 Cain, ‘Bentham and the Development of the British Critique’, 13; Pitts, A Turn to Empire, 112. 123 Qtd. in Pitts, A Turn to Empire, 114. The bill was defeated in the House of Lords. There are obvious similarities with Smith’s views about these companies. 124 Ibid. 125 Jennifer Pitts, ‘Jeremy Bentham: Legislator of the World?’, in Schultz and Varouxakis, Utilitarianism and Empire, 67.

31892_Williams.indd 115

20-10-15 08:23

116

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

he was sometimes very critical of it. He obviously did see the case of India as different from that of the European settler colonies in the Americas, and this at least shows his ambivalences about colonialism. In addition, while Bentham might have endorsed British rule simply as the least bad available option, the remarks noted earlier about the benefits of British colonialism suggest that Bentham did think that British rule would in the end be beneficial for the colonized.

Conclusion As we have seen, there certainly are some important anti-colonial arguments across Bentham’s works. In particular, Bentham stressed the economic costs of the mercantilist trade policies associated with European colonialism, and the ways in which colonialism encouraged misrule in the European states. He was also, at least some of the time, rather suspicious of any paternalistic justifications for colonial rule, and he was sceptical of the utility of simply transplanting European laws and institution to other places. In addition, aspects of his wider utilitarian philosophy, particularly its egalitarian and cosmopolitan elements, accord, at least in theory, an equal respect for all persons in any utilitarian calculus. Finally, the developmental thinking we have seen in Smith and Kant was a much less prominent feature of Bentham’s thinking, and thus the kinds of civilizational and temporal hierarchies that ­characterize their arguments are less present in Bentham. But there are nonetheless tensions and ambiguities. Bentham does seem to have thought that colonialism had been beneficial to mankind, particularly where settlement took place on ‘vacant’ land, and he did support a form of more ‘rational’ colonialism in Australia. He fully supported the independence of colonies in the Americas, but his consequentialism meant he did not accord any independent value to political inde­ pendence, and his attempts to influence these states, while mostly ineffectual, do point to the significance of alternative, ‘non-colonial’, mechanisms for reform of other places. More problematically, perhaps, the egalitarian and cosmopolitan aspects of his thought are challenged by the neglect of the indigenous peoples in the Americas and his description of the aborigines of Australia. Finally, in the case of India, it is certainly true that Bentham was not a great supporter of British rule, but, as the essay ‘Place and Time’ shows, Bentham’s attitude seems to have been that, while transplanting laws and institutions to India had

31892_Williams.indd 116

20-10-15 08:23



Bentham, Utilitarianism, and Empire 117

to be approached carefully, it should, nonetheless, be attempted. Different kinds of colonialism elicited different kinds of responses (as one would expect), and one obvious difference was between settler colonialism and the emerging form of colonial rule in India. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that India was different for Bentham because its inhabitants were less ‘civilized’. Given these kinds of tensions, it is no surprise that Bentham’s work is a rich source of reflections on liberal arguments about colonialism, as well as for our thinking today about related issues. The first issue is one we have seen with Smith – the stress on the economic and political consequences for European states of continued colonial rule. A second issue revolves around the consequentialist character of Bentham’s thinking more generally. Consequentialist reasoning is not limited to utilitarian forms of liberalism, of course.126 But in some ways that is the point. Liberalism is about achieving certain goods, and sometimes colonialism might be judged to be a problem and sometimes it might not. Of course, there is, at least with Bentham, a strong suspicion that he saw a difference between, say, India and the settler and plantation colonies of the Americas, which suggests that consequentialist thinking about colonialism can be shaped by a host of assumptions (or prejudices) about how fitted societies are for independence. A third issue relates to the egalitarian and cosmopolitan aspects of Bentham’s thought. At the most general level, his account of the springs of action has profoundly egalitarian implications – distant and diverse others really are like us. And such a claim is not just politically significant but also operates to puncture any illusions that ‘we’ as persons are in some sense ‘better’ than these distant and diverse others. On the other hand, such a claim also provides some of the underpinnings for an attempt to legislate for the world, and in that sense it can have imperial implications. And, as with the question of political independence, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that when thinking about this Bentham did make at least some kinds of distinctions between persons based on their ‘culture’ or perceived level of ‘civilization’.

126 See, for example, Simon Caney, ‘Consequentialist Defences of Liberal Neutrality’, Philosophical Quarterly 41, no. 165 (1991): 457–77.

31892_Williams.indd 117

20-10-15 08:23

4

L.T. Hobhouse, ‘New Liberalism’, and the ‘New Imperialism’

leonard trelawny hobhouse has had a somewhat less prominent role in contemporary debates about liberalism and colonialism than the other thinkers examined in this book.1 In some respects this is a little surprising, because Hobhouse was in his day perhaps the most prominent liberal critic of empire.2 But there is much to be gained from exploring Hobhouse’s arguments about colonialism. In particular, such an exploration provides an opportunity to see how certain liberal arguments about colonialism were articulated in the changed circumstances of the early twentieth century – a period when European and especially British imperialism was at its zenith. Hobhouse’s project had to contend with what he saw as a more violent and more racialized form of imperialism (the ‘new imperialism’), especially in Africa, which he thought had profoundly betrayed the promise of an earlier progressive form of empire. It also had to come to terms with the growing force of nationalism, and in doing so Hobhouse mounted a qualified defence of what we would now call ‘national self-determination’, particularly in the context 1 There are exceptions, of course. See Duncan Bell, ‘Democracy and Empire: J.A. Hobson, Leonard Hobhouse, and the Crisis of Liberalism’, in I. Hall and L. Hill, eds., British International Thinkers from Hobbes to Namier (London: Palgrave 2009), 181–205; and Mira Matikkala, Empire and Imperial Ambition: Liberty, Englishness and Anti-Imperialism in Late Victorian Britain (London: I.B. Taurus 2011). 2 Bell, ‘Democracy and Empire’, 200. Michael Freeden made the case in 1978 that the thinkers associated with the new liberalism had been unjustly neglected. Michael Freeden, The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform (Oxford: Clarendon 1978), 1. This is perhaps less so today, in some part because of Freeden’s pioneering work. Nonetheless, compared to the outpouring of commentary on Smith, Kant, and Bentham, interest in thinkers like Hobhouse remains marginal.

31892_Williams.indd 118

20-10-15 08:23



Hobhouse, ‘New Liberalism’, and the ‘New Imperialism’ 119

of debates about Home Rule in Ireland. Furthermore, Hobhouse’s reflections on the problem of imperialism were also shaped by a set of pessimistic assessments of the role of public opinion and the functioning of democracy in an industrialized society. For Hobhouse, far from providing an effective bulwark against domestically damaging impe­ rialism by controlling the ‘sinister interests’ and debunking the specious justifications that supported it, democracy had become part of the problem because a largely disinterested and narrow-minded public was easily manipulated into supporting imperial adventures. Hobhouse was writing in a period that he saw as characterized by a reaction against liberal values and practices, both domestically and internationally, and he made a quite conscious effort to rework liberalism in ways that responded to these changing conditions. At the same time, there are some parallels between Hobhouse’s arguments and those of the other thinkers discussed in this book.3 We find a similar concern with the violence and cruelties of colonial rule combined with a deep anxiety about its impact on the colonizing states. Here Hobhouse stressed the ways in which imperialism undermined liberty at home and diverted attention and resources from what he saw as a vitally important program of domestic social, economic, and political reform. He also identified some of the links between finance, imperialism, and war that were made famous by J.A. Hobson (and developed subsequently by Lenin) as a way of partly explaining why foolish and ultimately self-defeating imperial adventures happened at all.4 We 3 These connections are set out in Peter Cain, ‘Bentham and the Development of the British Critique of Colonialism’, Utilitas 23, no. 1 (2011): 124; and Bernard Porter, Critics of Empire: British Radicals and the Imperial Challenge (London: I.B. Taurus 2011), 5–18. See also Miles Taylor, ‘Imperium et Libertas? Rethinking the Radical Critique of Imperialism during the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 19, no. 1 (1991): 1–23. 4 J.A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (New York: Cosimo 2005 [1902]). Hobhouse was friends with Hobson and was instrumental in getting him sent to South Africa in 1899. For a discussion, see Stephan Collini, Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006), chap. 4. It was during his coverage of the Boer War that Hobson sharpened his own critique of imperialism. See Porter, Critics of Empire, 200–6. For discussions of Hobson and imperialism, see Peter Cain, Hobson and Imperialism: Radicalism, New Liberalism and Finance, 1887–1938 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002); John Wood, ‘J.A. Hobson and British Imperialism’, American Journal of Economics and Sociology 42, no. 4 (1983): 483–500; and Bell, ‘Democracy and Empire’.

31892_Williams.indd 119

20-10-15 08:23

120

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

find, too, a form of developmental thinking that placed what Hobhouse called ‘simpler peoples’ far below the societies of European and (white settler) North America in a hierarchy of cultures.5 Finally, we can see in Hobhouse’s work a series of tensions and ambiv­ alences that can be traced back to his version of ‘developmental liber­ alism’, this time couched in the language of evolution.6 While this language was in certain respects different from the earlier developmentalist arguments of Smith and Kant, it exhibited some of the same tensions and generated some of the same kinds of ambiguities. The most basic tension was between a more historical and sociological account of different modes of thought and action, including liberalism itself, and a commitment to a progressive history in which certain states were more ‘advanced’ than others. In this context Hobhouse’s embrace of a particular kind of evolutionary thinking is another version of Smith’s benevolent deity – a kind of guarantee of the course of progress and a bulwark against the relativism that can result from the historicization of thought. In terms of the ambiguities about colonialism, Hobhouse’s belief in the progressive possibilities of a liberal empire led him to defend aspects of British colonialism. He advocated an Anglo-Saxon imperial union as a vehicle for progressive reform of international politics, and exhibited some ambivalence about whether colonial rule over ‘simpler peoples’ might be a vehicle for progress in these societies. Nowhere did Hobhouse explicitly embrace the argument that colonialism was justified because without it ‘simpler peoples’ would not ‘develop’ (the stark brutalities of the ‘new imperialism’ were such as to make Hobhouse very wary of this kind of argument). Yet Hobhouse’s ambivalences about the process and possibilities of progress in the context of a clear hierarchy of peoples point to important and illuminating tensions within his thought, as well as to significant parallels with Smith and Kant. Hobhouse’s work, like the work of the other thinkers examined in this book, presents certain interpretive difficulties. In the first place, it

5 This is most obvious in L.T. Hobhouse, G.C. Wheeler, and M. Ginsberg, The Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples: An Essay in Correlation (London: Chapman and Hall 1915), but we see similar concerns in his other works. 6 Hobhouse’s reformulation of the idea of ‘development’ (both individual and social) was characteristic of what has become known as the ‘new liberalism’. See Freeden, The New Liberalism, esp. pt. III.

31892_Williams.indd 120

20-10-15 08:23



Hobhouse, ‘New Liberalism’, and the ‘New Imperialism’ 121

is a remarkable mixture of genres. Some is what we would now call ‘political theory’, particularly Liberalism and The Metaphysical Theory of the State. Some is self-consciously sociological, especially Morals in Evolution and The Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples.7 It was in these works that Hobhouse engaged in empirical and classificatory work framed by his particular concern with social development. Other writings, notably Social Evolution and Political Theory, are a mixture of the two.8 Still other works are more rhetorical engagements in vital political debates of the day, especially Democracy and Reaction and The World in Conflict, where Hobhouse often included shortened and simplified versions of what were already, or were to become, book-length treatments of particular issues. On top of this, Hobhouse worked as a journalist for five years and continued thereafter to contribute articles to newspapers and journals.9 Second, it is important to recognize that Hobhouse’s work was, as Michael Freeden has noted, ‘nurtured upon, and directed at, the soil of concrete social phenomena’.10 Hobhouse often appealed to empirical evidence, to the experience of history, and to the judgement of policymakers to decide in particular cases. This is an important (and valuable) aspect of Hobhouse’s thought, but it does also muddy the interpretive waters, especially when Hobhouse does not provide any very clear guide to how empirical matters are to be weighed in particular cases. This problem was noted by one of the early reviewers of Democracy and Reaction. With an exasperated tone, they asked, ‘[W]here in all of this is the concrete principle of universal application?’11 The aim of this chapter, as with the previous three, is not to draw out of Hobhouse’s work some single clear set of arguments about imperialism, but rather to explore the varied and various forms of argument he made and the ambiguities and tensions present in them with an eye to what they might contribute to our thinking today about how liberals   7 Hobhouse held the first chair in sociology at the University of London.  8 The relationship between ‘political theory’ and ‘sociology’ in Hobhouse’s work is explored in Stefan Collini, Liberalism and Sociology: L.T. Hobhouse and Political Argument in England, 1880–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1983).   9 As Freeden has argued, Hobhouse was a very engaged participant in the political events and debates of his day. Freeden, The New Liberalism, 253. 10 Ibid. 11 Henry Jones Ford, ‘The Ethics of Empire’, Political Science Quarterly 22, no. 3 (1907): 502.

31892_Williams.indd 121

20-10-15 08:23

122

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

relate to plural others. The chapter begins by outlining Hobhouse’s critique of imperialism. It then explores some of the broader tensions in his thought revealed by the juxtaposition of his historicization of liberalism with his evolutionary account of progress. Next, it turns to Hobhouse’s arguments about the progressive possibilities of a form of empire and his uncertainties about the potentially progressive role of colonialism. The chapter concludes by reflecting on what we might take away from Hobhouse for our thinking today about the problems and possibilities of a liberal imperialism.

Hobhouse as Critic of Imperialism Hobhouse’s critique of imperialism, especially British imperialism, was composed of several strands. First, he gave a qualified endorsement of what we would now call a right to self-determination for Ireland. The qualifications demonstrate the ambivalences Hobhouse had about nationalism, but in this case at least Hobhouse thought that continued British rule was illegitimate. Second, he was deeply critical of the violence and brutality he saw as characteristic of the ‘new imperialism’, and he stressed the costs to Britain of its imperial policies, as well as the apathy of the British public that enabled this brutal form of imperialism to continue. Finally, he was explicitly critical of the racial theories that were used to justify European imperialism. Nationalism and Independence Since the Act of Union in 1800, there had been growing opposition within Ireland to British rule.12 In the late nineteenth century, two Irish Home Rule bills were defeated in Parliament, but the Parliament Act  of  1911 neutered the power of opposition in the House of Lords and in 1912 a new Irish Home Rule Bill was introduced.13 In support of the bill, Hobhouse contributed an essay to a collection, The New Irish Constitution. In ‘Irish Nationalism and Liberal Principle’, Hobhouse argued the case for Irish independence through a more 12 For one history, see D. George Boyce, Nineteenth Century Ireland: The Search for Stability (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan 1999), esp. chaps. 3, 6, and 8. 13 This was passed but, as a result of the outbreak of the First World War and the Easter Rising, never implemented.

31892_Williams.indd 122

20-10-15 08:23



Hobhouse, ‘New Liberalism’, and the ‘New Imperialism’ 123

general investigation into the relationship between liberalism, nationalism, and claims for national self-determination.14 In Liberalism (published a year earlier), Hobhouse had argued that ‘the general tendency of Liberalism is to favour autonomy’.15 But the choice of word tendency here was not incidental. In ‘Irish Nationalism and Liberal Principle’, he said, ‘Liberalism is for self-government, it is true, but, provided that all parts of a country or of an empire are equally represented on a democratic franchise in the governing assembly of the whole, what has the principle of liberty to say further on the matter? Why should it be on the side of division or against unity?’16 This was an important question for Hobhouse because he had a characteristically liberal set of anxieties about nationalism.17 On the one hand, Hobhouse thought that ‘national unity’ had positive consequences. It was the attachments of patriotism and loyalty to one’s society that generated a collective pride in and commitment to the particular institutions and values of one’s place, and thus helped to integrate individuals into the social whole.18 Given that one characteristic of Hobhouse’s thought was its stress on creating the conditions for a ‘harmonious’ social life, including a mutual recognition of entitlements and obligations, some kind of

14 The essay was originally published in J.H. Morgan, ed., The New Irish Constitution: An Exposition and Some Arguments (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1912). For a general discussion, see G.K. Peatling, ‘New Liberalism, J.L. Hammond and the Irish Problem, 1987–1949’, Historical Research 73, no. 180 (2000): 48–65. 15 L.T. Hobhouse, Liberalism and Other Writings, ed. J. Meadowcroft (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1994), 20. 16 L.T. Hobhouse, ‘Irish Nationalism and Liberal Principle’, in Hobhouse: Liberalism and Other Writings, 168. Irish voters elected mps to the British Parliament, although the franchise was limited as a result of a property qualification. 17 The literature here is extensive. For some general reviews see: Mark ­Haugaard, ‘Nationalism and Liberalism’, in G. Delanty and K. Kumar, eds., The Sage Handbook of  Nations and Nationalism (London: Sage 2006), 245–65; Paul Kelly, ‘Liberalism and  Nationalism’, in S. Wall, ed., Cambridge Companion to Liberalism (Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press 2015), 329–52; and Bernard Yack’s review essay ‘Reconciling Liberalism and Nationalism’, Political Theory 23, no. 1 (1995): 166–82. For a vivid demonstration of the tensions, see Brain Barry’s review of David Miller’s book On Nationality: Brain Barry, ‘Nationalism versus Liberalism?’ Nations and Nationalism 2, no. 3 (1996): 430–5. For an important account of a reconciliation (although one that places more emphasis on liberalism), see Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press 1993). 18 L.T. Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction (London: Fisher Unwin 1904), 159–60.

31892_Williams.indd 123

20-10-15 08:23

124

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

national bonds are a sociologically necessary condition for his kind of liberalism – individuals had to feel themselves connected to others.19 On the other hand, he blamed the growth of nationalism for the ‘recrudescence of militarism’ in Europe.20 And he argued that the ‘heightening of national unity’ had led to the resurgence of protectionism and thus undermined the pacifying effect of free trade.21 For Hobhouse, nationalism was ‘Janus faced’: ‘[I]t looks both ways – towards freedom and towards aggression. The struggles of subject nationalities with oppressors have filled a great chapter in the history of freedom. Yet nationalities that have become free have often gone on to enslave others’.22 Nonetheless, Hobhouse argued that Ireland at least ought to be free from British rule. This was so for three reasons. First, he argued that economic and social conditions in Ireland made it far more ‘capable of self-support’ than it had been in the past.23 Second, the growing strength of Irish national identity meant that, despite the representation that the Irish had in the union, rule by Britain was always going to be resented. As Hobhouse put it, ‘man is attached even against his will to his kindred, and prefers their blunders to the perfect wisdom of an alien’.24 Third, Hobhouse identified the political costs of continued rule over another national group. He said that this rule often leads to violations of the principles of political liberty, as constitutional rights are curtailed in an attempt to maintain order.25 Taken together, these arguments meant that ‘the test of nationality lies in history’: ‘If the life of one people can be absorbed into that of another so that free Government

19 See, for example, Hobhouse, ‘The Individual and the State’, in Hobhouse: Liberalism and Other Writings, 152–65. 20 L.T. Hobhouse, The World in Conflict (London: Fischer Unwin 1915), 64; Hobhouse, ‘Irish Nationalism and Liberal Principle’, 68. 21 Hobhouse, World in Conflict, 667. Hobhouse said that Norman Angell’s arguments had been ‘unjustly decried’, 67. For a discussion, see Leonie Holthaus, ‘L.T. Hobhouse and the Transformation of Liberal Internationalism’, Review of International Studies 40, no. 4 (2014): 709. 22 Hobhouse, World in Conflict, 63. 23 Hobhouse, ‘Irish Nationalism and Liberal Principle’, 167. See Boyce, Nineteenth Century Ireland, chap. 9, for a discussion. 24 Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 160. 25 Hobhouse, ‘Irish Nationalism and Liberal Principle’, 168–9.

31892_Williams.indd 124

20-10-15 08:23



Hobhouse, ‘New Liberalism’, and the ‘New Imperialism’ 125

can proceed unimpeded … the union is justified by the event. If on the other hand the demand for autonomy is clear and persistent … there is proof that nationality is a vital principle, and a permanent force with which liberty must make its account’.26 Liberalism had to ‘rely on the concrete teachings of history and the practical insight of statesmanship to determine how the lines of autonomy were to be drawn’.27 Here we can see Hobhouse wrestling with the implications of nationalism for arguments about empire. Sometimes such sentiments had to be politically reckoned with – as was the case in Ireland – and they might indeed have some positive effects. And his arguments about Irish Home Rule suggest a number of factors that might be used to justify independence in other cases (although Hobhouse did not extend his arguments beyond Ireland). On the other hand, Hobhouse did not want to endorse any principle of national self-determination. In ways that parallel Bentham’s ambivalences about political independence, Hobhouse saw that national self-determination might, but also might not, lead to the furtherance of liberal values and practices, and thus one had to tread carefully when considering claims for political independence on the part of colonized societies. It is this that partly explains why Hobhouse’s favoured solution for the Anglo-Saxon empire was not formal inde­ pendence at all but a progressive imperial union that guaranteed some form of political autonomy while constraining the potentially dangerous impulses of national groups within a wider institutional and legal structure. Imperialism and Reaction Hobhouse’s most extended and vociferous criticisms of imperialism were made in the context of the ‘new imperialism’, and most forcefully articulated in Democracy and Reaction, a collection of essays written during the Boer War. He set out ‘two deeply-contrasted pictures of imperialism’.28 The first picture was of the British Empire as a progressive force in world politics. Hobhouse argued that this vision owed much 26 Ibid., 170. 27 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 20. See also Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 161; and Hobhouse, World in Conflict, 82, 28 Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 44.

31892_Williams.indd 125

20-10-15 08:23

126

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

to earlier liberal thinkers and statesmen. It stressed the ways in which imperial rule brought peace, justice, progress, and freedom to colonized societies.29 The appeal of this vision of empire was, according to Hobhouse, ‘seductive, and taken at its face value … almost irresistible’.30 But, while such statements indicated his sympathy with some of the principles that underpinned this imperial vision, Hobhouse’s argument was that the ‘imperialism of promise’ had nothing to do with the ‘imperialism of performance’: ‘Little by little it became clearer that the new Imperialism stood, not for a widened and ennobled sense of national responsibility, but for a hard assertion of racial supremacy and material force’.31 The ‘unprejudiced observer’ was compelled to recognize that, in practice, imperialism meant ‘perpetual warfare, battles which, where black or yellow men were concerned, became sheer massacres, campaigns which, where a resolute white race stood in the way [the Boers], involved desolation unspeakable, the destruction of political and personal freedom, and … the recrudescence of servile labour’.32 This was  the ‘antithesis’ of the conception of empire ‘bequeathed by the older generation of liberals’.33 ‘Under the reign of Imperialism … Blood never ceases to run. The voice of the mourner is never hushed’.34 One of Hobhouse’s explicit purposes in employing such dramatic rhetoric was to persuade liberals at the time that, whatever their own understanding of what empire ought to be, this was a far cry from what it actually was; and that by supporting an imaginary imperialism, they were ‘insensibly led’ to support the practice of a quite different and dreadfully cruel form of imperialism.35 Another of his targets was Fabian support for imperialism, and for the Boer War in particular.36 The Fabian vision of empire stressed collectivism at home and abroad

29 Ibid., 13–14. 30 Ibid., 16. 31 Ibid., 44–5. 32 Ibid., 46. 33 Ibid., 47. 34 Ibid., 28. 35 See also Bell, ‘Democracy and Empire’, 186–7. 36 Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 48.

31892_Williams.indd 126

20-10-15 08:23



Hobhouse, ‘New Liberalism’, and the ‘New Imperialism’ 127

and a state-led rationalization of imperial economic relations.37 For Hobhouse, this was both dangerous and foolish. It was dangerous because the more collectivist understanding of empire had undermined some of the old liberal ideas about the centrality of collective and individual autonomy.38 It was foolish because it thought to combine a vigorous imperial policy with a domestic political reform program. This, for Hobhouse, was a ‘dream’: imperialism ‘paralysed democratic effort at home’.39 The ‘policy of expansion’ meant ever-increasing military expenditures both to defend territories and to guard against the ‘dangerous jealousies’ awakened in other states by the march of empire.40 These resources could have gone ‘to improve the condition of the people’.41 The spirit of freedom, at home and in the colonies, was sacrificed: ‘[T]he determination to rule others had its normal effects on the ­liberties of the ruling people themselves’.42 Economic protectionism re-emerged, taxation increased, and ‘compulsory enlistment’ was a real danger.43 Imperialism, he said, was ‘a standing menace to domestic freedom’.44 All this raised the same question that had confronted Smith and Bentham: If imperialism as actually practised was so damaging to the colonizing state, why did it happen? Part of Hobhouse’s answer was that the older liberal ideas that had sustained liberty, free trade, and the empire as a progressive force had been abandoned by influential ­sections of society, including by the Fabians. He blamed the baleful

37 This was expressed most famously in Fabianism and the Empire: A Manifesto by the Fabian Society, ed. G.B. Shaw (London: Grant Richards, 1900). For a discussion of the debates within the Fabian Society, see Porter, Critics of Empire, 109–23. For a wider discussion of Fabianism and empire, see Fred Schneider, ‘Fabians and the Utilitarian Idea of Empire’, Review of Politics 35, no. 4 (1973): 501–22; and Michael Cowen and Robert Shenton, ‘The Origin and Course of Fabian Colonialism’, Journal of Historical Sociology 4, no. 2 (1991): 143–74. 38 L.T. Hobhouse, ‘The Foreign Policy of Collectivism’, Economic Review 9 (April 1899): 197–220. 39 Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 49. 40 Ibid., 30. Again there are parallels with Kant and Bentham here. 41 Ibid., 32. 42 Ibid., 49. 43 Ibid., 46–7. 44 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 114.

31892_Williams.indd 127

20-10-15 08:23

128

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

influence of German idealism for undermining liberal humanitarianism, just as the rise of social Darwinism undermined the concern with social justice.45 According to Hobhouse, these ideas led to the view that it ‘is the business of the individual to be a loyal and law-abiding subject of the state’ and that it is the ‘business of the State merely to advance itself and trample down all who cross its path’.46 Part of the answer, too, was that imperial policy was not conceived in the interests of the empire as a whole, nor of the interests of Britain as a whole, but in the interests ‘of a group of financiers’. The blood that was ‘lavished’ in the Boer War was, he said, for ‘the benefit of a few wealthy corporations’.47 In another essay he said that the new imperialists viewed empire as a ‘great gold producing machine’.48 Wrongheaded and dangerous ideas as well as greed had conspired to produce a form of imperialism that was a betrayal of the imperialism of promise. The final part of the explanation for the pursuit of a dangerous and damaging imperial policy related to the functioning of democracy – hence the title of the book. For Hobhouse, democracy was an important element of liberalism because it provided a mechanism to enforce the ‘responsibility of the executive and legislature to the community as a whole’ and because the achievement of collective self-government was bound up with a ‘deepening sense of social responsibility’ on the part of individual citizens.49 On the other hand, Hobhouse also thought that it ‘was well to be under no illusions about democracy’.50 ‘[T]o the new public opinion of the streets and tramcars it is useless to appeal in terms of reason; it has not time to put the two ends of an argument together; it has hardly the patience to receive a single idea, much less to hold two in the mind and compare them … it is, of course, the athletic and sporting news which in the main sells the papers in the streets. The marvelous diffusion of interest in these matters, while the result of the 45 Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 77–83, 84–95. 46 Ibid., 87. 47 Ibid., 43–4. 48 Qtd. in Bell, ‘Democracy and Empire’, 202. 49 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 21. See also L.T. Hobhouse ‘Government by the People’, in Hobhouse: Liberalism and Other Writings, 133. 50 Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 180. See James Meadowcroft, ‘Neutrality, Perfectionism, and the New Liberal Conception of the State’, in A. Simhony and D. Weinstein, eds., The New Liberalism: Reconciling Liberty and Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001), 127; and Bell, ‘Democracy and Empire’, 184.

31892_Williams.indd 128

20-10-15 08:23



Hobhouse, ‘New Liberalism’, and the ‘New Imperialism’ 129

general growth of material prosperity, is also a bar to the maintenance of any wide-spread interest in public affairs’.51 He went on: ‘As to news, mere fidelity to fact ceases to be of moment when everything is forgotten within twenty-four hours, and when people do not really read in order that they may know, but in order that their attention may be momentarily diverted from the tedium of the train or the tramcar’.52 The problem here was that, as a result of this, ‘the worst of governments could always retain power by raising the patriotic cry’.53 There are obvious similarities here with John Stuart Mill’s ambivalences about democracy that Hobhouse himself noted.54 In Liberalism, Hobhouse said that ‘complete and wholehearted absorption in public interests is rare. It is the property not of the mass but of the few, and the democrat is well aware that it is the remnant which saves the people. He subjoins only that if their effort is really to succeed the people must be willing to be saved’.55 This aspect of Hobhouse’s critique of imperialism is an amalgam of older and newer arguments. He shared with Smith and Kant an acknowledgement of the cruelties and barbarities associated with colonial rule. And he shared with Smith and Bentham a set of anxieties about the impact of imperialism on domestic politics, especially the ways in which it operated to block programs of domestic reform. He shared, too, the belief that imperialism was really beneficial only to a small section of society. But neither Smith nor Bentham had to worry much about how imperialism might play out in the context of industrial democracy. Bentham thought that democracy could provide a mechanism for reigning in the ‘sinister interests’ that profited from colonialism, and that the court of public opinion could help undermine the specious arguments that supported it. Hobhouse was not so sanguine. The ‘public opinion of the streets and tramcars’ was not amenable to ‘reason’ and had neither the time nor the inclination to take an interest in public affairs. It was thus easily led into supporting dangerous and misguided imperial adventures. For both Smith and Bentham, society at large had

51 Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 71. Hobhouse also said that ‘no social revolution will come from a people so absorbed in cricket and football’ (ibid., 76). 52 Ibid., 74–5. 53 Ibid., 49. 54 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 54. 55 Ibid., 111.

31892_Williams.indd 129

20-10-15 08:23

130

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

been the victim of misguided colonial policies, and both cast themselves as defenders of the wider public interest against the sectional interests that profited from colonialism. Hobhouse, too, wanted to ‘save’ the people, but he was confronted by the uncomfortable fact that they might not even care about being saved. Race and the New Imperialism We also find in Hobhouse’s work some resources for condemning imperialism on the basis of a theory of just relations between peoples. Hobhouse is at times very clear: ‘[T]he spirit of domination which rejoices in conquest is by nature hostile to the idea of racial equality’.56 In this context, it is also worth noting that, at the request of W.E.B. Du Bois, Hobhouse wrote a letter of appreciation as a contribution to a pamphlet commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (naacp).57 Hobhouse was also deeply critical of the deployment of racial hierarchies to justify imperial conquest: ‘The literature of Imperialism is openly contemptuous – sometimes aggressively, sometimes patronizingly – of the ‘coloured’ races … and alternates between a sentimental insistence on the duties owed to them by the white man, and invective against anyone who inquires how these duties are being performed’.58 In other places he also invokes the idea of a common humanity: ‘[I]f we bring fire and famine into their land, the suffering which we cause is no less real because felt by men and women of different speech or even different colour. The foreigner bleeds when you prick him, just as your compatriot does’.59 And, when it came to the ‘elementary rights’ that other races deserve, he said that ‘there can be no question as the attitude of

56 Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 36. 57 The W.E.B. Du Bois letter can be found at: www.credo.library.umass.edu/ view/full/mums312-b043-i454. Du Bois also sent Hobhouse a memo in 1922 on the ‘Negro Problem’ in the United States: www.credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/ mums312-b019-i333. The full title is ‘Memo to Mr L.T. Hobhouse, Chairman of the Proposed British Committee on the Negro Problem’. I have been unable to find any further information on this committee or on Hobhouse’s proposed chairmanship. 58 Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 36–7. 59 Ibid., 201.

31892_Williams.indd 130

20-10-15 08:23



Hobhouse, ‘New Liberalism’, and the ‘New Imperialism’ 131

Liberalism’: ‘Moral rights and duties are founded on relations between man and man and therefore applicable to all humanity’.60 Sometimes Hobhouse does deploy the language of a racialized hierarchy: ‘[T]he kaffir is after all a human being, if an inferior one’.61 And Hobhouse’s concern with racial and national liberty was tempered by what he called ‘questions of fact’. These could cut both ways: ‘Is the Negro or the Kaffir mentally and morally capable of self-government or of taking part in a self-governing state? The experience of the Cape Colony tends to the affirmative view. American experiences of the negro gives [sic], I take it, a more doubtful answer. A specious extension of the white man’s rights to the black may be the best way of ruining the black. To destroy tribal custom by introducing conceptions of individual property, the free disposal of land, and the free purchase of gin may be the handiest method for the expropriator’.62 Yet, despite these sentiments, Hobhouse, in one of his most uncompromising statements, said that ‘until the white man has fully learnt to rule his own life, the best of all things that he can do with the dark man is to do nothing with him. In this relation, the day of a more constructive Liberalism is yet to come’.63 In the context of the ‘new imperialism’, the idea that the ‘white man’ ought to leave the ‘dark man’ alone was an extraordinarily radical claim. The ‘new imperialists’ themselves, as well as those liberals and Fabians who sometimes lent their unwitting support to them, all thought that doing something to the ‘dark man’ was a central project of the British Empire. Hobhouse’s exposure of the profound difference between the ‘imperialism of promise’ and the brutalities of the ‘imperialism of performance’ undermined this presumption and provides one of his most important anti-colonial liberal arguments. Hobhouse could not quite abandon the ‘imperialism of promise’, however. Despite everything he said about the ‘imperialism of performance’, and despite the dangers he saw in the liberal justification for empire being an unwittingly accomplice in the new imperialism, Hobhouse wanted to hold on to the idea of a ‘more constructive Liberalism’. This tension between a recognition of the often brutal realties of imperialism and a commitment to the progressive possibilities 60 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 20; Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 199–200. 61 Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 91. 62 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 20. 63 Ibid., 21

31892_Williams.indd 131

20-10-15 08:23

132

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

of a more properly liberal imperialism points towards perhaps the most important issue at stake in Hobhouse’s arguments: the grounds upon which it was possible to think that liberalism actually was, or could be, a progressive force.

The Problem of Progress and t h e   H i s to r i c i z at i o n o f L i b e r a l i s m Hobhouse was one of the first writers to identify explicitly a series of seminal thinkers who, taken together, had helped to define something called ‘liberalism’.64 He did this in a now commonplace way: identifying a ‘core’ idea that characterized ‘liberalism’ and then tracing its history through the works of certain canonical thinkers. Hobhouse argued that at the heart of liberalism was a concern with ‘liberty’. Liberalism, he said, was concerned with ‘loosening the bonds’ imposed on human activity. It was ‘a movement of liberation, a clearance of obstructions, an opening of channels for the flow of free spontaneous action’.65 It was this concern with liberty that made the name ‘liberalism’ appropriate, and provided the thread that united different thinkers into an identifiable tradition of thought. Through the history of liberalism, however, the meaning of ‘liberty’ changed in response to changing circumstances. Liberalism was formed initially, according to Hobhouse, out of a protest against the increasing power of the state.66 The thinkers he associated with this were the theorists of the ‘natural order’, particularly Locke, Rousseau, and Paine. These thinkers were united in their defence of natural rights and in the idea that political institutions derived their authority from the consent of the governed and were established primarily to defend the people’s rights. Next were the utilitarian thinkers, especially Bentham but also James Mill, who, Hobhouse thought, were right to think that there was no such thing as natural rights and that liberty had to be tempered by considerations of utility. Then there were the ‘Cobdenites’,

64 Hobhouse’s role in the emergence of the idea of a ‘tradition’ of liberal thought is noted in Duncan Bell, ‘What Is Liberalism?’ Political Theory 42, no. 6 (2014): 682–715; and John Gunnell, ‘American Political Science, Liberalism, and the Invention of Political Theory’, American Political Science Review 82, no. 1 (1988): 71–87. 65 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 23, 22. 66 Ibid., 8.

31892_Williams.indd 132

20-10-15 08:23



Hobhouse, ‘New Liberalism’, and the ‘New Imperialism’ 133

who stressed individual economic liberty in the face of mercantilist economic policies. Finally, for Hobhouse, were Gladstone and John Stuart Mill. Mill showed that ‘the permanent welfare of the public’ is bound up with the liberty of the individual, but also that individual well-being is dependent on ‘social well-being’ and that there was a difference between ‘the desire of the majority and the good of the community’ (this was an important part of Hobhouse’s anxieties about democracy, as we have seen).67 The point of this construction of a tradition of liberal thinking was not primarily (perhaps even largely) historical.68 Rather, it was designed to show the ways in which Hobhouse’s ‘new liberalism’ was a logical and legitimate development of the liberal tradition – one that held on to the core liberal ideas but developed in them ways more suited to the conditions of a modern industrial society.69 Although individual liberty remained central, it was valuable primarily as a vehicle for individual ‘growth’ and ‘self-control’. The key to integrating the liberty of individuals into a progressive society was the concept of ‘harmony’.70 Living well with others meant having rights (but not natural rights) that are recognized by others through their self-restraint, as well as having duties to assist others. Only in this way could the liberty necessary for individual growth be reconciled with harmonious communal living.71 The ‘social ideal’ consisted in the attainment of ‘ethical harmony’ that was, he said, ‘the persistent impulse of the rational being’.72 Part of the purpose of these somewhat abstract arguments was to lay the foundations for a more concrete political program.73 Such a program was concerned to expand the sphere of state intervention in the management of economic

67 Ibid., 52, 54. 68 Any construction of a history of liberalism serves more than scholarly purposes. See Bell, ‘What Is Liberalism?’, 689–92. 69 James Meadowcroft makes this point in his ‘Introduction’ to Hobhouse: Liberalism and Other Writings, xv. Hobhouse used the phrase ‘new liberalism’ (Liberalism, 51). For more general discussions of new liberalism, see Freeden, The New Liberalism; and Simhony and Weinstein, The New Liberalism. 70 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 62. See also L.T. Hobhouse Social Evolution and Political Theory (New York: Columbia University Press 1911), 92–3. 71 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 59; Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory, 23. 72 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 62; Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory, 83. 73 This is developed most fully in Hobhouse, Liberalism, chaps. 7 and 8. For one discussion, see Freeden, The New Liberalism, chap. 6.

31892_Williams.indd 133

20-10-15 08:23

134

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

life and in the amelioration of the social problems that characterized industrial society.74 So, for example, Hobhouse advocated a ‘living wage’ and argued that the state must pursue as far as possible fullemployment, more expansive welfare provision, and increased taxation, especially on the profits derived from speculation. He also advocated changes to British democracy, including the use of proportional representation, reform of the House of Lords, and decentralization. These policies would provide the conditions for individual growth and social harmony.75 For Hobhouse, the history of liberalism was not just a history of theories or thinkers, although he thought that one could trace the onward course of the liberal movement ‘by appreciating the successive points of view which its thinkers and statesman have occupied’.76 Rather, he saw liberalism as a ‘movement’ (what we have been calling a ‘project’).77 ‘Great changes are not caused by ideas alone; but they are not effected without ideas’. The ideas helped to direct common action, to convert, and to inspire. They became elaborated into social philosophies, but they arose in the course of ‘practical demands of human feeling’.78 At each stage in the development of this movement, Hobhouse located liberal arguments in the context of the particular political contests liberals were engaged in (against the centralizing state, against mercantilism, against the stultifying effects of public opinion, and so on). So, while Hobhouse was concerned to think through the logic and possibilities of liberal arguments, he was always aware of the ways in which what these thinkers said was shaped by particular contexts and political projects. Although Hobhouse saw his own version of ‘liberalism’ as different in important respects from those that preceded it, he understood himself to be operating within this tradition because he, too, reworked and rejected previous liberal ideas in the context of new circumstances and

74 Hobhouse sometimes used the phrase ‘liberal socialism’ to describe his political position; see, for example, Hobhouse, Liberalism, 55; Meadowcroft, ‘Introduction’, Hobhouse: Liberalism and Other Writings, xii; and Freeden, The New Liberalism, chap. 2. 75 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 98. 76 Ibid., 25. 77 Ibid., 22. 78 Ibid., 24.

31892_Williams.indd 134

20-10-15 08:23



Hobhouse, ‘New Liberalism’, and the ‘New Imperialism’ 135

new political problems. And he also understood the production of these arguments as a way of directing, converting, and inspiring.79 While today this would not pass muster as anything like an adequate history of anything we might call ‘liberalism’, what is most revealing and significant about Hobhouse’s history is that it is an historicization of liberalism – albeit not a very sophisticated one – and that has some important consequences. On this account, ‘liberalism’ first emerged in the seventeenth century as a reaction against an increasingly overbearing state. It developed and changed in response to changing political and social conditions. It provided a way of giving a philosophical coherence to demands that originated in the ‘practical demands of human feelings’. And Hobhouse himself was responding to what he saw as the pressing economic and social demands of his time (and place). The point is not whether Hobhouse’s history is especially accurate but whether in this mode it ran the risk of making liberalism simply just the particular ideas that happened to emerge as part of a particular historical story of a particular place; of making the achievement of liberalism simply something inside the historical process.80 And Hobhouse could see this. At the end of the first chapter of Liberalism, he asked if liberalism was ‘of permanent significance’: ‘Does it express some vital truth of social life as such, or is it a temporary phenomenon called forth by the special circumstances of Western Europe?’81 We can see in this question some parallel with the kind of problem thrown up by Smith’s and Kant’s moral theorizing. The more one understands modes of thought of action historically or sociologically, the more pressing the demand for some way out of the problem of cultural relativism by inscribing a meaning and direction to the historical process. Hobhouse did not appeal to a benevolent deity but something was required that would fulfil the same role. And here he turned to the increasingly influential language of evolution.82 This way of thinking,

79 Ibid. 80 I take it that this is Bernard Williams’s point about liberalism and the problems it has with its own history. See Bernard Williams, In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press 2005). 81 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 9. 82 Freeden, The New Liberalism, chap. 3, addresses the widespread use of biological metaphors in ‘new liberal’ thought at the time. Collini, Liberalism and Sociology, chap. 6, focuses on Hobhouse in this context.

31892_Williams.indd 135

20-10-15 08:23

136

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

he said, provided ‘a meaning and an element of purpose for the historical process’.83 Hobhouse rejected the version of evolution that stressed competition and survival as the keys to the evolutionary process in human life (and which for some other thinkers justified European colonialism).84 The important distinction for Hobhouse was between ‘fittedness for survival’ and ‘higher’. Microbes were well adapted to survive, but they were not ‘higher’ organisms.85 When it came to applying evolution to the ‘science of society’, it was the distinction between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ that was central. For Hobhouse, ‘mind’ was ‘higher’ than ‘matter’, and the ‘more developed mind’ was ‘higher’ than the ‘less developed’. This form of evolution ‘along the main or ascending line’ that consisted in the ‘expansion of mind’ he called ‘orthogenic evolution’.86 In this view, social development was ‘the active realization of something that is at first a mere potentiality’. While Hobhouse ­certainly thought that such a process was at work in human history, he did not think that it manifest itself in any simple linear process. There were no strict laws here, and certainly no simple correlations between a set of conditions and a definite outcome.87 It was not continuous, but it was real and ‘fundamental’.88 This raised the question of how any such process was to be seen in the concrete development of human societies. This question was similar to that asked by Kant – how to tease out a story of human progress from the mass of chaotic, incomplete, and sometimes contradictory evidence.89 Hobhouse addressed this question through the methodology of the nascent discipline of sociology.90 The purpose of Hobhouse’s empirical investigations into human progress was to measure the

83 L.T. Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution: A Study in Comparative Ethics (New York: Henry Holt 1906), 637. 84 Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory, chap. 4. 85 Ibid., 100. 86 Ibid., 102–3. The term has a complex history inside and outside of biology. For one discussion, see Freeden, The New Liberalism, 85–97. 87 Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory, 84, 106. 88 Ibid., 152, 103, 111. See also Hobhouse, Liberalism, 65. 89 Hobhouse, Wheeler, and Ginsberg, The Material Culture and Social Institutions, 1. 90 Collini, Liberalism and Sociology, chap. 6. For a discussion of the links between the discipline of sociology and the British Empire after the Second World War, see George Steinmetz, ‘A Child of the Empire: British Sociology and Colonialism, 1940s–1960s’, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 49, no. 4 (2013): 353–78.

31892_Williams.indd 136

20-10-15 08:23



Hobhouse, ‘New Liberalism’, and the ‘New Imperialism’ 137

‘direction and the distance traversed in the evolution of man’.91 The methodology he used was a form of ‘social morphology’ that involved the systematic arrangement and classification of social types. The problem, of course, was the basis upon which to make such a classification, and Hobhouse made it clear that the object must be to show institutions in an ‘order in which they might be conceived as growing up’; or, as he put it, to show the ‘stages or phases of human development’, ‘and in particular that development which has brought a large portion of humanity to the present stage of civilization’.92 In other words, Hobhouse operated with a teleology whereby the definition of what counted as ‘developed’ provided the categories within which the story of this development was told.93 In Social Evolution and Political Theory, the categories included the widening of the social unit, the evolution of impartial justice, expanded membership in the political community, the evolution of individual liberty, the emergence of mutual forbearance and mutual aid, and the extension of the rational control of life.94 This history operated to locate societies in the past and the present in a hierarchy. The clearest example of this is The Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples, which surveys the historical and anthropological record and places groups into seven categories: ‘lower hunters’, ‘higher hunters’, and then three levels of agriculturalists and two levels of pastoralists.95 The level of economic development provided the basis for this classification, and issues such as the form of government and systems of justice, family relations, war fighting, extent of cannibalism, infanticide and human sacrifice, and property relations are investigated at the different levels. Hobhouse’s way out of the dilemmas created by the historicization of liberalism thus creates the kinds of hierarchies of peoples and cultures we have seen before in both Smith and Kant. As with these thinkers,

91 Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory, 116. 92 Ibid., 118, 119, 124. 93 Collini, Liberalism and Sociology, chap. 7. 94 Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory, 152–3. This summarizes the much more extensive discussion in Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution. 95 Hobhouse, Wheeler, and Ginsberg, The Material Culture and Social Institutions, 29; and see 30–44 for a very extensive list of groups around the world allocated to these categories.

31892_Williams.indd 137

20-10-15 08:23

138

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

the simple identification of such a hierarchy did not, for Hobhouse, lead straightforwardly to a justification of colonial rule as a way of leading more backward societies on the path of development. But it clearly did operate to cast diverse others as in important respects behind the more developed Anglo-Saxon and European states, and it gave to those states a special and particular role in the creation of a progressive world order. At the same time, though, it is not hard to see the more existential anxieties that underlay this attempt to provide a ‘scientific’ grounding for the belief in the developmental superiority of the West. As Stefan Collini has argued, despite the attempt to provide a social scientific foundation for this progressive history, behind it is an anxiety not ­dissimilar to Kant’s: the account of progress settles the ‘fundamental question – whether the life of man is full of hopeful purpose or void of meaning’.96

I m p e r i a l i s m a n d t h e A m b i va l e n c e s of Developmental Liberalism Hobhouse never deviated from his condemnation of the ‘imperialism of performance’. But alongside this Hobhouse articulated and defended a particular kind of imperial federation, comprised of the ‘Englishspeaking’ peoples. Such a federation, conceived on quasi-racial grounds, was for Hobhouse a rational solution to the changing character of international politics and could balance the demands of democracy and nationality with a widened sense of communal belonging. When it came to the relationship between Britain and its ‘non-English-speaking’ colonies, however, Hobhouse was more ambivalent. While stressing the cruelties and injustices that accompanied imperialism as actually practised, Hobhouse thought that the liberal understanding of empire, as a vehicle for progress, justice, and peace, was, at least in principle, positive. And Hobhouse left open the question of whether external intervention might accelerate the development of peoples towards the rational ends of the evolutionary process.

96 L.T. Hobhouse, Development and Purpose: An Essay towards a Philosophy of Evolution (London: Macmillan 1913), 372. Collini argues that there was in Hobhouse a continuous tension between this more optimistic outlook and pessimism about the future of ‘western civilization’. See, Collini, Liberalism and Sociology, 252.

31892_Williams.indd 138

20-10-15 08:23



Hobhouse, ‘New Liberalism’, and the ‘New Imperialism’ 139

Imperialism or Empire? We noted earlier Hobhouse’s claim that liberalism favoured autonomy and self-government. But we also noted his ambivalences about nationalism and claims to self-determination. One solution to this tension was the idea of an imperial federation that might form the basis of a future ‘International State’.97 Through the second half of the nineteenth century, white-settler colonies such as Canada and Australia had achieved a degree of political autonomy even while they remained important parts of the British Empire. For Hobhouse, the form of government of these states – self-governing but part of a larger imperial union – was very attractive: it provided a way of reconciling large-scale social cooperation with freedom of its component parts.98 Hobhouse made several arguments here. The first was a familiar liberal argument about the benefits of global unification. He explicitly defended the views of Richard Cobden and Norman Angell, and said that ‘the interconnection of free trade and peace … stands fast’.99 The second was an appeal to changing international circumstances. Hobhouse pointed to trade, commerce, and communications as indications that ‘physically the world is rapidly becoming one’.100 And, despite the obvious setbacks (in Britain, for example), liberal ideals were spreading as well. In this context Hobhouse celebrated the ‘political awakening’ of the ‘East’ as one of the ‘most hopeful political facts of our time’.101 He pointed to the ‘complex and subtle interactions of nation upon nation which make every local success or failure of democracy tell upon other countries’.102 Hobhouse argued that a ‘universal and permanent peace’ was not just a ‘vision’ ‘but an actual process of history palpably forwarded in our own day by the development of international law and morals’.103 Hobhouse and Kant were very different thinkers in very  97 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 116; Hobhouse, World in Conflict, 84.  98 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 115.  99 Hobhouse, World in Conflict, 67–8. 100 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 115. It should hardly need pointing out how familiar these kinds of claims are in the more recent literature on ‘globalization’. For one example, see David Held et al., Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture (London: Polity 1999). 101 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 114; Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory, 144. 102 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 114. 103 Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 199.

31892_Williams.indd 139

20-10-15 08:23

140

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

different contexts, yet the parallels here are a testament to the pervasive attraction these kinds of claims have had for liberal thinkers over the years. All this meant that the ‘old doctrine of absolute sovereignty’ was dead: the physical unity of the world ‘must ultimately be reflected in political institutions’.104 In thinking through what these political institutions ought to be, Hobhouse argued first of all that that the ‘greater states’ of the day themselves exhibited complex forms of ‘government within government, authority limited by authority’.105 And it was this model that he envisaged for the ‘world-state of the not impossible future’: ‘free national self-direction as full and satisfying as that enjoyed by Canada or Australia within the British Empire at this moment’.106 He even hinted that such a state was the likely outcome of a long process of development in human societies.107 One step on the road to this would be an imperial federation. He pointed to ‘the sentiment of unity pervading its [the empire’s] white population, to all the possibilities involved in the bare fact that a fourth part of the human race recognizes one flag and one supreme authority’: ‘There exists accordingly the political conditions of a democratic alliance which it is the business of the British Liberal to turn to account. He may hope to make his country the centre of a group of self-governing, democratic communities, one of which [Britain], moreover, serves as natural link with the other great commonwealth of English-speaking people [the United States]’.108 Such a union, he said, was ‘no menace to the world’s peace or to the common cause of freedom. On the contrary, as a natural outgrowth of a common sentiment it is one of the steps towards a wider unity … it is a model … of the International State’.109 There were, in other words, ‘progressive and reactionary forms of imperial government’, those on the ‘right side of history’ and ‘those that sought to hold it back’.110 It was not just that empire could be made compatible with autonomy, freedom, and nationality; it was that a form of empire was the best way of protecting these

104 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 115. 105 He was here thinking of the United States in particular. 106 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 115. 107 Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory, 148. 108 Hobhouse, Liberalism, 115–16. 109 Ibid., 116. 110 Bell, ‘Democracy and Empire’, 190.

31892_Williams.indd 140

20-10-15 08:23



Hobhouse, ‘New Liberalism’, and the ‘New Imperialism’ 141

while at the same time instituting a form of political unity that was progressive and adapted to changing international conditions.111 We see similar themes in Hobhouse’s account of the future of Europe after the end of the First World War.112 Hobhouse stressed the fact that Europe was ‘on the whole, one civilization’, united by a common religion, a ‘community of cultivated thought’, and a long history of political interaction. It was also becoming ever more closely integrated through communication, trade, and commerce. Yet, while the individual countries of Europe were organized, the ‘common centre’ was not. Attempts by a single power to impose a unity on Europe had never been successful, and were themselves a cause of resentment and warfare.113 Hobhouse’s vision involved three elements. First, it would be necessary to accept the principle of national self-determination in Europe as the surest basis for future cooperation. Second, the existing Western European alliance should be transformed into a more permanent ‘league or federation’ with a constitution and some ‘definite functions’, especially the supervision and control of military forces. Third, Hobhouse looked to the emergence of ‘a new and more real feeling for the unity of human interests’ which would emerge after recognition of the horrors of the war. The task of statesmen and political thinkers would be to ‘give to this bond definite and more permanent expression’.114 As Duncan Bell has shown, Hobhouse was far from alone in making these kinds of arguments.115 We can see in them two things of relevance for our discussion. The first is the ways in which they are an attempt to think creatively about forms of governing beyond the simple binary between empire and sovereign independence. Imperial rule ran the risk of denying freedom and autonomy, and in cases such as Ireland it 111 Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 155. 112 Hobhouse said that ‘Europe cannot afford to amuse itself with two such wars in a century, or it will, without rhetorical exaggeration, revert to barbarism’: Hobhouse, World in Conflict, 77. 113 Ibid., 75–7. 114 Ibid., 91, 93–4, 103. 115 Duncan Bell, The Idea of a Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860–1900 (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press 2007); and several of the essays in Duncan Bell, Reordering the World: Essays on Liberalism and Empire (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press 2016). See also Theodore Koditschek, Liberalism, Imperialism, and the Historical Imagination: Nineteenth-Century Visions of a Greater Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2011).

31892_Williams.indd 141

20-10-15 08:23

142

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

was dangerous and damaging; however, as a transnational form of government, imperialism was more attuned to the changing times. Sovereign independence was dangerous too (especially when combined with nationalism) and was in any case outmoded given the changing character of the world; yet the nation was a vehicle for collective freedom and for the expression of national values. We can see in these arguments illuminating parallels between the institutional conditions for Kant’s perpetual peace and Bentham’s views about the point and purpose of sovereign independence. All of them are attempts to contain or constrain the dangerous potentialities of nationalism and sovereign statehood. Second, Hobhouse’s arguments replay the claim that it is the more advanced societies of Europe and North America that have an especially privileged role to play in leading the development of more progressive forms of political organization, and that the global history of progress, faltering though it may be, is best seen through the history of these societies. As he put it, ‘the characteristic modern state, with all its imperfections, exhibits the most complete reconciliation yet achieved on the large scale of social cooperation with the freedom and spontaneity of the component individuals, localities and nationalities’.116 The ‘Simpler Peoples’ and the Possibilities of Progress As we have seen, Hobhouse’s evolutionary account of progress created the kind of hierarchy that placed the more developed states at the top. But almost by definition, an evolutionary rendering of a teleological history implied that ‘progress’ was an open possibility for all societies – at least in the long term – as the process of evolution was wired into the potentialities of the human mind. The crucial question was the role colonialism might be thought to have in stimulating social development. We can certainly read Hobhouse’s contrast between the ‘imperialism of promise’ and the ‘imperialism of performance’ as an endorsement of the older liberal ideal of empire. That idea, he said, was of ‘a free, informal union with the Colonies, combined with a conscientious but tolerant government of the tropical dependencies that have come under our control’. He said of India that ‘the English have doubtless done a

116 Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory, 148.

31892_Williams.indd 142

20-10-15 08:23



Hobhouse, ‘New Liberalism’, and the ‘New Imperialism’ 143

great work’.117 But Hobhouse never explicitly argued that colonialism was justified because of the role that it might play in bringing progress to the simpler peoples. Given that his main target was precisely the ‘imperialism of performance’ that was unwittingly legitimated by this older liberal idea, it is easy to see why. Nonetheless, there is within Hobhouse’s arguments a telling set of claims about the potential role of human agency in the unfolding of a progressive history.118 In his ‘empirical’ investigations into the evolution of morals, Hobhouse did not lay any great stress on the role of active human agency in this process in the past. But Hobhouse argued that the history of human progress had by his time reached a ‘turning point’: the evolution of the human mind had reached ‘a point of selfdetermination’ where it could become ‘master of the conditions internal and external to its own development’.119 As he put it at the end of Morals in Evolution, ‘the further development of society will follow a very different course from its past history, in that it is destined to fall within the scope of an organizing intelligence, and thereby to be removed from the play of blind force to the sphere of rational order’.120 This argument was essential to Hobhouse’s justification for a more ‘interventionist’ state that could ameliorate the problems of industrial society and ensure the effective liberty of all persons.121 He did not argue, however, that the development of Britain’s ‘tropical dependencies’ could be furthered by a ‘rational’ colonialism. In the end, all we can say is that Hobhouse was not prepared to actively endorse a ‘civilizing mission’, and he was scathing in his criticisms of the use of such high-sounding phrases in the context of the cruelties and injustices of the ‘imperialism of practice’. On the other hand, his evolutionary account of progress and his recognition that such a process will come increasingly under the sway of 117 Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 47, 156. 118 Freeden, The New Liberalism, 89. 119 Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory, 158. 120 Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, 637. See also Hobhouse, ‘The Individual and the State’, 164–5. In World in Conflict Hobhouse lamented the ‘loss of faith in the ­rational betterment of humanity’ (72). 121 See Freeden, The New Liberalism, 90; and, more generally, John Morrow, ‘Private Property, Liberal Subjects and the State’, in Simhony and Weinstein, eds., The New Liberalism, 92–114. This also raises new questions about Hobhouse’s evolutionary arguments, for it seems as if at a certain point the course of ‘evolution’ itself can be shaped by the actions of a rational agency.

31892_Williams.indd 143

20-10-15 08:23

144

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

a ‘rational mind’ leaves open the possibility that a better form of ­colonialism was possible for the ‘non-English-speaking’ colonies. By the time of Hobhouse’s death in 1929, British colonial policy was changing.122 There is no suggestion that these changes were directly related to Hobhouse’s work. If anything it was the Fabians, and Sydney Webb in particular, who were responsible.123 But the period from 1919 to 1929 saw not just the increasing institutionalization of practices of colonial development but also a shift in the language of imperialism. The idea of ‘trusteeship’ emerged more vigorously after the war as a legitimation for empire, and the 1929 Colonial Development Act recognized the responsibility Britain had for ‘development’ in its nonself-governing colonies.124 At the end of Critics of Empire, Bernard Porter says that ‘the new imperialism made a dent in the course of British History; but not half so big a dent as the reaction to it’.125 Part of this was the continued claims from the political left for the self-determination of colonized peoples, as well as the nationalist critiques of colonial rule. But part of it, too, was a more sustained pressure for the British Empire to live up to its self-proclaimed liberal ideals. And in this, at least, Hobhouse played a crucial role, even if aspects of the ‘imperialism of performance’ would certainly still have horrified him.

Conclusion As is true of the other thinkers examined in this book, there are significant anti-colonial arguments to be found in Hobhouse. He accepted that claims to national self-determination could sometimes be legitimate, although his anxieties about nationalism meant he did not endorse self-determination as a principle. He was fiercely critical of British imperial practice, roundly condemning it both for its impact on domestic politics and for the often racialized violence and injustices that 122 David Meredith, ‘The British Government and Colonial Economic Policy, 1919–1939’, Economic History Review 28, no. 3 (1975): 484–99. 123 George Abbott, ‘A Re-Examination of the 1929 Colonial Development Act’, Economic History Review 24, no. 1 (1971): 70. See also Paul Kelemen, ‘Planning for Africa: The British Labour Party’s Colonial Development Policy, 1920–1964’, Journal of Agrarian Change 7, no. 1 (2006): 76–98; and Cowan and Shenton, ‘The Origin and Course of Fabian Colonialism’. Sydney Webb became colonial secretary in 1929. 124 Abbott, ‘A Re-Examination of the 1929 Colonial Development Act’. 125 Porter, Critics of Empire, 336

31892_Williams.indd 144

20-10-15 08:23



Hobhouse, ‘New Liberalism’, and the ‘New Imperialism’ 145

accompanied it. In that sense Hobhouse is certainly an anti-colonial liberal. But, like our other thinkers, there are also ambivalences and tensions. Hobhouse could not abandon the liberal ideal of empire: his criticisms stressed the reality of imperialism but did not deny the possibility of an empire dedicated to justice, progress, and freedom. And his preferred solution to the problems of empire was an imperial union that would balance autonomy and integration. One reason for this was Hobhouse’s commitment to a developmental liberalism ultimately anchored in a teleological account of history. This generated a clear hierarchy of cultures and inscribed into the experience of the ‘West’ the meaning of history itself. Collini concluded his pioneering study of Hobhouse by saying that Hobhouse’s ‘thinking was embedded in a set of assumption which no longer demands our allegiance, and addressed a range of problems which no longer commands our attention’.126 Of course, a lot hinges on the ‘our’ here, but, when it comes to the issues surrounding imperialism, nationalism, development, and democracy, Hobhouse seems if anything rather familiar.127 In terms of liberal arguments about relations with diverse others, three points stand out. The first is one we have seen before – deep anxieties about the impact of colonialism on the politics of the metropole, combined in Hobhouse’s case with anxieties about the functioning of democracy, which allowed unscrupulous politicians to manipulate a largely ill-informed or disinterested public. Second, Hobhouse demonstrates clearly a set of ambivalences about nationalism and national-self-determination. He recognized the positive aspects of national attachments and the reality of national sentiments, and he thought that at times it was futile and dangerous to suppress them. On the other hand, he also saw nationalism as a potentially dangerous and divisive force, fuelling conflict and prone to being manipulated. Hobhouse wanted to contain it within wider forms of governance – both 126 Collini, Liberalism and Sociology, 253. 127 Many modern philosophers, political theorists, and sociologists would, of course, reject important aspects of Hobhouse’s thought, but perhaps not all. Contemporary liberalism’s tacit reliance on a progressive history is well illustrated by Thomas Nagel in his review of Bernard Williams’s posthumously published essays in the L ­ ondon Review of Books 28, no. 9 (11 May 2006). Responding to Williams’s criticisms, Nagel said that ‘one can believe in moral progress without accusing past ages of wickedness or stupidity (though there is plenty of both in all ages). Perhaps progress can occur only through a series of historical stages, in morality as in science’.

31892_Williams.indd 145

20-10-15 08:23

146

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

within Europe and across the empire. This, he thought, could strike the right balance between communal feeling, peace, and liberty. Finally, there are the ever-present problems thrown up by the idea of ‘progress’. A commitment to progress does not mean a commitment to every mechanism for achieving it, and Hobhouse was more alert to the dangers of high-sounding words than those liberals and Fabians who supported Britain’s imperial policies. But in the end Hobhouse was committed to progress. The empire as actually governed might not have been a good way of achieving this, but perhaps a better-governed empire might. And as with Smith and Kant, there are claims that progressive evolution is real and fundamental, immanent in the human mind itself; yet at the same time we see a temptation to augment the unfolding of this process with actions directed by the ‘rational mind’. Finally, the example of Hobhouse suggests that the temptations of a developmental account of history (with all that implies) do not derive simply from a narrowminded ‘Eurocentrism’; they are also related to the deep anxieties about how Western societies understand themselves in relation to plural others that emerge from an increased awareness of the historical character of thought and action. One of Hobhouse’s near contemporaries, Wilhelm Dilthey, put the issue bluntly: ‘[T]he relativity of all human concepts is the last word of the historical vision of society’.128

128 Qtd. in Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return: or Cosmos and History (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press 1971), 150; more generally, see chap. 4, brilliantly entitled ‘The Terror of History’.

31892_Williams.indd 146

20-10-15 08:23

5

Liberalism and Colonialism Past and Present

As we have seen, all four of the thinkers examined in this book were critical, sometimes very critical, of aspects of European imperialism. These thinkers certainly approached the subject in ways that set them apart from more obviously colonial liberals such as James Mill, John Stuart Mill, or Alexis de Tocqueville.1 And so those commentators who have identified a strong anti-colonial tradition within the liberal canon are right; and they are also right that the existence of such a strand of thought means there is no simple or straightforward link between certain characteristically liberal patterns of thought and a commitment to an imperial mission. In particular, the four thinkers we have studied were much more concerned with the domestic costs of colonial ventures, more alert to the ways in which such ventures were corrupted by greed and violence, and altogether less impressed with the pretensions that surrounded colonialism. These thinkers also stand as an important counterpoint to some of the recent celebrations of liberal imperialism that have often downplayed the costs of colonialism both for the colonized and for the colonizers.2 Whatever benefits we might think British rule brought to its colonies, British colonialism was also implicated in mass famines (as Smith knew) and associated with appalling cruelties

1 Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press 2005). 2 The most obvious example here is Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (London: Penguin 2006). For a discussion, see Jeanne Morefield, Empires without Imperialism: Anglo-American Decline and the Politics of Deflection (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2014), chap. 4. See also Robert Cooper, ‘A New Liberal Imperialism’, Observer (7 April 2002); and Robert Kaplan, ‘In Defense of Empire’, Atlantic (April 2014).

31892_Williams.indd 147

20-10-15 08:23

148

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

(as Hobhouse insisted liberals recognize). And, finally, our thinkers offer a sharp contrast to much of contemporary liberal political philosophy about relations with plural others that has often taken a certain pride in precisely not considering what might be involved, as a matter of practice, in achieving the often wildly ambitious accounts of what ‘global justice’ actually requires, whether in terms of ‘humanitarian intervention’, ‘distributive justice’, or human rights. Regardless of the philosophical reasons we might have for believing these projects desirable, we cannot think seriously about whether we ought to pursue them without reflecting on what the costs of doing so might be, who might bear these costs, what would need to be done to whom, and how likely any of it is to work out at all well.3 As we have also seen, however, there are ambiguities and ambivalences in all these thinkers. Much of their opposition to the policies and practices of European colonialism derived from privileging reform in European states over other considerations. When it came to the overall impact of European colonialism, they often thought it had advanced certain liberal projects, despite the costs and cruelties associated with it, and they often advocated a reformed type of colonialism as a vehicle for further advancing these projects. Furthermore, while it is the case that these thinkers tended to be less judgemental about other cultures and practices than more obviously colonial liberals, they were not entirely non-judgemental either, in part because they thought that European societies, for all their faults, really were more advanced than distant and diverse others. This suggests that, while the link between liberalism and colonialism is not simple, there is nonetheless a strong imperial tendency within liberal thought. Beyond contributing to what I hope is a more subtle account of the colonial or imperial aspects of the thought of these four thinkers, the point of trying to show their complex and often ambivalent arguments is twofold. First, as noted in the Introduction, they help to illuminate some of the central tensions within liberal patterns of thought more generally. It is when a liberal project confronts the pluralism that characterizes human societies (past and present) that we can get a clearer sense of some of the fundamental commitments and problems that

3 Raymond Geuss, Philosophy and Real Politics (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press 2008), 25.

31892_Williams.indd 148

20-10-15 08:23



Liberalism and Colonialism Past and Present 149

underpin the ways in which liberal thinking understands the world. The four thinkers we have looked at here demonstrate the ways in which the commitment to certain goods or ends, not just ‘theoretically’, but as a matter of practice, opens up a series of related tensions. There is a tension between seeing liberal goods and ends as both situated within a historical process and also in some way guaranteed by something outside of that process – by a benevolent deity, or nature, or evolution, or the fundamental features of human reasoning. There is a related tension between identity and difference. The obvious plurality of human communities is usually explained, in broadly empirical terms, as the result of the particular material and institutional conditions within which human live. At the same time, there is a strong universalizing impulse within liberal thought that aims at identifying not just goods and ends that are, or will become, universal, but also those basic features of human nature that help to justify them. Here, humans are grasped both empirically and abstractly, or phenomenally or nuomenally to use Kant’s terms. This has important implications for the claims of liberal moral theorizing, and we are back to the tension between seeing human persons and their particular beliefs and commitments as both inside and outside of history. There is also a temporal tension between the claims of justice and the claims of progress that is made particularly apparent in arguments about colonialism. So, viewed from one perspective, colonialism could be seen as profoundly unjust, while, from another perspective, it could be seen as progressive. Given that some account of how plural others might come actually to enjoy liberal goods and ends is wired into the universalizing aspirations of most liberal thinking, a reckoning of the progressive potential of otherwise problematic practices seems essential. Finally, and perhaps more prosaically, there are a series of tensions about the progressive possibilities of political freedom. Democracy is good but also profoundly problematic. Personal freedom is a good, but its proper exercise requires a particular institutional setting. Political independence is sometimes desirable, but its dangerous potentialities have to be contained and constrained. The arguments of these thinkers illustrate the significance of a disciplined freedom, both individual and collective, as a central feature of liberal thought. The second reason for engaging with these complex and ambivalent arguments is that they provide a resource for reflecting on the ways in which relations with plural others are viewed within contemporary liberal societies. As we noted in the Introduction, it is sensible not to

31892_Williams.indd 149

20-10-15 08:23

150

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

be too optimistic about the contribution that work of this kind might make to ability of liberal societies to think a bit more clearly about their relationship with plural others. The best there can be in liberal societies is just ongoing debates – attempts to clarify what we think we can or ought to do, attempts to learn lessons from previous experiences, and attempts to understand why it might be so hard to find clear answers in the first place – and these debates are of profoundly non-deliberative form. In the end, we have to do our thinking for ourselves, as Quentin Skinner has insisted.4 But in thinking for ourselves we have nothing to rely on apart from what we have around us, including the history of political thought. This history cannot tell us what to do, but it does provide some potentially useful material to help us think about what we might do.5 In what follows I try to show some of the ways in which the arguments, categories and concepts, and tensions and uncertainties we find in the work of our four thinkers might help to illuminate the things that are at stake, for us, here and now.

I m p e r i a l T e m p tat i o n s All of the thinkers we have examined demonstrate some of the different sources of what we might call an ‘imperial temptation’ – the idea that European imperialism either had been or could be beneficial – and in so doing they help us to see how this imperial temptation is manifest in contemporary arguments. The first source is simple and relates to the ways in which colonialism was thought to be a vehicle for advancing certain goods. None of them thought that colonialism produced unalloyed goods, of course, and for some of them colonialism would have to be reformed if it was to achieve certain goods; but they did all think that it might be one way in which these goods could be advanced. The goods these thinkers were concerned to advance were varied. For Smith, material advancement (‘improvement’) was an important good, since, in his words, it enabled people to ‘satisfy their wants’. But the advance of material prosperity was also associated with other goods – it allowed 4 The phrase is from Quentin Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, History and Theory 8, no. 1 (1969): 3–53. 5 John Dunn, ‘The Impact of Political Theory’, Political Studies Review 13, no. 4 (2015): 494–9.

31892_Williams.indd 150

20-10-15 08:23



Liberalism and Colonialism Past and Present 151

for the advancement of science, culture, and morals, for example, and the emergence of a global economy, particularly stimulated by the ‘discovery’ of America, permitted societies to ‘increase one another’s enjoyments’. Smith was well aware of the problems that commercial society produced, but part of the point of his work was to set out a particular vision of aspects of collective life.6 Kant, too, thought that material advancement was desirable, in part because it provided the conditions for the moral development of persons, and the growth of trade and finance helped to create the reality of a cosmopolitan community. But Kant’s vision was more expansive than Smith’s. In the end, humans live together in freedom, as fully developed individuals, under laws that are the product of their own reasoning. For Bentham, humans wanted to have more ‘happiness’ and less ‘pain’, and, however psychologically plausible or implausible this is as an account of human moti­ vations, it is also accompanied by an understanding of persons as fundamentally equal in some important respects and of the obligations government has towards the governed. The business of government is to organize collective life in such a way as to maximize the happiness felt by individuals. For Hobhouse, living in ethical ‘harmony’ with others was the ‘social ideal’. This can sound a bit odd, not to say suspicious, to modern liberal ears, but embedded within it are more familiar liberal understandings, including a mutual recognition of rights and duties that created a particular kind of individual freedom, and an imperative on the part of the government to create the conditions for individual growth of all persons, which meant, among other things, welfare-­ orientated interventions in the market. The different ways in which the goods of collective and individual life are understood across these thinkers illustrates some of the evident diversity within the liberal tradition.7 But this diversity should not blind us to the shared idea that there are indeed goods of collective and individual life and the whole point of their arguments was to show that this was the case and how such goods might come to be enjoyed. 6 More generally, see Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press 1977). 7 There are, of course, limits to this diversity, as many critics of liberalism have pointed out. Without wishing to downplay this point, it is also worth noting that these critics rarely think that all of these goods should be abandoned.

31892_Williams.indd 151

20-10-15 08:23

152

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

And this partly explains the ambivalences we find in all of our thinkers about the impact of European conquest and colonial rule: sometimes colonialism might be judged to be profoundly antithetical to the achievement of these goods, but other times it might be thought to advance them. And sometimes making this kind of judgement also involved drawing distinctions between the costs and benefits to European states, colonized peoples, and humanity as a whole. Almost all the goods advanced by these thinkers are similar to modern liberal goods.8 And it is obvious that many modern liberals generally do want to see certain goods created in distant and diverse places, even if, like the thinkers examined here, they might also be concerned with the possible costs and consequences of trying to do this. One of the characteristics of being a modern liberal is thinking that individuals and societies in other places would benefit from the achievement of certain liberal goods – whether this is, for example, economic development, human rights, stable property rights, the rule of law, or various forms of freedom and equality.9 Given that fact, it is extremely hard to see how modern liberals can avoid thinking about their relations with plural others without also thinking about how those relations might help advance or retard the achievement of these kinds of goods for individuals and societies.10 Contemporary liberals would do well to acknowledge this as a starting point for their thinking. The idea that a key feature of liberalism is its ‘neutrality’ towards alternative conceptions of the ‘good’ would not have gained acceptance without a restriction of many individuals’ geographical and historical gaze to the relatively settled conditions inside an already largely liberal society.11 The only way out of the imperial temptation here is to say that liberal goods can really be achieved only in some particular places, perhaps

  8 Williams Galston, Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues and Diversity in the Liberal State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991).   9 For one discussion, see David Williams, The World Bank and Social Transformation in International Politics: Liberalism, Governance and Sovereignty (London: Routledge 2008). 10 As demonstrated, for example, by the academic and public debates about what a commitment to ‘human rights’ ought to mean for the foreign policies of ­liberal states. 11 As Alan Bloom put it in his review of A Theory of Justice, Rawls’s theory is ‘a first philosophy for the last man’. Alan Bloom, ‘Justice: John Rawls vs. the Tradition of Political Philosophy’, American Political Science Review 69, no. 2 (1975): 662.

31892_Williams.indd 152

20-10-15 08:23



Liberalism and Colonialism Past and Present 153

those that have certain institutional, social, or economic conditions.12 Yet, however sociologically plausible this view may be, it runs against the tenor of much contemporary liberal thinking and many of the categories of contemporary liberal thought (human rights, for example). Moreover, even if it is acknowledged that there are indeed particular conditions necessary for the achievement of certain liberal goods, this only raises the question of whether relations with plural others can be organized in such a way as to create those conditions – for instance, by encouraging a process of ‘development’.13 Finally, and here we are back to some of the tensions mentioned above, to claim that liberal goods are achievable only in some places would raise important questions about certain of the standard justifications for the desirability of liberal goods within liberal states, for these justifications tend to imagine that they derive from features of human life that are in important respects universal – the ability to reason, for example, or the desire to avoid pain. A second source of the imperial temptation relates to the ways in which ‘progress’ was thought to happen and the particular role that colonial agency might play in this process. Smith, Kant, and Hobhouse sometimes imagined progress as immanent – as somehow or another a possibility for all societies. For Smith and Kant, this involved two kinds of claims. The first was a theological or quasi-theological claim that there was a plan or purpose for humanity that originated with God or ‘nature’. There was, in other words, a point or purpose to human existence. The second was a claim about how that plan played out through the inclinations, traits, and actions of persons. Neither of them thought of the unfolding of human destiny as linear or simple, but both saw in human actions (themselves evidence of the existence of a ‘plan’) the mechanisms that drove a progressive history. Hobhouse’s arguments 12 This is one reading of some of John Rawls’s arguments, and one that he himself suggests. On this view, the institutions of justice he outlines in A Theory of Justice draw upon the ‘basic intuitive ideas that are embedded in the political institutions of a constitutionally democratic regime and the public tradition of their interpretation’. See John Rawls, ‘Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 14, no. 3 (1985): 225. In other words, the institutions of justice are suitable only for a society within which the principles of liberalism provide some of the basic categories of political thinking. 13 This was J.S. Mill’s argument. For a discussion, see David Williams, ‘Liberalism, Colonialism, and Liberal Imperialism’, East Central Europe 45, no. 1 (2018): 94–118.

31892_Williams.indd 153

20-10-15 08:23

154

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

are structurally similar. In the place of the ultimate guarantee provided by God, Hobhouse appealed to ‘science’ by embracing a particular account of evolution. Again there was no linearity here, and the processes involved were complex, but the process itself was real and, as he put it, ‘fundamental’. What all three thinkers could sometimes imagine, then, was that ‘progress’ was possible in distant and diverse other societies, over time, without colonial agency. And such accounts obviously cast a particular light on the goods achieved through these processes – they are not contingent or particular but wired into the meaning of human life itself. Yet there are also some very significant tensions here about whether this process really is immanent everywhere, and about the role that external agencies might play in kick-starting or advancing it. Smith thought there might be places excluded from this process altogether (‘all the inland parts of Africa’, for example) and other places where it had become stalled (‘the whole body of Tartars’, for instance, or China). For those places that Smith thought were incapable of much progress on their own accord, perhaps the only hope was that they were connected to global trading routes by the practices of European expansion. Kant seems to have thought that places such as Tahiti needed to be ‘visited by more civilized nations’ in order to be jolted out of their ‘peaceful indolence’. In these modes, it seems that Smith and Kant believed there was a progressive, and perhaps necessary, role for European imperialism. More generally, all of these thinkers maintained that colonialism had in some ways actually been a progressive force. While Smith thought continued colonial rule led to ‘languid and slow’ progress, he also claimed that European conquest had resulted in more ‘improvement’ than would otherwise have taken place. For Kant, European expansion had played a role in creating the reality of a cosmopolitan community that encompassed all humans. Even Bentham said that ‘taking futurity into the scale, the well-being of mankind appears to have been promoted on the whole by the colonies’. Hobhouse’s ambivalences about colonialism as a progressive force are also evident. Despite his scathing condemnation of the ‘imperialism of practice’, he also said that ‘the English have doubtless done a great work’ in India, and his praise for the ‘imperialism of promise’ (the ‘older liberal idea’ of empire) suggests that he, too, thought of colonialism as a potentially progressive force.

31892_Williams.indd 154

20-10-15 08:23



Liberalism and Colonialism Past and Present 155

All of these thinkers, then, thought that colonialism had played some kind of progressive role, even if it was also deeply problematic in other respects. This points to one of the central issues in liberal debates about plural others. If there are some goods that it would be desirable for people in other places to have, an account of how they might get these goods is obviously required, or at the very least implied. Stories of a ‘universal history’ provide one answer, and there are a variety of such stories available.14 But, while these stories provide some account of how the world might come (eventually) to converge on a set of ‘liberal’ values and institutions, they are rarely enough. In the first place, there are always doubts about how much faith one can put in these stories, particularly once the belief in the benevolence of either God or nature has receded.15 But, even if contemporary liberals have some remnant of faith in a progressive history, there is still the issue of whether we can afford to wait for such a history to manifest itself. Appeals to ‘do something’ about the ills of the world have a pressing immediacy that contemporary liberals find hard to ignore (perhaps for very good reason). And, as soon as we say we cannot wait for any progressive history to unfold, the arguments circle back to the question of what liberal states might do to ‘improve’ things in the here and now. An important additional point to note relates to Hobhouse’s argument about the changed role of agency in the story of human development. Hobhouse suggested that the evolution of the human mind had reached a ‘turning point’ whereby it could become the ‘master of the conditions internal and external to its own development’. The future development of societies could follow a different course, as it would now fall ‘within the scope of an organizing intelligence’. The thought that new epistemological conditions provide the possibility of making ‘interventions’ in the pursuit of liberal ends more successful is a very powerful and attractive one for contemporary liberal states and organizations. Past failures are almost always a spur to think how interventions might be undertaken better, and new ‘solutions’, where ‘lessons 14 Perhaps most recently, Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press 1992). 15 For a discussion, see Dennis Dean, ‘“Through Science to Despair”: Geology and the Victorians’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 360, no. 1 (1981): 111–36.

31892_Williams.indd 155

20-10-15 08:23

156

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

are learned’ or where more modern or more ‘scientific’ principles are brought to bear, are a regular feature of discussions of intervention or international development.16 In this way, too, past failures are often explained as a result of epistemic inadequacy rather than as anything inherent in the broader project itself.17 A third source of the imperial temptation relates to the assumed superiority of European institutions and practices. While Smith thought that continued colonial rule was often not economically beneficial for the colonies (or the colonizing states), he did think that the transplantation of certain institutions and practices was desirable. These included knowledge of agriculture and other ‘useful arts’, a ‘habit of subordi­ nation’, ‘regular government’, and the use of iron, ploughs, and coined money, among others. Kant famously said that Europe would ‘probably legislate for all other continents’, and by this he was not advocating a direct form of colonial rule but rather arguing that the laws, institutions, and practices of European states, as they came closer to the ideal, would provide the model for other societies. Here, for example, the enforcement of law and improving material conditions were means to the development of human moral capacities. Even Bentham, who was at times more charitably inclined to the cultural practices of other societies, talked about the importance of ‘habits of thinking in matters of government’ and ‘habits of acting in the sphere of domestic economy and morals’. And, while Hobhouse was fiercely critical of the ‘new imperialism,’ the categories that informed his account of social development were transparently those that draw from a stylized picture of Western states: the widening of the social unit, impartial justice, expanded membership in the political community, the evolution of political liberty, mutual aid, and the rational control of life. This is obviously Eurocentric, but it also seems entirely plausible that the enjoyment of certain characteristically liberal goods (some degree of personal freedom, for example, or some minimum level of material provisioning) is the result of the establishment of particular institutions

16 There are countless examples, but for a flavour see Dennis Rondinelli, Development Projects as Policy Experiments: An Adaptive Approach to Development Administration (London: Routledge 1993); and Howard White, ‘An Introduction to the Use of Randomised Control Trials to Evaluate Development Interventions’, Journal of Development Effectiveness 5, no. 1 (2013): 30–49. 17 This was J.S. Mill’s view about British rule in India. See Williams, ‘Liberalism, Colonialism and Liberal Imperialism’.

31892_Williams.indd 156

20-10-15 08:23



Liberalism and Colonialism Past and Present 157

and practices (such as an enforceable set of legal claims or a bureaucratic structure that can redistribute income).18 And, to the extent that liberals think these goods are indeed good for others (which they generally do), they cannot avoid thinking about the contribution that certain institutions and practices might make to the achievement of these goods; and in turn then thinking about what might be done by liberal states to transplant or create these institutions and practices such that others get to enjoy them (help draft new laws, train judges, or build the ‘capacity’ of bureaucratic departments). More generally, it may be that ­contemporary liberals, and indeed others, would want to contest the particular connections these thinkers drew between certain institutions and practices and certain goods; and they may also want to condemn certain of these institutions and practices as inimical to the achievement of certain goods (global trade, for example). Nonetheless, the basic idea that there are particular institutions and practices that are necessary for the enjoyment of social goods seems inescapable. And again, liberals are then back to thinking about what might be done to create these institutions and practices in other places. The fourth source of the imperial temptation relates to the possibilities of alternative vehicles for the advancement of certain goods. All of the thinkers here were critical, sometimes highly so, of aspects of European colonialism. But both Bentham and Hobhouse (and to a lesser extent Smith) considered the possibility of a reformed form of colonialism as an alternative. Bentham’s 1831 ‘Colonization Proposal’ was a way of trying to reap the benefits from colonialism while avoiding the political corruption normally associated with it. Hobhouse’s idea of an imperial union was a way of making imperialism progressive within the changing international circumstances of the early twentieth century. What both demonstrate is the impulse to imagine that forms of imperialism could be made better. While in some respects these thinkers were quite clear-sighted about the actual realities of European colonialism, they could not bring themselves to abandon the ‘imperialism of promise’. Debates within liberal states about intervention or development have often been characterized by the same kind of impulse. Even the most committed liberal imperialist has had to recognize that imperial adventures are sometimes done very badly indeed. But, rather than take this as a sign that such actions are inevitably accompanied by difficulties,

18 Galston, Liberal Purposes.

31892_Williams.indd 157

20-10-15 08:23

158

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

the temptation again has been to imagine there is a better way of organizing them – one that is properly multilateral, or one that involves non-governmental organizations, or one that is authorized by the United Nations Security Council, or one that is planned more intelligently and resourced properly, and so on. There is a related issue when it comes to the question of political independence. Smith was clear that Britain ‘should give up all authority over her colonies, and leave them to elect their own magistrates, to enact their laws, and to make peace and war as they might think proper’. Bentham, too, was unequivocal about the need for European states to give up their dependencies (at least in the Americas) and he supported those European nations struggling to gain their freedom. Hobhouse thought that the attachments of patriotism and loyalty to one’s society were potentially valuable, as they provided a vehicle for social integration and an impulse to harmonious living. On the other hand, of course, neither Bentham nor Hobhouse could leave it at that. As Hobhouse argued, nationalism was ‘Janus faced’; it could be a vehicle for freedom as well as for aggression. And this was why Hobhouse accepted that the reality of national attachments was something that had to be accommodated even though his preferred solution was to try to contain the dangerous impulses of nationalism within an imperial union, and ultimately an international state. Bentham points in a slightly different direction. For him, political independence was a condition for the achievement of political liberty and rational government. But it was only a condition. It was not the final goal but rather a necessary step in the achievement of desirable political and social ends. There is something familiar about both Hobhouse’s and Bentham’s arguments. As the endless contemporary liberal anxieties about the political and social conditions in other places demonstrate, sovereign independence is understood to be highly problematic as it provides a partially protected and legitimated vehicle that can enclose deeply illiberal political projects and institutions. Hence, as with Hobhouse and Bentham, the aim has often been to find ways to contain or influence these independent political communities in such a way as to encourage the pursuit of liberal goods.19 The ‘art of government’ here has meant

19 For one example, see Williams, The World Bank and Social Transformation in International Politics.

31892_Williams.indd 158

20-10-15 08:23



Liberalism and Colonialism Past and Present 159

the use of political conditionality and economic sanctions, development aid, ‘training’, ‘capacity building’, and a host of other mechanisms designed to minimize the dangers of sovereign statehood. A final source of the imperial temptation relates to the ways in which the social or cultural hierarchies we often find in the thought of our four thinkers generate an assessment of diverse places in terms of how close they are to some set of ideals. For Bentham, as for Smith, the colonies they were usually talking about were the European settler and plantation colonies in the Americas. These were colonies that, on independence, would be ruled by European settlers or their descendants, not by the indigenous peoples, whose fate Bentham at any rate almost completely ignored. When it came to India, though, Bentham was more ambivalent. He was often very critical of East India Company rule in India, but equally he did not seem to think that India should be granted political independence in the same way as the colonies in South America. Similarly, while Hobhouse supported the political independence of Ireland, he did not make the same arguments about India. Some such view seems hard to avoid for contemporary liberals. The commitment to a particular way of organizing social and political life generates judgements about how far away other places are from this. And, as part of the same issue, judgements about the most appropriate form of relationship are likely to follow. In some cases, perhaps just persuasion is the appropriate response (‘decent non-liberal peoples’?). In other cases, perhaps additional ‘assistance’ will be all that is required (‘burdened societies’?). But in still other places the relationship might be altogether more forceful (‘outlaw states’?).20 Here we see again the impulse not simply to colonize or use military force, although at times liberal states and international organizations have embraced a more or less colonial response in the form of ‘international administrations’, but to resort to a variety of mechanisms to generate what liberals think of as progressive change in different cases. These thinkers, then, help to illustrate the various sources of the imperial temptation that often characterizes liberal thought today. It is hard for liberals not to be imperial in some respects, and some contemporary liberals have been prepared to embrace openly such a position,

20 The phrases are from John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press 1999).

31892_Williams.indd 159

20-10-15 08:23

160

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

and indeed have taken a certain pride in having seen that the liberal project requires liberal states to be imperialist. One of the things that makes the thinkers examined here so important, however, is that we can also read what they say as a series of salutatory warnings about the dangers of imperialism.

Salutary Warnings The first set of warnings relates to the costs of colonialism for the colonizing states themselves. We might rather schematically identify in these thinkers three kinds of costs. The first were the costs associated with war. Bentham addressed this directly in his ‘Plan for a Universal and Perpetual Peace’, where he argued that the ‘apparent’ power that colonies conferred led to increased ‘jealousies’ and that the sheer distance and ‘obscurity of title’ involved in governing far-flung dependencies made war more likely. Similarly, Kant worried about the connection between colonialism and European militarism, stressing the ways in which colonialism multiplied and exacerbated rivalries between European states; he also noted that colonial trade served the purpose of training sailors for warships that aided in the prosecution of wars in Europe. The second kind of cost was economic. This was particularly central for Smith and Bentham in their critique of the mercantilist trade policies associated with colonial rule in the Americas. Both argued that there were no economic benefits to be gained from control of colonial trade and that a policy of free trade with these states would be advantageous to European states. Both of them also argued that the defence of the colonies was a drain on the resources of the mother country. The final set of costs, and in some ways the most important, was political. For Smith and Bentham, these costs were related to the corruption and patronage that mercantilism generated. As Smith put it, the ‘overgrown standing army’ of those who benefited from colonial rule was powerful enough to intimidate the government. For Bentham, continued colonial rule not only contributed to ‘bad government’ in Britain but also undermined domestic liberty. We see similar arguments in Hobhouse. One of his criticisms of those liberals and Fabians who supported imperialism was that they did not see that a progressive domestic political program would be fatally undermined by a vigorous imperial policy. Imperial expansion meant increasing military expenditures at the cost of ‘improving the condition of the people’. Imperialism ‘paralysed democratic

31892_Williams.indd 160

20-10-15 08:23



Liberalism and Colonialism Past and Present 161

effort at home’, and, as the spirit of freedom was sacrificed in the colonies, so there was a great danger it would be sacrificed at home. At one level, this kind of argument is also Eurocentric: it prioritizes the costs experienced by the European states. But, while it can seem rather callous, not to say myopic, to modern critics of colonialism, it is nonetheless important. In the first place, it is hard not to be drawn to its obvious contemporary relevance. The costs borne by Western states, especially the United States, in their overseas adventures in recent years have been significant, and such costs ought to matter in any liberal account of the rights and wrongs of these adventures.21 Liberals might follow Hobhouse here and say that these resources could have been much better spent on improving the ‘condition of the people’. Or they could follow Bentham and Hobhouse (and to some extent Smith) and say that the political costs in terms of liberty at home are one of the key reasons for objecting to these kinds of actions. To follow Hobhouse again, liberals might well agree that the pursuit of such ventures has been a ‘standing menace to domestic freedom’. Second, the stress on the domestic costs of overseas actions provides an important corrective to the kind of moral righteousness that sometimes accompanies them. Liberals might well believe they have good reasons to think that certain forms of government or social practices and institutions in other places are ‘wrong’ in some sense, but, even if they do, they certainly ought to think seriously about the costs of doing something about them. Experience suggests that it is easy to have a far too optimistic view of what might be involved in ‘intervening’ in other places. In this connection, we might remember Smith, who stressed the ‘judgment of sober reason and experience’ as a counter to the ‘absurd confidence which almost all men have in their own good fortune’. A second set of warnings relates to the ways in which imperial practices often came to serve the interests of the few, usually at the expense of the interests of the many. For Smith, it was the ‘rich and powerful’ who

21 The Brown University Costs of War program has recently estimated that the United States has spent $5.9 trillion on ‘post-2001’ wars. See Neta Crawford, ‘United States Budgetary Costs of the Post-9/11 Wars through fy2019’, Watson Institute, Brown University, 14 November 2018. Available at www.watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2018/Crawford_Costs%20of%20War%20Estimates %20Through%20FY2019.pdf. In addition, something in the order of 4,500 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq.

31892_Williams.indd 161

20-10-15 08:23

162

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

benefited from colonialism at the expense of the majority of the population. They were able to accumulate profits by taking advantage of the monopolies secured through their political influence. And, on the other side, governments could exploit the patronage opportunities offered by the mass of regulations that accompanied mercantilist colonial trade policy. Bentham was even more forceful. In particular, he identified the basic social injustice of mercantilist colonial trade policies: society as a whole was taxed to provide the resources to defend colonial trade, while many people in that society were unable to afford to buy the goods traded under this system because their prices were artificially high. Worse still, ‘oppressors’ and ‘corruptors’ had deluded the ‘many’ into thinking that they actually benefited from these arrangements. Hobhouse, too, identified economic interests as lying behind the worst excesses of imperial policy. Britain’s imperial policy was enacted in the interests of a group of financiers and, as he said, the Boer War benefited only a few wealthy corporations. Neither Bentham nor obviously Smith was against the idea of people or indeed corporations acting in their ‘interests’, but they were against those ‘sinister’ interests that warped the rules of the economic and political game. Importantly, Smith, Bentham, and Hobhouse were not, I think, surprised either that imperialism generally operated to benefit only a small part of society or that powerful interests conspired to shape imperialism to their advantage. Smith in particular had a keen eye for the ways in which greed operated as a motive for all kinds of actions – some socially beneficial, others definitely not. Debates in liberal societies about their relations with plural others would do well to take that reality into account. The fact that the best-intentioned actions are sometimes warped by greed (or indeed other common human failings) can hardly be a surprise, and the outrage that sometimes accompanies the ‘discovery’ of this can ring rather hollow. Nor can it be a surprise that imperial adventures often end up benefiting only a small section of society. One of the things contemporary liberals might take away from these thinkers is not to get so carried away by the righteousness of any imperial cause as to overlook the ways in which such causes usually play out within the messy reality of complex human motivations. A third set of warnings concerns the cruelties and sufferings inflicted on the colonized. All of our thinkers we have explored identified and condemned the suffering, cruelty, and death that accompanied European conquest and colonial rule. Smith argued that East India

31892_Williams.indd 162

20-10-15 08:23



Liberalism and Colonialism Past and Present 163

Company policies had contributed to the famine in Bengal 1769–73 that caused the death of up to ten million people.22 In addition, Smith was well aware of what he called the ‘dreadful misfortunes’ suffered by the ‘natives’ as a result of the ‘discovery’ of America’. Kant, too, said that the arrival of European trading companies led to famines as well as wars, rebellions, treachery, and the ‘whole litany of troubles that oppresses the human race’. Hobhouse’s outrage was even more palpable. As he said, imperialism actually meant ‘perpetual warfare’, ‘massacres’, and ‘desolation unspeakable’. Hobhouse is here talking about the Boer War, which saw not just the use of concentration camps but various forms of scorched-earth policies to deny the Boers access to food and supplies.23 In one of his most powerful statements, he declared that ‘under the reign of imperialism … Blood never ceases to run. The voice of the mourner is never hushed’. These thinkers were, of course, far from alone in condemning the horrors that sometimes accompanied European colonial expansion, but they do suggest that there certainly is a strand of liberal thought that was sometimes aware of the brutal practical consequences of colonial rule for many of those peoples subject to it. Our thinkers were also attuned to the hypocrisies that often accompanied all of this. Smith noted how slavery flourished despite the professed Christianity of the colonial masters in the Americas. Kant talked of the ‘cruelest and most calculated slavery’ in the Sugar Islands and specifically mentioned the hypocrisy of those ‘powers’ that made ‘endless ado about their piety’ and yet lived on the ‘fruits of iniquity’. Bentham explicitly identified the dramatic contrast between the ideals of the French Revolution and French colonial practices: ‘[Y]ou choose your own government: why are not other people to choose theirs?’. The case is somewhat different with Hobhouse, because, as he said, some of the justifications for the new imperialism had abandoned any real sense of

22 Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1981), 39. 23 See Enzo Traverso, The Origins of Nazi Violence (New York: New Press 2003), chap. 2, which traces the lineage of colonial wars. The use of ‘detention camps’ and systematic torture in colonial wars continued, with the British response to the Mau Mau uprising being one example. See David Anderson’s important book, Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson 2005).

31892_Williams.indd 163

20-10-15 08:23

164

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

moral superiority on the part of European nations, stressing instead a  ‘hard assertion of racial supremacy and material force’. In this sense, these new imperialists were not really hypocritical at all. But Hobhouse was very concerned to impress upon those liberals and Fabians who continued to believe in some kinds of ‘progressive’ imperial project that they should face up to the sometimes horrific realities of colonial rule. Even though there are ambivalences about colonialism in all these thinkers, I do not think we should doubt the outrage they felt about some of the consequences of European colonialism or the pious cant that accompanied it. Perhaps to modern critics of European imperialism, these kinds of condemnations are not strong enough, especially given that they often stand alongside more positive statements about the potential benefits of colonial rule. Nonetheless, one of the things modern liberals might usefully take away from these thinkers is the importance of facing up to the often destructive (even if wellintentioned) realities of imperial projects. They might see a warning that, whatever ‘good’ might come of liberal forms of imperialism, imperialists themselves are complicit in the brutalities that often accompany it.24 And finally, they might see, too, a warning that, whatever liberals think about their own motivations and intentions, however ‘right’ they think they are, sometimes what they say and do is profoundly hypocritical. It is easy to claim that one wants to uphold liberal values or defend democracy, but, if that results in the death of (sometimes literally) countless civilians, it is not quite clear what others are to think of it except that it is in important ways hypocritical. The response that these are ‘unfortunate’ or unintended side effects of well-meaning efforts might go some way to assuaging the guilt of those who support (or supported) these adventures (although this reflects an unwillingness to confront the fact that there are always ‘unfortunate’ side effects), but it is not going to do much to persuade those people who are the victims. All in all, these thinkers can serve as a reminder about the dangers of a simple-minded self-righteousness and a naivety about the inevitably messy realities of any form of liberal imperialism. As Bentham said, ‘vast masses of misery have been poured out upon the world, and that with the most benevolent intention’.

24 Estimates of the number of Iraqis killed since the invasion are variable and disputed, but it is undoubtedly several hundred thousand.

31892_Williams.indd 164

20-10-15 08:23



Liberalism and Colonialism Past and Present 165

‘Justice’ and ‘Progress’ Within the arguments of Smith, Kant, and Hobhouse in particular, we can see an important set of tensions between the demands of ‘justice’ and the demands of ‘progress’ or development. While a concern with the injustices of colonialism was often not central to their arguments, they did at times point in that direction. Smith said at one point that taking the land of ‘harmless natives’ was an ‘injustice’. He also talked about the violation of the ‘sacred’ rights of ‘mankind’ in the context of the restrictions that colonial trade placed on the economic freedom of the European settlers. With Kant, there is something that approximates a fully developed account of the injustices associated with conquest and colonial rule. Kant rejected some of the key arguments, associated with Locke, about the legitimacy of appropriating indigenous lands, even for ‘improvement’. It is clear that, for Kant, the ‘inhospitable’ behaviour of the ‘civilized states’ was a breach of cosmopolitan right, and that many of the practices associated with colonialism most evidently did not treat persons in colonized societies as ends in themselves. Bentham’s utilitarianism, or at least the egalitarian and cosmopolitan aspects of it, might also provide the basis for an account of the basic injustice of colonial rule as that rule did not weigh the happiness of diverse others equally with that of the colonizers, although Bentham himself did not make such an argument. Hobhouse used the language of justice to condemn racial domination and talked about the ‘elementary rights’ that all people deserve. A concern with ‘justice’ was only one part of their arguments, however, as they also viewed European conquest and colonial rule in ‘developmental’ terms. It was this that led them into sometimes seemingly paradoxical positions. Smith might have thought that the conquest of the Americas led to the ‘cruel destruction of the natives’, but he also believed that it had brought valuable improvement. While the ‘discovery’ of the Americas resulted in ‘great misfortunes’ for the indigenous popu­lations, it also benefited mankind because it united the world and enabled societies to ‘relieve one another’s wants, to increase one another’s enjoyments and to encourage one another’s industries’. Despite Kant’s objections to the actions of European states in their dealings with conquered and colonized peoples, he also thought that European expansion had created the conditions for the development of a cosmopolitan consciousness, and provided the jolt the people  of Tahiti needed to overcome their peaceful indolence.

31892_Williams.indd 165

20-10-15 08:23

166

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

And for Kant, the experience of ‘injustice’ may be the only way this can happen. The tension between the demands of justice and the demands of progress illustrates some of the different temporalities of judgement within which these thinkers operated. The question of justice often concerned the injustices done to concrete people. The question of development was concerned with the good things that the future would bring – perhaps a future distant enough that many of those who suffered injustice (the ‘harmless natives’) might feel little benefit from it. As many people have pointed out, the danger of the developmental time frame is that present injustices are perpetually excused on the basis of a future that is forever receding.25 In this context, one of the attractions of at least part of Bentham’s thought was that it focused on the pain and happiness experienced by individuals in the here and now, and the accompanying suspicion of any claim that pain now is worth the future happiness of others. But even Bentham could not quite avoid ‘taking futurity into the scale’, and when he did his view about colonialism was rather more positive. These kinds of temporally inflected tensions are also evident in contemporary liberal debates about plural others. In the first place, arguments about how European (and perhaps especially British) colonialism should be judged take place precisely within this tension between justice and progress. In recent years, there has emerged a quite extensive ­literature concerned with explicating what it was about colonialism that was ‘unjust’.26 When debated in this literature, the question of the injustice of colonialism tends to consist of identifying some essential and absolute wrong that in turn can provide not simply a moral

25 Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts (New York: Columbia University Press 2002), 5. More generally, see Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (New York: Columbia University Press 2004); and Michael Pickering, ‘Experience as Horizon: Koselleck, Expectation and Historical Time’, Cultural Studies 18, nos. 2–3 (2004): 271–98. For a wider discussion, see Karl Lowith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1949). 26 See, for example, Lea Ypi, ‘What’s Wrong with Colonialism?’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 41, no. 2 (2013): 158–91; Laura Valentini, ‘On the Distinct Procedural Wrong of Colonialism’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 43, no. 4 (2015): 312–31; and Anna Stilz, ‘Decolonization and Self-Determination’, Social Philosophy and Policy 32, no. 1 (2015): 1–24. For a useful discussion, see Margaret Moore, ‘Justice and Colonialism’, Philosophy Compass 11, no. 8 (2016): 447–61.

31892_Williams.indd 166

20-10-15 08:23



Liberalism and Colonialism Past and Present 167

condemnation of colonialism but the basis for an account of what (now) should be done to rectify this wrong.27 And this kind of argument has been reflected in the more controversial public debates about the legacies of European imperialism, where the focus has often been on the varied wrongs inflicted on colonized peoples. On the other side are those defenders of colonialism who point to the developmental benefits it brought to at least some colonized societies.28 The point is not to adjudicate in this debate, but only to suggest that it is hard for those committed to liberal goods to escape from the tension between justice and progress because some (perhaps most) liberal goods have to be made real in the world, and that means practices will be assessed, at least in part, in terms of how far they help in that construction.29 More generally, there is no easy way out of the varied temporalities of judgement for contemporary liberals. There is no reason at all to assume that all good things go together and there is every reason to think there are likely to be trade-offs in the pursuit of varied liberal goods.30 Nor is there any reason to think that progress (however defined) can be achieved entirely justly, because ‘progress’ generally requires the exercise of at least some kinds of power over some people in the course of changing certain institutions or practices in the expectation of future benefits. And, finally, there is no reason to think that perfect justice (assuming we can imagine such a thing) leads to progress precisely because progress requires that things change and in this change there will be costs and benefits and winners and losers. Justice may indeed be an important liberal good but there are other liberal goods that can be achieved only with a certain level of development; and

27 There is also a substantial literature here. See, for one example, Goran Collste, Global Rectificatory Justice (London: Palgrave 2014). 28 Ferguson, Empire; but also see Bruce Gilley, ‘The Case for Colonialism’. This was originally published in Third World Quarterly in 2017 but was subsequently ­withdrawn as a result of complaints about the journal and threats of violence against the editors. 29 I take it that one of Gilley’s (and indeed Ferguson’s) purposes is to needle critics of colonialism by pointing out that colonialism played a role in instituting ­certain social goods that many critics of colonialism themselves approve of. This does not detract from the criticism that these defences of colonialism are very one-sided. 30 Raymond Geuss, History and Illusion in Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001), 153–62. For a recent discussion, see the special issue of Democratization, 19, no. 3 (2012) entitled ‘Do All Good Things Go Together? Conflicting Objectives in Democracy Promotion’.

31892_Williams.indd 167

20-10-15 08:23

168

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

indeed it seems likely that certain kinds of ‘justice’ can be actually experienced only under some quite highly ‘developed’ political and economic circumstances (impartial administration of law, for example, requires institutionalized capacities for extensive surveillance and monitoring, as well as enforcement). Recognition of the fact that there is no easy resolution to this tension might force a more realistic assessment of what it is that liberal states can actually do in their dealings with plural others, and also of the likely costs and benefits of any such actions. The varied liberal goods are not always compatible with one another, and difficult choices sometimes have to be made. The pursuit of ‘development’ is never a costless exercise – and in that sense it is surely important to be aware that injustice is integral to such activities. Equally, it is as easy to forget this as it is to forget that the high-minded pursuit of justice does not necessarily put food in people’s bellies or protect them from bullets.31

The Problem of Diversity As we have seen, the question of diversity was central to the thought of all of these thinkers. And all of them illustrate a characteristically liberal tension between some account of the unity of humanity and an account of the obviously diverse forms of cultural life found across time and space. The account of human unity can be seen to derive from two sources. One is the theological or quasi-theological account of Smith and Kant. The second (and sometimes related) was some account of ‘human nature’. For Bentham, for example, the unity of the human race was provided by the description he gives of human motivations: ‘[T]hus far at least human nature may be pronounced to be every where the same’. For Hobhouse, the unity of the human race was underpinned by his account of the potentialities of human development – the ‘persistent impulse of the rational being’. This insistence on the essential unity of the human race is a central aspect of all forms of liberalism,

31 Contemporary debates about the idea of ‘transitional justice’ are one example where this tension is evident. See, for example, Pablo de Greiff and Roger Duthie, eds., Transitional Justice and Development: Making Connections (New York: Columbia University Press 2009). It is notable that the idea there might be tensions between the demands of justice and the demands of development in post-conflict societies counts in these circles as an analytical advance.

31892_Williams.indd 168

20-10-15 08:23



Liberalism and Colonialism Past and Present 169

and while, as we have seen, racism and racial classifications are part of the history of liberal thought, this thought remains nonetheless different from racialized accounts of human diversity that deny the possibility and desirability of other people coming to enjoy certain liberal goods. At the same time, the diversity of human groups seen from a liberal perspective implies judgements about the ways of life of diverse others. It is hard for anyone holding ‘liberal’ values not to judge those things in other places that offend against liberal values as in some way or another deficient, even if this is also accompanied by a myopia and amnesia about some features of liberal societies themselves. Indeed, it is difficult to see how this can be avoided. Indeed, when liberals are criticized for being judgemental about plural others, it is a bit hard to know what kind of criticism this actually is: almost by definition, liberals committed to a particular account of the goods (and ‘bads’) of social life will judge others (and sometimes their own societies) by the standards of such an account. To say they should not judge is to say they should not be liberal, and, while that may indeed be what critics of liberalism would wish for, it is not a terribly helpful injunction to those whose self-understanding and indeed social life is bound up with at least some liberal ideas and practices.32 A more profound issue relates to the question of how diversity is to be explained. One of the most important answers we have seen is that diversity is rooted in the ‘circumstances’ of societies – their level of economic development, or their climate or geography, for example. And this kind of explanation is often folded into temporal schemas. For Smith, it was the ‘different situations of different ages and countries’ that ‘give different characters to the generality of those who live in them’, and Smith’s account of progress through the stages of human history sometimes explicitly linked changing material circumstances (such as population growth) with institutional and cultural changes. Hobhouse’s ‘social morphology’ explicitly tied the level of economic development to the institutional and cultural characteristics of societies. Kant sometimes seems to have held a similar view, as illustrated by the way in which he associated the behaviour of people in Tahiti (‘peaceful indolence’) and of ‘savage nations’ (‘lawless freedom’) with their particular 32 And if critics of liberalism do want liberal societies to think differently, some account is needed of how this might come to pass – who will do what to whom to make this happen?

31892_Williams.indd 169

20-10-15 08:23

170

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

circumstances. Bentham’s overall approach is rather different, but we can see his account of human motivations as expressing something similar: how people act will depend upon the kinds of things that in any particular society cause pleasure and pain. And, given that these include bodily motivations as well as more socially constructed ones (for good standing in the eyes of others and so on), people’s ­conduct will be fundamentally shaped by existing understandings of appropriate behaviour. This kind of explanation for diversity has some important implications. The first is that, for the most part, it means that the existence of practices and institutions that might be deeply inadequate from the point of view of the ends for humanity do not result from any fundamental failings on the part of the people themselves. These practices and institutions arise as responses (possibly perfectly ‘reasonable’ ones) to the circumstances people find themselves in. For Smith, for example, infanticide, while a ‘dreadful violation of humanity’, was ‘more pardonable’ among the ‘rudest and lowest state of society’ because it was an understandable response to ‘extreme indigence’. Even Kant, I think, did not blame the ‘savages’ themselves for living in ‘lawless freedom’, at least up to the point where they had a better example to follow. In this way, the essential unity of humanity, with its capacities and potentialities, was upheld at the same time as diversity was explained. In other words, we find a rather odd kind of tolerance for diverse institutions in these thinkers. It is a tolerance borne of the view that the people themselves are not to blame either for the practices and institutions of their societies or for doing what they think is the right thing to do. But this kind of tolerance is bound up with an inevitably judgemental attitude towards those institutions and practices that fail from the point of view of the ‘right’ way to organize social life. The partial exception here concerns Kant’s statements on race. Kant argued that all humans were part of a common humanity. But in some of his comments he seems to do more than argue that people’s traits were the product of their circumstances, noting that, as circumstances change, so too will habits, attitudes, and forms of thinking; he appears to suggest either that certain people are inferior by ‘nature’ (in the case of ‘the Negroes of Africa’) or that the effect of their circumstances is such as to render them incapable of changing (the ‘savages’ of North America). As we noted in chapter 2, these aspects of Kant’s thought have been an object of much debate. For our purposes here, the crucial point is that Kant seems to

31892_Williams.indd 170

20-10-15 08:23



Liberalism and Colonialism Past and Present 171

leave us with two options: either groups are excluded or they are not excluded but their culture and institutions must change. The second implication is the importance of making a distinction between a way of life that is merely a ‘culture’ (the product of the particular circumstances of particular times and places) and one that represents something more than that – the fulfilment of God’s purpose for humanity, the end of nature’s plan, and so on. The thinkers we have looked at did not mark this distinction strictly in geographical terms. All of them were often critical of some of the institutions and practices that characterized European states, and so it is most definitely not the case that these thinkers uncritically celebrated European society and culture. Nor did they see that society and culture as in all instances evidently superior; rather, they saw European states as ‘better’ because they were closer to, or were moving in the direction of, what these thinkers thought of as the proper ends of social life. But, as Smith ­illustrates particularly well, the combination of a ‘circumstantial’ account of the origins of diversity with a firm commitment that some ways of life are ‘true’ or the ‘proper’ way for people to live is potentially very unstable. Once we say, for example, that a belief in the truth or rightness of a particular way of life is itself the product of a particular set of circumstances (what else might it be?), then the distinction becomes hard to uphold. Finally, as Kant and Hobhouse illustrate, lurking behind a commitment to some kind of progressive history is a darker set of anxieties. While they appealed to God or nature or science to ground an account of the course of progress in human affairs, the idea of ‘hope’ played a very important role. As Kant said, ‘we may hope what strikes us in the actions of individuals as confused and fortuitous may be recognized, in the history of the entire species, as a steadily advancing but slow development of man’s original capacities’. Without such a hope, all there is to see is ‘confused and fortuitous’. Hobhouse said that the account of progress (evolution) deals with the ‘fundamental question – whether the life of man is full of hopeful purpose or void of meaning’. In other words, both thinkers recognized the great existential fear that sits at the heart of accounts of a progressive history – that actually there is no ‘meaning’, only the ongoing course of confused and entirely contingent events. Contemporary liberal debates about relations with plural others remain within this basic set of tensions. It is precisely the idea of the

31892_Williams.indd 171

20-10-15 08:23

172

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

unity of humanity that underpins the liberal imperial impulse, and many concepts central to contemporary liberal arguments are obviously hinged exactly on this (human rights, for example): because others are already ‘like us’ in some critical respects, they should have, and can come to enjoy, the kinds of goods ‘we’ have (or liberals think we should have).33 And in these arguments individuals or groups are often portrayed as in some sense the ‘victims’ of their particular cultural or ­polit­ical institutions. It is not the people who are ‘bad’ but the cultural understandings they live within or the form of government they live under. But it is this thought that drives the sometimes deeply intrusive practices of liberal imperialism because it is precisely those cultural understandings and forms of government that have to change if people are to come to enjoy liberal goods. Of course, in the face of inevitable disappointments, it can also be tempting to shift quite quickly from a benevolent, if imperial, attitude towards others to a righteous indignation that these others seem unwilling to embrace what liberals think is right, even though there is ‘example and encouragement nearby’.34 In addition, to the extent that the liberal faith in a benevolent God or nature has receded, so the existential fear looms ever larger. This has at least two consequences. The first is the evident tendency to read the events of the world as validating some kind of progressive story, as confirming that liberals and liberal states are on the ‘right side of history’.35 This can play a psychologically comforting role for modern liberals, but it can also lead to all kinds of sometimes misguided actions to support those ‘fighting tyranny’ when a more sober assessment of what is going on might produce altogether more judicious policies.36 Second, appeals to the ‘badness’ of the world and assertions of the superiority of liberal ideas and societies become a way of shoring up the identity of liberalism and liberal societies themselves. The liberal imperial will 33 For just one example among many, see Simon Caney, Justice beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005). His argument hinges on the claim that ‘notwithstanding the many differences between different persons from different cultures, there are some morally significant commonalities’ (36). 34 We might point to the dramatic shift in the way Aung San Suu Kyi has been portrayed in the Western media. 35 The most recent case is the ‘Arab Spring’. It is invidious to single out individuals here but as an example see Sheri Berman, ‘The Promise of the Arab Spring’, Foreign Affairs 92 (January-February 2013): 64–74, for a sense of this. 36 The intervention in Libya is one obvious example.

31892_Williams.indd 172

20-10-15 08:23



Liberalism and Colonialism Past and Present 173

to power can sometimes operate to fill a void left by the decline of faith in any idea of a progressive history.

The Question of Politics The final element of the thought of these thinkers that has a bearing on contemporary liberal debates about plural others is the importance of political considerations. There are at least three aspects to this. The first we have already noted. It is the insistence on the inevitably messy realities of colonial adventures. Hobhouse’s stress on the need to appreciate the difference between an ‘imperialism of promise’ and an ‘imperialism of performance’ was an attempt to force liberal imperialists to recognize that the world did not conform to their expectations because it was corrupted by greed and ignorance. Similarly, as Bentham said in his ‘Plan for a Universal and Perpetual Peace’, ‘nothing but confirmed blindness and stupidity can prompt us to go on imitating Alexander or Caesar’. While Smith wanted Britain to give up its colonies, he thought this was unlikely as such a policy would be ‘mortifying to the pride of every nation’. Hobhouse, Bentham, and Smith, then, were all acutely aware that a variety of not altogether praiseworthy emotions would form part of any colonial adventure and that what Smith called ‘visionary enthusiasts’ ought to be understand that basic reality. I think that this point is something that advocates of liberal imperialism in the recent past would have been very well served by recognizing. The second and related aspect of this concerns the relative casual or political efficacy of different forms of arguments. A focus on the domestic costs of colonialism can be seen as a recognition that this kind of argument is one that can have more ‘political bite’ in the colonizing states. Arguments about the injustice of Western expansionism need to have some political impact if they are to play a role in shaping what these states do. And, for all kinds of reasons that contemporary liberals might not like (narrow political horizons, an insufficiently cosmopolitan outlook, and so on), a concern with the costs to the imperial state may have more political significance than any argument about the inherent injustice of colonialism. In other words, liberals today concerned about relations with plural others would do well to spend a bit more time thinking about how their arguments might actually come to have some political weight in liberal-democratic societies.

31892_Williams.indd 173

20-10-15 08:23

174

Progress, Pluralism, and Politics

The third and again related aspect concerns the functioning of democracy in modern liberal societies. For Bentham, the institution of more democratic politics was one way of countering the power of those ‘sinister interests’ that sustained the imperial system. It was not just that, under a more democratic system, the ‘many’ would have a say in colonial policy; instead, it was that, taken as a whole, a democratic society would expose the workings of these ‘sinister interests’ to public scrutiny – hence the importance of a free press. For Hobhouse, however, the functioning of democracy in an industrial society was part of the problem of imperialism. It was not that democracy was undesirable, it was that the ‘masses’ did not really care about ‘public affairs’ and thus the controlling and regulative function of democracy did not work as well as it should. People were too busy or too distracted by the ‘sporting news’ to think clearly about the public interest, and partly as a result the ‘news’ itself was produced simply as a distraction rather than as a serious effort to debate what ought to be done. Under these conditions, of course, the ‘masses’ were easily persuaded by the ‘patriotic cry’ to support imperial ventures. The characteristic liberal problem was that, as Hobhouse said, there was a difference between the ‘desire of the majority and the good of the community’. Hobhouse’s conclusion is obviously ‘elitist’ in one sense – it is the ‘remnant’ that saves the people – but it is also rather pessimistic: the remnant can save the masses only if the masses are ‘willing to be saved’. Contemporary liberals are sometimes caught in this bind, and often end up embracing a view not dissimilar to Hobhouse’s. Whichever side individual liberals are on in arguments about liberal imperialism, they ought to recognize that the functioning of democracy in modern societies is often characterized by significant disinterest in, or ignorance about, matters of ‘public interest’.37 This obviously creates political problems on both sides. People can be led to support foolish imperial adventures, but equally their ‘parochial’ or ‘unenlightened’ attachments can lead them to put their concerns ahead of the sufferings of distant others. Recognition of these problems should be more central to liberal thinking, if only because, as recent experience perhaps suggests, the liberal imperial project can come badly unstuck if the ‘masses’, 37 I do not mean to suggest that people ought to have such knowledge or interest. I think that modern liberals often do denounce their compatriots as ignorant or disinterested (or at least they do when the public does not support what they think of as the right course of action). The point being made here is that these liberals ought to start thinking from this perfectly explicable fact, rather than simply condemning it.

31892_Williams.indd 174

20-10-15 08:23



Liberalism and Colonialism Past and Present 175

who often actually suffer some of the consequences, turn against it. Liberalism is often elitist as a matter of actual practice, and liberals ought to understand this; but they ought to understand too that they have to take cognizance of how democracy actually functions in modern liberal societies.

Conclusion One of the ways in which Smith, Kant, Bentham, and Hobhouse can be important for us, ‘now and around here’, is that they can help us see some of the abiding tensions, ambiguities, and uncertainties that characterize the manner in which liberals and liberal societies relate to plural others, and they illustrate that there is no easy way out of these. To be a liberal is to be judgemental about plural others. To believe in the desirability of certain liberal goods for others is to contemplate liberal imperialism. To think there is a progressive history at work in the history of humanity is to think about what liberal states might do to support such a process. At the same time, such imperial projects often go very badly for both sides, and they are usually corrupted by greed and stupidity. So we are left without any clear guidance. The imperial temptation is real enough, but so are the problems this can generate. The best that can be hoped for is that liberals and liberal societies become a bit more aware of the tensions, ambiguities, and uncertainties they live within, a bit more aware of how the rest of the world sees them, and a bit more alive to the almost inevitably ambiguous consequences of imperial ventures. There may be few reasons to expect that this will happen at all easily, although, in the changing international order, it may in the end be forced upon liberal states. But, while there are also few reasons to think that ‘theorists’ will have an especially privileged role here, it also means, I think, that the only politically salient way of engaging with ‘theory’ is to work away at improving understanding and identifying the ways in which thinking goes and some of the problems that can lead to. We can study past thinkers for all kinds of reasons and with all kinds of purposes in mind. One of them is with an eye to what they can contribute to our own thinking. And, given that the way we think about this issue has mattered and will continue to matter enormously to many people around the world, this seems like the best possible justification for studying the history of political thought.

31892_Williams.indd 175

20-10-15 08:23

31892_Williams.indd 176

20-10-15 08:23

Index

Adams, John Quincy, 110n100 Adam Smith Institute, 33n10 Africa: Hobhouse on new imperialism in Africa, 118; Kant on ‘Negro countries’/‘Negroes’ of Africa, 65, 75, 79, 170–1; and new imperialism, 10; Smith on progress and Africa, 46, 154; Smith’s cultural judgement on Africa, 49 Americas: Bentham’s criticism of colonialism in the Americas, 91, 93, 115, 116, 117, 158; Bentham’s legal-code projects in Central and South American states, 107, 108, 109; Bentham’s neglect of indigenous populations’ fate, 104, 110–11; Kant’s criticism of colonialism in the Americas, 65, 68–9, 75, 86; ­settler colonialism, 10; Smith on America before Columbus, 49; Smith’s criticism of colonialism in the Americas, 14, 17, 35–7, 39, 41–2, 49; Smith’s ‘discovery of America’ quote, 40–1, 47, 151, 163, 165. See also Native Americans ancient Greece, Smith on, 47–8 ancient Rome, Smith on, 47–8 Anderson, James, 90n6

31892_Williams.indd 177

Angell, Norman, 124, 139 anthropology: ‘anthropological epistemology’ concept, 29; anthropological knowledge (of past liberal thinkers), 18; moral anthropology (in Kant), 83–4 anti-colonialism. See colonialism, anticolonialism, and the liberal project; liberalism and colonialism past and present Arab Spring, 172n35 Arneil, Barbara, 5 art of government: and Bentham’s utilitarianism, 92, 94, 114; and ­liberalism, 94n20, 158–9 Asia: Kant on ‘oriental’ nations/ people, 79; Smith on, 46 Aung San Suu Kyi, 172n34 Australia: Bentham’s characterization of indigenous peoples, 103, 104, 111, 116; Bentham’s ‘Colonization Proposal’ for reformed colonialism, 17, 104–6, 116, 157; Bentham’s criticism of Botany Bay penal colony (New South Wales), 91, 93, 102–4; penal colonialism, 10; settler colonialism, 17 Ayoob, Mohammed, xi

20-10-15 08:23

178

Index

Bell, Duncan, xiii–xiv, 132n64, 140n110, 141 Bengal, Smith on 1769–73 famine, 39, 163 Bentham, Jeremy: ambivalence towards colonialism, 9–10, 104; as ‘anti-colonial’ liberal thinker, xiii–xiv, 90; Bentham Project, 92, 105n72; ‘From Bentham’s Memorandum-Book’, 97n35; British rule in India, 89–90, 91, 92, 93–4, 95, 111, 112–17, 159; ‘Codification Proposal’, 97n34; colonialism, unjustifiability of, 98–9; colonialism in the Americas, criticism of, 91, 93, 115, 116, 117, 158; colonialism as beneficial for ‘humanity’ as a whole, 17, 105–6, 116; colonialism and economic/political costs to colonizing states, 12–13, 93, 98–102, 116, 117, 160, 161; colonialism and increased likelihood of war between European states, 13, 100; colonialism and penal colony in New South Wales, criticism of, 91, 93, 102–4; colonialism and rejection of benevolent paternalism, 92, 95, 116; colonial topics in his work, 10; ‘Colonization Proposal’ for reformed colonialism in Australia, 17, 104–6, 116, 157; consequentialist thinking, 95, 117; Constitutional Code, 99n43, 108; ‘conversation tubes’ scheme, 106– 7; cosmopolitanism, 104, 113, 116, 117, 165; cultural/civilizational hierarchies, 20, 93, 116, 117; ­cultural/civilizational hierarchies and indigenous peoples, 19, 103–4, 110–12, 116, 159; cultural pluralism and institutional/cultural ­conditions, 92–3, 96–7; democracy

31892_Williams.indd 178

and fight against ‘sinister interests’, 13, 129, 174; Deontology, 95, 96, 96n27; egalitarianism, 92, 93, 96, 97, 104, 111, 113–14, 116, 117, 165; ‘Emancipate Your Colonies’, 98–9, 99n45, 101, 101n58, 102n59, 112–13; ‘Emancipation Spanish’, 101n55, 102n60, 108; and Enlightenment, 90, 91; ‘epistemic imperialism’, 110; Eurocentrism, 156; ‘Exordium’, 111n103; A Fragment on Government, 96n26, 107; free trade, advocacy of, 160; French Revolution and French ­colonial practices, 91, 99, 163; frigidarium and food preservation, 106–7; ‘greatest happiness of the greatest number’ quote, 95–6, 107; human nature ‘every where the same’, 96, 168, 170; imperial temptation and liberal goods, 151; ‘The Influence of Time and Place in Matters of Legislation’, 92, 112, 114; ‘interoceanic canal across Venezuela’ scheme, 106–7; interpretive difficulties with Bentham’s works, 91–2; An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 96, 98, 107, 108, 109; ‘legislator of the world’, 93, 104, 106–10, 117; ‘Manual on Political Economy’, 105nn75–7; mercantilist trade policies, criticism of, 12, 90, 116, 160, 162; monopoly trade, criticism of, 101; Native Americans, 111, 116; pain and pleasure, 96, 114, 151, 166, 170; pannomion concept, 107; panopticon penitentiary concept, 103, 106–7; ‘Place and Time’, 96n30, 97n33, 98nn38–9, 98n41, 112, 113–14, 116–17; ‘Plan for a Universal and Perpetual Peace’,

20-10-15 08:23



Index 179

99–100, 101n56, 160, 173; portrait (National Portrait Gallery, London), 109; Principles of International Law, 99; progress and colonialism, 93, 154, 166; progress and justice, 166; progress and utilitarianism, 97–8, 112; ‘Proposed Law for the Establishment of the Liberty of the Press in Venezuela’, 109; ‘Rid Yourselves of Ultramaria’, 102n61, 108, 111n102; Rights, Representation and Reform, 99n44; Securities against Misrule and Other Constitutional Writings for Tripoli and Greece, 108n90, 110n100; settler colonialism, 17, 91, 104, 115, 116, 117, 159; trading companies, criticism of, 17; utilitarianism and art of government, 92, 94, 114; utilitarianism in British India, 89–90; utilitarianism and colonialism, 97; utilitarianism and human psychology, 92, 96–7; utilitarianism and ­individualism, 97–8; utilitarianism and liberty, 132; utilitarianism and political independence, 101, 110, 117, 158; utilitarianism and progress, 97–8, 112; utilitarianism and reform, 94–7; utilitarianism and universal political vision, 107; utilitarian legal system, 93; ‘vast masses of misery’ quote, 95, 164; ‘Of War’, 99n47 Bevir, Mark, 29 Bloom, Alan, 152n11 Boer War, Hobhouse’s criticism of, 125, 126, 128, 162, 163 Bolivar, Simon, 109 Boralevi, Lea, 91n12, 92n17 Bowring, John, 92 British Empire: Colonial Development Act (1929), 144;

31892_Williams.indd 179

Hobhouse and British Empire as ‘liberal empire’, 120, 125–6, 127, 142–3, 144, 145; Hobhouse’s support for imperial union, 17, 120, 125, 138, 139–43, 145, 157; and liberal arguments (early twentieth century), 118; and Locke’s liberalism, 5; and mass famines/cruelties, 147–8; Mau Bora Levi uprising, 163n23; recent celebrations of, 147, 167; Smith’s support for imperial union, 32, 33, 36; Smith’s views on, 17, 147; ‘trusteeship’ idea, 144. See also India; Ireland Cain, Peter, 90 Cambridge School (history of political thought), xiii, 29n65, 33n10 Caney, Simon, 172n33 Canovan, Margaret, xii, 10n25 Chile, Bentham’s legal-code project, 109 China: Kant on China and European trading companies, 67; Smith on, 47, 154 civilizational/cultural hierarchies. See human diversity ‘civilizing mission’ of colonialism: and anti-colonial strand in liberalism, 8; and Hobhouse, 143–4; J.S. Mill’s belief in, 6–7, 31; Kant’s criticism of, 69, 70, 72; Smith’s criticism of, 31, 56. See also human diversity Cobden, Richard, 32, 33, 133, 139 Collini, Stefan, 138, 145 Colonial Development Act (United Kingdom, 1929), 144 colonialism, anti-colonialism, and the liberal project: ‘anti-colonial’ and colonial liberal thinkers, xii, xiii– xiv, 8–9; ‘anti-colonial’ liberal thinkers’ ambivalence towards

20-10-15 08:23

180

Index

colonialism, 9–10, 14–15, 20; ‘colonial’ aspects of their thinking, 20; colonial liberalism in post–Cold War period, xii–xiii, xv; criticism of economic and political costs of colonialism to colonizers, 12–13, 20; criticism of violence/cruelties of colonialism, 13–14, 20; empire and liberalism, xiii–xiv, 3–4, 5, 6–7, 9, 14; global imaginary and anthropological knowledge of cultures, 18; liberal ‘project’ concept and achievement of ends/goods, 10–12; liberal project and noumenal vs phenomenal, 15; liberal project and possibilities/limitations of European colonialism, 20; neutrality and liberalism, 12n28; plurality and cultural/civilizational hierarchies, 7–8, 19–20; plurality and universalism, 15, 18–19; progress and liberalism, xiv, 7, 11–12; progress and liberal view of colonialism, 15, 16–17, 20, 26. See also liberalism and colonialism past and present; political thought, history of Columbia, Bentham’s legal-code ­project, 109 concentration (detention) camps, 163 Connolly, William, 18n35 consequentialist thinking, 95, 117 cosmopolitanism: and Bentham, 104, 113, 116, 117, 165; and Kant, 61, 62, 63, 65, 67, 71n51, 74–5, 165; and Smith, 53, 55 cultural/civilizational hierarchies. See human diversity Darwinism. See social Darwinism Deism, and Smith, 44–5, 48, 49–50, 53, 58

31892_Williams.indd 180

democracy: Bentham’s views on, 13, 129, 174; Hobhouse’s views on, 13, 119, 128–30, 133, 145, 174; J.S. Mill’s views on, 129, 133; in ­modern liberal societies, 174–5; non-­deliberative practices of liberaldemocratic politics, 21–2, 150; and Philosopher King model, 24; and progress, 149. See also liberty Democratic Peace Theory, 59–60 Desch, Michael, 59 detention (concentration) camps, 163 developmental liberalism, 120, 145 diagnostic/interpretive approach, 22–3, 25, 27 Diaros das Cortes (Portuguese government’s papers), 109 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 146 ‘disciplined freedom’ concept, 85, 110, 149 diversity. See human diversity; pluralism/plurality Doyle, Michael, 59n3 Du Bois, W.E.B., 130 Dunn, John, xiv, 28n63, 33n10 East India Company (Dutch), 39 East India Company (English): and British rule in India, 10, 89, 91, 112, 114–15, 159; and J.S. Mill, 6, 114–15; Smith’s criticism of, 39, 162–3. See also trading companies East Indies, Kant on, 65–6 egalitarianism, in Bentham’s thought, 92, 93, 96, 97, 104, 111, 113–14, 116, 117, 165 Egypt, Bentham on, 111 ‘elementary rights’, Hobhouse on, 130–1, 165 empiricist philosophy, 45 Engelmann, Stephen, 111, 112, 113

20-10-15 08:23



Index 181

Enlightenment: and ‘backward ­societies’ judgements, 49; and Bentham, 90, 91; and diversity of cultures, 35; and Kant, 60, 62, 73, 85; and Philanthropinum Institute (Dessau, Germany), 84n115; and progress/colonialism, 33; and Tahiti, 76n74 ‘epistemic imperialism’, 110 ‘epistemic violence’, 8 Eurocentrism: in Bentham’s thought, 156; and criticism of economic costs of colonialism to colonizers, 56, 161; and developmental account of history, 146; in Hobhouse’s thought, 156; and imperial temptation, 156–7; in Kant’s thought, 60, 61, 62, 156; and liberalism, 7–8; and liberal view of progress, 16; in Smith’s thought, 33, 35, 43, 55, 56, 156 Europe, Hobhouse’s views on, 141 Evensky, Jerry, 43n54 evolution theory: orthogenic ­evolution, 136; and progress in Hobhouse’s thought, 135–8, 142, 143–4, 143n121, 146, 153–4. See also social Darwinism Fabians: and changes in British ­colonial policy (1920s), 144; Hobhouse’s criticism of their support for imperialism, 14, 126–7, 131, 146, 160–1, 164 famines, and colonialism, 14, 39, 66, 147, 163 Ferguson, Niall, 147n2, 167nn28–9 Fleischacker, Samuel, 54n107 Foucault, Michel, 94n20 Fox, Charles James, 115 Freeden, Michael, 118n2, 121, 121n9, 135n82

31892_Williams.indd 181

freedom: disciplined freedom, 85, 110, 149. See also liberty free trade: Bentham’s advocacy of, 160; Hobhouse’s advocacy of, 124, 139; Smith’s advocacy of, 32, 160 free-trade imperialism, 32 French Revolution: Bentham on ideals of Revolution and French colonialism, 91, 99, 163; Kant’s views on, 73–4; and liberalism, xiv–xv Frierson, Patrick, 78n80 Galston, William, 12n28 German idealism, Hobhouse’s criticism of, 128 Gilley, Bruce, ‘The Case for Colonialism’, 167nn28–9 Gladstone, William Ewart, 133 ‘global imaginary’ concept, 18 Greece: Bentham’s legal-code project, 107, 108, 110. See also ancient Greece greed, Smith on, 14, 162 Guatemala: Bentham’s legal-code ­project, 107, 109, 110 Gunnell, John, 132n64 Halevy, Elie, 107 Hastings, Warren, 115 Hayek, F.A., 95n22 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 62 Herder, Johann Gotfried von, Ideas on the Philosophy of History of Mankind, 76 Hill, Lisa, 34n13 Hindess, Barry, 7 Hobbes, Thomas, 28n63 Hobhouse, L.T.: ambivalence towards colonialism, 9–10, 120, 145, 154; as ‘anti-colonial’ liberal thinker, xiii–xiv, 144–5; Boer War, criticism

20-10-15 08:23

182

Index

of, 125, 126, 128, 162, 163; British Empire as ‘liberal empire’, 120, 125–6, 127, 142–3, 144, 145; British Empire and support for ­imperial union, 17, 120, 125, 138, 139–43, 145, 157; British rule in India, 142–3, 154, 159; ‘civilizing mission’ of colonialism, 143–4; ­colonialism and economic/political costs to colonizing states, 12–13, 119, 127, 129, 144, 145, 160–1; colonial violence/cruelties, criticism of, 119, 129, 144–5, 148, 163; cultural/civilizational hierarchies and colonialism, 20, 145; cultural hierarchies and ‘simpler peoples’, 18, 120, 137–8, 169; democracy, public opinion, and imperialism, 13, 119, 128–30, 133, 145, 174; Democracy and Reaction, overview, 121; Democracy and Reaction on British rule in India, 143n117; Democracy and Reaction on democracy, 128n50, 129n51, 129n53; Democracy and Reaction on imperial union, 141n111; Democracy and Reaction on nationalism, 123n18, 124n24, 125n27; Democracy and Reaction on new imperialism, 125– 6, 127n39, 127n43, 128n45, 128n47; Democracy and Reaction on race and new imperialism, 130n56, 130nn58–9, 131nn60–1; Democracy and Reaction on ‘universal and permanent peace’, 139n103; developmental liberalism, 120, 145; Development and Purpose: An Essay ­towards a Philosophy of Evolution, 138n96; ‘elementary rights’ concept, 130–1, 165; Eurocentrism, 156; Europe, future of after Second World War, 141; Fabians’ support

31892_Williams.indd 182

for imperialism, criticism of, 14, 126–7, 131, 146, 160–1, 164; ‘The Foreign Policy of Collectivism’, 127n38; free trade, advocacy of, 124, 139; German idealism, criticism of, 128; ‘Government by the People’, 128n49; hope and progress, 138, 171; human unity and ‘persistent impulse of the rational being’, 133, 168, 170; imperialism, criticism of, 118, 122–32; imperialism, finance, and war, 119, 162; ‘imperialism of promise’ vs ‘imperialism of performance’, 131–2, 138, 142–3, 144, 154, 173; imperial temptation and liberal goods, 151; ‘The Individual and the State’, 124n19, 143n120; interpretive ­difficulties with Hobhouse’s works, 120–1; Ireland, nationalism, and Home Rule, 118–19, 122–5, 159; ‘Irish Nationalism and Liberal Principle’, 122–3, 124n20, 124n23, 125n26; Liberalism, focus on political theory, 121; Liberalism on ­autonomy/nationalism, 123, 125n27; Liberalism on democracy, 128n49, 129; Liberalism on ‘elementary rights’, 131n60; Liberalism on imperialism, 127n44; Liberalism on imperial union, 139nn97–8, 139n100, 139n102, 140n104, 140n106, 140nn108–9; Liberalism on liberalism as movement, 134n74, 134n78, 135n79; Liberalism on liberalism and question of its ‘permanent significance’, 135; Liberalism on liberty, 132nn65–6, 133n67; Liberalism on liberty and harmony, 133n70, 133n73; Liberalism on progress, 136n88; Liberalism on race and new imperialism,

20-10-15 08:23



Index 183

131nn62–3; liberty and ‘harmony’ concept, 133–4; liberty and liberalism, 132–3; The Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples, 121, 137; The Metaphysical Theory of the State, 121; Morals in Evolution, 121, 136n83, 137n94, 143; nationalism as ‘Janus faced’, 124, 158; national self-determination, 118–19, 123, 125, 139, 141–2, 144, 145–6, 158; new imperialism, criticism of, 118, 120, 122, 125–32, 144–5; new liberalism, 118n2, 120n6, 133, 135n82, 163–4; political program, 133–4; progress and developmental liberalism, 120; progress and evolution theory, 135–8, 142, 143–4, 143n121, 146, 153–4; progress and hope, 138, 171; progress and human agency, 143, 146, 155; progress and justice, 165; progress and sociology, 136–7; progress as immanent, 16, 146, 153–4; race and new imperialism, 122, 126, 130–2, 144–5, 163–4, 165; social Darwinism, criticism of, 128; Social Evolution and Political Theory, 121, 133n70, 133n72, 136n84, 136n88, 137, 137nn91–2, 139n101, 140n107, 142n116, 143n119; United States, political institutions of, 140, 140n105; utilitarianism, views on, 132; The World in Conflict, 121, 124n20, 124n22, 125n27, 139n97, 139n99, 141n112, 141n114, 143n120 Hobson, J.A., 90, 119 Hobson, John, 43, 48 Home, Henry, Lord Kames, 77n78 Honig, Bonnie, 85 Honneth, Alex, 72n54 hope, and progress, 138, 171

31892_Williams.indd 183

human diversity: Bentham’s egalitarianism and cultural hierarchies, 19–20, 92–3, 96–7, 103–4, 110–14, 116, 117, 159; Hobhouse’s ‘simpler peoples’ and cultural hierarchies, 18, 20, 120, 137–8, 145, 169; imperial temptation and cultural ­hierarchies, 159; Kant on ‘savage peoples’, 80–1, 169–70; Kant on Tahiti people, 76, 79–80, 154, 165, 169; Kant’s race theory, 18, 60, 61–2, 63–4, 71n51, 76–82, 86, 88, 170–1; liberalism and cultural ­hierarchies, 7–8, 19–20; liberalism and problem of diversity, 168–73; Smith’s cultural judgements, 18, 35, 48–9, 51–2, 54–5, 57–8, 169, 171. See also ‘civilizing mission’ of colonialism; human unity; ­pluralism/plurality; race human rights: commitment to and liberal states’ foreign policies, 152n10, 153; and human unity, 172 human unity: and liberalism, 168–9, 170, 171–2. See also human diversity Hume, David, 62 hypocrisy(ies): of colonialism, 8, 9, 20, 66, 71–2, 86, 163; of interventionism, 164 ‘ideal theory’ concept, 24–5 imperialism: ‘epistemic imperialism’, 110; free-trade imperialism, 32. See also Hobhouse, L.T. imperial temptation: and advancement of liberal goods, 148, 150–3; and changing international order, 175; and contemporary liberals, 159–60; and cultural hierarchies, 159; and Eurocentrism, 156–7; and nationalindependence question, 158–9;

20-10-15 08:23

184

Index

and progress, 153–6; and reformed-colonialism idea, 157–8. See also intervention ‘improvement’ of land argument, and colonialism, 68, 165 independence. See national independence India: Bentham’s legal-code schemes, 111, 113; British rule and Bentham, 89–90, 91, 92, 93–4, 95, 111, 112–17, 159; British rule and Hobhouse, 142–3, 154, 159; British rule and J.S. Mill, 6–7, 94, 114–15; East India Company’s role, 10, 89, 91, 112, 114–15, 159; famines caused by British rule, 14; utilitarian reform program (early nineteenth century), 89–90 infanticide, Smith on, 52, 55, 170 international-development institutions, xi–xii, 156. See also intervention interpretive/diagnostic approach, 22–3, 25, 27 intervention: and Democratic Peace Theory, 59–60; and Kant’s arguments, 59–60; and liberalism, xii, xv, 25–6, 155–6, 157–8, 159, 161, 164, 172–3. See also imperial temptation Iraq, casualties since 2003 invasion, 164n24 Ireland, Hobhouse on nationalism and Home Rule, 118–19, 122–5, 159 Japan, Kant on Japan and European trading companies, 67 justice, and progress, 39, 53, 149, 165–8 Kames, Lord. See Home, Henry, Lord Kames

31892_Williams.indd 184

Kant, Immanuel: ambivalence towards colonialism, 9–10, 72, 86–7; ‘An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?’, 73n58, 84n110, 85; Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, 18, 84n112; as ‘anticolonial’ liberal thinker, xiii–xiv, 61, 62, 65, 86; Categorical ­Imperative and condemnation of colonialism, 87; Categorical ­Imperative and hypocrisy, 66; ­Categorical Imperative and intrinsic worth of all persons, 70–1, 77; Categorical Imperative and moral duties, 82; Categorical Imperative and universal morality, 83; colonialism in the Americas, criticism of, 65, 68–9, 75, 86; colonialism and anti-paternalist arguments, 69–70, 71, 86; colonialism and hypocrisy, 66, 71–2; colonialism and increased likelihood of war between European states, 13, 66, 160; colonialism and injustices/cruelties inflicted on colonies, 39n38, 65–7, 71; colonialism and intrinsic worth of all persons, 70–1, 72; colonialism and rejection of ‘civilizing’ argument, 69, 70, 72; colonialism and rejection of ‘improvement’ of land argument, 68, 165; colonialism and right of resistance, 66–7, 69, 72; colonialism and universal history, 72–6; ­colonialism and ‘universal and ­lasting’ peace, 71, 72; colonialism and victory in war, 67; colonialists’ ‘­inhospitable conduct’, 65–7, 165; ‘Conjectural Beginning of Human History’, 74n66, 80, 81n97; ‘­Contest of the Faculties’, 74n62, 74n64; cosmopolitan right, 61, 62, 63, 65, 67, 71n51, 74–5, 165;

20-10-15 08:23



Index 185 Critique of the Power of Judgment, 74; Critique of Practical Reason, 82n103; Critiques, 61; ‘Determination of the Concept of a Human Race’, 77, 78n80, 78n83; ‘Of the Different Races of Human Beings’, 78nn80–1; East Indies, 65–6; education, ­central role of, 84–5; and Enlightenment, 60, 62, 73, 85; ‘Essays ­regarding the Philanthropinum’, 84nn114–15; Eurocentrism, 60, 61, 62, 156; European trading companies, criticism of, 67, 86, 163; free will vs causation, 64–5; French Revolution and progress, 73–4; Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 67–9, 70, 71nn51–2, 82n101, 83n107, 85n116; hope and progress, 171; human reasoning, shared basic structure of, 18– 19; human unity, quasi-theological account of, 168, 170; ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim’, 61, 67n32, 72nn55–6, 81n98; imperial temptation and liberal goods, 151; interpretive difficulties with Kant’s works, 61–3; Lectures on Anthropology, 79n89; ­Lectures on Pedagogy, 61; moral anthropology, 83–4; moral reasoning, 64–5, 82–3, 88; moral theory, 64–5, 70, 82–6, 87–8; Native Americans, 60, 79–80; ‘Negro countries’/ ’Negroes’ of Africa, 65, 75, 79, 170–1; noumenal vs phenomenal world, 64–5, 86, 149; ‘Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime’, 79n88; ‘Physical ­Geography’, 79n87; political/­ institutional structures, central role of, 85–6, 88; progress and colonialism, 16–17, 63, 65, 75–6, 86–7,

31892_Williams.indd 185

154, 165; progress and enlightenment, 73; progress and hope, 171; progress and human history, 72–4, 76, 80; progress as immanent, 16, 153, 154; progress and justice, 165–6; progress and Tahiti, 154, 165; progress and war, 74; race theory, 18, 60–2, 63–4, 71n51, 76– 82, 86, 88, 170–1; ‘savage people’, 80–1, 169–70; settler colonialism, criticism of, 63, 68–9, 86; slavery in Sugar Islands, 66, 163; Spice Islands, 39n40, 65, 75; Tahiti people, 76, 79–80, 154, 165, 169; teleological account of history, 64; Towards Perpetual Peace, 61, 65–7, 69, 71n53, 74–5, 74n65, 78n84, 80n94, 85n116; universal history as embodiment of Eurocentric liberal thought, 60; universal hospitality, 65; ‘unsocial sociability’ concept, 67, 80; ‘On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy’, 60n7, 79n90; U.S. interventionist foreign policy and Kant’s thought, 59–60 Kleingeld, Pauline, 83n106 Koselleck, Reinhart, 16 land ‘improvement’ argument, and colonialism, 68, 165 Laslett, Peter, 28n61 Lenin, Vladimir, 119 liberalism and colonialism past and present: anti-colonial thinkers’ ­advocacy of reformed colonialism, 148; anti-colonial thinkers’ ambiguities/ambivalences, 148–9, 164; ­anti-colonial tradition within liberal canon, 147; colonialism and costs to colonized peoples, 147–8; colonialism and costs to colonizers, 147; disciplined freedom, 149;

20-10-15 08:23

186

Index

Eurocentrism, 156; human diversity, problem of, 168–73; human unity, 168–9, 170, 171–2; imperial temptation and advancement of liberal goods, 148, 150–3; imperial temptation and changing international order, 175; imperial temptation and contemporary liberals, 159–60; imperial temptation and cultural hierarchies, 159; imperial temptation and Eurocentrism, 156–7; imperial temptation and ­national-independence question, 158–9; imperial temptation and progress, 153–6; imperial temptation and reformed-colonialism idea, 157–8; pluralism and liberalism, 148–9; political efficacity of liberals’ arguments, 173; politics and functioning of democracy in modern liberal democracies, 174– 5; politics and unwise colonial ­adventures, 172–3; progress and democracy, 149; progress and ­justice, 149, 165–8; reformed-­ colonialism idea, 157; thinking for ourselves and history of political thought, 150; universalizing impulse within liberal thought, 149; warnings against colonialism serving the interests of the few, 161–2; warnings against cruelties inflicted on colonized, 162–4; warnings against economic/political costs of colonialism to colonizers, 160–1. See also colonialism, anti-colonialism, and the liberal project; ­political thought, history of liberal ‘project’ concept, xii, 10–12. See also colonialism, anti-colonialism, and the liberal project ‘liberal tradition’ concept, xi–xii, 3–4

31892_Williams.indd 186

liberty: ‘disciplined freedom’ concept, 85, 110, 149; and liberalism, 132–3; and utilitarianism, 132 Libya, 2011 intervention, 172n36 Locke, John: empiricist philosophy, 45; Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 109; historical/­ political anthropology, 18n34; ‘improvement’ of land as justification for appropriation, 68, 165; ­liberalism and colonial/slave-­ trading ventures, 4–6, 7; as ‘­misused’ political thinker, 28n63; natural order, theorist of, 132; progress, 16n31; Tully’s work on Locke and colonialism, 29n65; Two Treatises and colonialism, 5; Two Treatises as interpreted by Laslett, 28n61 Macaulay, Thomas, 89 Macfie, A.L., 34 McLean, Iain, 37 MacPherson, C.B., 28n63 Malthus, Thomas Robert, 105 Marxism, 26 Mau MacPhie uprising, 163n23 Meadowcroft, James, 133n69 Mehta, Uday Singh, 3, 5 mercantilism: Bentham’s criticism of, 12, 90, 116, 160, 162; Cobden’s criticism of, 133; and liberalism, 134; Smith’s criticism of, 12, 32, 38, 42, 56, 90, 160, 162 Mexico, Bentham’s legal-code project, 109 Mignolo, Walter, 8 Mill, James, 19, 89–90, 91, 98, 115, 132, 147 Mill, John Stuart: on Bentham’s ‘Time and Place’, 114; on Bentham’s utilitarianism, 94, 97; British rule in India, 6–7, 94, 114–15; ‘civilizing

20-10-15 08:23



Index 187

mission’ of colonialism, 6–7, 31; as colonial liberal thinker, xii, 4, 147; Considerations on Representative Government, 6; cultural generalizations as feature of his thinking, 98; democracy, ambivalences about, 129, 133; and East India Company, 6, 114–15; liberal goods and ‘development’ process, 153; liberty and social wellbeing, 133; ‘Memorandum of the Improvements in the Administration of India during the Last Thirty Years’, 114nn118–19; ‘­Petition of the East India Company’, 115n120; progress and colonialism, 16n32; utilitarian liberalism, 91, 94, 97 monopoly trade: Bentham’s criticism of, 101; Smith’s criticism of, 37–40, 41, 55 Muthu, Sankar, 61, 66–7 Nagel, Thomas, 145n127 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (naacp), 130 national independence: Bentham’s views on political independence, 101, 110, 117, 158; Hobhouse’s views on national self-determination, 118–19, 123, 125, 139, 141–2, 144, 145–6, 158; and imperial temptation, 158–9; Smith’s advocacy of colonies’ national independence, 36, 158 nationalism: Hobhouse on Ireland, nationalism, and Home Rule, 118– 19, 122–5, 159; Hobhouse on nationalism as ‘Janus faced’, 124, 158. See also national independence Native Americans: Bentham on, 111, 116; Kant on, 60, 79–80 natural order, theorists of, 132 natural rights, 5, 132, 133

31892_Williams.indd 187

neutrality, and liberalism, 12n28, 152 new imperialism: and Africa, 10. See also Hobhouse, L.T. new liberalism, 118n2, 120n6, 133, 135n82, 163–4 Newton, Isaac, 43 noumenal, vs phenomenal, 15, 64–5, 86, 149 orthogenic evolution, 136 Pain, Thomas, 132 paternalism: Bentham’s rejection of benevolent paternalism, 92, 95, 116; Kant’s anti-paternalist arguments, 69–70, 71, 86 penal colonialism, 10; Bentham’s criticism of Botany Bay penal colony (New South Wales), 91, 93, 102–4 phenomenal, vs noumenal, 15, 64–5, 86, 149 Philanthropinum Institute (Dessau, Germany), 84n115 Philosopher King model, 23–5 Pitts, Jennifer, 31, 32, 46, 49, 90, 111, 112, 113 plantation colonialism, 10, 36, 42, 91, 117, 159 pluralism/plurality: and liberalism, xiv, 148–9; and universalism, 15, 18–19, 35, 149. See also human diversity Pocock, John, 33n10 Poland, Bentham’s legal-code project, 108 political independence. See national independence political thought, history of: current debates and study of past thought, 20–1; democratic politics and nondeliberative practices, 21–2; historians/theorists’ role, 22; liberal

20-10-15 08:23

188

Index

intervention/colonialism issue, 25–6; liberalism as identity, 26–7; ­liberalism as term of abuse, 26n54; Philosopher King model, 23–5; preference for diagnostic and interpretive approach, 22–3, 25, 27; ­relevance of past thinkers and historicization issue, 27–30; thinking for ourselves and history of political thought, 150. See also Cambridge School (history of political thought) politics: efficacity of liberals’ arguments, 173. See also art of government; democracy; intervention Porter, Bernard, Critics of Empire, 144 Portugal: Bentham’s legal-code project, 108, 109; Diaros das Cortes (Portuguese government’s papers), 109 post-colonial thought, 7–8 primogeniture laws, Smith’s criticism of, 41 progress: and democracy, 149; Enlightenment accounts of and colonialism, 33; and hope, 138, 171; and imperial temptation, 153–6; and justice, 149, 165–8; and liberalism, xiv, 7, 11–12; and liberal view of colonialism, 15, 16–17, 20, 26. See also Bentham, Jeremy; Hobhouse, L.T.; Kant, Immanuel; Smith, Adam race: Hobhouse on race and new imperialism, 122, 126, 130–2, 144–5, 163–4, 165; Kant’s race theory, 18, 60–2, 63–4, 71n51, 76–82, 86, 88, 170–1; polygenesis vs monogenesis, 77. See also human diversity racism: Kant’s ‘racism’, 61, 62; and liberalism, 26, 169 Rawls, John, 152n11, 153n12, 159n20 Reid, Thomas, 53n103

31892_Williams.indd 188

rights: ‘elementary rights’ in Hobhouse’s thought, 130–1, 165; human rights, 152n10, 153, 172; natural rights, 5, 132, 133; right of resistance in Kant’s thought, 66–7, 69, 72 Roberts, Adam, 110n100 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 80, 132 Roy, Rammohun, 113n109 Russia, Bentham’s legal-code project, 107, 108 Schofield, Philip, 92n17, 93n18, 105n73, 105n77 self-determination. See national independence settler colonialism: in the Americas, 10; Bentham on, 17, 91, 104, 115, 116, 117, 159; and cultural/civilizational hierarchies, 19; Kant on, 63, 68–9, 86; Smith on, 36, 41–2 Shaw, G.B., Fabianism and the Empire (ed.), 127n37 Skinner, Quentin, 10n24, 27n59, 28n63, 33n10, 150 slavery: and colonialism, 8, 14; Kant on slavery in Sugar Islands, 66, 163; and Locke, 4–5; Smith on, 40, 46, 163 Smith, Adam: ‘Adam Smith problem’ notion, 34n11; as ‘anti-colonial’ liberal thinker, xiii–xiv, 31–2, 36, 48; Britain as providing best form of colonial rule, 17; British Empire and mass famines, 147; British Empire and support for imperial union, 32, 33, 36; ‘civilizing mission’ argument, rejection of, 31, 56; colonialism, ambivalence towards, 9–10, 35, 40–2, 48; colonialism, economic costs to colonizing states, 34–5, 36–7, 40, 55, 56, 160; colonialism, economic impact on colonies, 41–2; colonialism, greed

20-10-15 08:23



Index 189 and stupidity as drivers for, 14; colonialism, human motivations for, 37, 56; colonialism, political costs to colonizing states, 13, 34–5, 40, 55, 160, 161; colonialism in the Americas, criticism of, 14, 17, 35–7, 39, 41–2, 49; colonialism benefiting the ‘rich and powerful’, 37–8, 161–2; colonialism and indigenous peoples’ claims, 19, 159; colonialism and injustices/cruelties inflicted on colonies, 39–41, 55, 162–3; colonialism and moral theory, 54– 5, 57–8; commercial society, 31, 43, 49–51, 54, 151; cosmopolitan sentiments, 53, 55; cultural diversity and ‘backward societies’ (America, Africa), 49; cultural judgements, 18, 35, 48–9, 51–2, 54–5, 57–8, 169, 171; Deism, 44–5, 48, 49–50, 53, 58; ‘discovery of America’ quote, 40–1, 47, 151, 163, 165; East India companies, criticism of, 39, 162–3; Essays on Philosophical Subjects, 44n55, 51n93; Eurocentrism, 33, 35, 43, 55, 56, 156; foot binding and other cruel customs, criticism of, 19; free trade, advocacy of, 32, 160; greed, 14, 162; ‘History of Astronomy’, 43–4, 51; human unity, quasi-theological account of, 168, 170; imperial temptation and liberal goods, 150– 1; infanticide, 52, 55, 170; interpretive difficulties with Smith’s works, 33–4; Lectures on Jurisprudence, 18, 40n43, 43n52, 45n67, 47n73, 49, 50n89, 50n91; ‘man of system’, 46, 56–7; mercantilist trade policies, criticism of, 12, 32, 38, 42, 56, 90, 160, 162; monopoly trade, criticism of, 37–40, 41, 55; moral theory, 49, 52–5, 57–8, 83; ‘mortifying to the

31892_Williams.indd 189

pride of every nation’ quote, 37, 173; national independence of ­colonies, advocacy of, 36, 158; ­philosophy, purpose of, 43–4; primogeniture laws, criticism of, 41; progress and Africa, Asia, China, ancient Greece/Rome, 46–8, 154; progress and colonialism, 16–17, 33, 34–5, 42–3, 46, 48, 55, 57–8, 165; progress and commercial society, 31, 43; progress and contingency, 46–7, 48, 154; progress as immanent/natural, 16, 35, 43–5, 46, 47, 48, 153, 154; progress and institutional/political arrangements, 45–6, 47–8; progress and justice, 39, 165; progress and natural justice, 53; progress and stadial theory, 49; settler colonialism, 36, 41–2; slavery, 40, 46, 163; Spice Islands, 39, 65n21; stadial theory, 43, 45, 46, 49–50; Tartars, 47, 154; Theory of Moral Sentiments, interpretive difficulties with, 34; Theory of Moral Sentiments and ‘Adam Smith problem’, 34n11; Theory of Moral Sentiments and commercial society, 49n84, 50n92; Theory of Moral Sentiments and Essays on Philosophical Subjects, 44n55; Theory of Moral Sentiments and ‘man of system’, 46n68, 56n110; Theory of Moral Sentiments and moral theory, 52–3, 83; Theory of Moral Sentiments and progress as immanent, 44n58, 44n61; Theory of Moral Sentiments and ‘savages’, 51–2; trading companies, criticism of, 17, 38; universal benevolence, 53–4, 55; The Wealth of Nations, 34n11, 36–42, 44n55, 44n61, 45, 45n62, 46n71, 47nn75–8, 49nn80–1 Smith, Richard, 112

20-10-15 08:23

190

Index

social Darwinism, Hobhouse’s criticism of, 128 Spain: Bentham’s legal-code project, 107, 108–9; colonial crisis, 91 Spice Islands: Kant on, 39n40, 65, 75; Smith on, 39, 65n21 Spivak, Gaytari, 8, 85 stadial theory, and Smith, 43, 45, 46, 49–50 Stern, Paul, 83 Stokes, Eric, 89, 113n109 Strauss, Leo, 28n63 Sugar Islands, Kant on slavery in, 66, 163 Tahiti: Enlightenment responses to ‘discovery’ of, 76n74; Kant on, 76, 79–80, 154, 165, 169 Tartars, Smith on, 47, 154 Taylor, Charles, 11 Third World Quarterly, withdrawal of Gilley’s ‘The Case for Colonialism’ article, 167n28 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 147 Tomas, Jose, 101 trade. See free trade; mercantilism; monopoly trade trading companies: Bentham’s criticism of, 17; Kant’s criticism of, 67, 86, 163; Smith’s criticism of, 17, 38. See also East India Company (Dutch); East India Company (English) Tripoli, Bentham’s legal-code project, 110n100 Tucker, Josiah, 90n6 Tully, James, 29n65 ‘unipolar concert’ concept, xi, xv United States: Bentham’s legal-code project, 107, 108; costs of overseas

31892_Williams.indd 190

adventures, 161; Hobhouse on U.S. political institutions, 140, 140n105; Kant’s thought and U.S. interventionist foreign policy, 59–60 universalism: and liberalism, 149; and plurality of human cultures, 15, 18–19, 35, 149; universal benevolence and Smith, 53–4, 55; ‘­universal history’, concept of, 155; universal history and Kant, 60, 72– 6; universal hospitality and Kant, 65; universal morality and Kant, 83; and utilitarianism, 107 utilitarianism: and British rule in India, 89–90; Hobhouse’s views on, 132; and J.S. Mill, 91, 94, 97; and liberty, 132. See also Bentham, Jeremy Valdez, Ines, 66 Venezuela: Bentham’s ‘interoceanic canal’ scheme, 106–7; Bentham’s legal-code project, 109; Bentham’s ‘Proposed Law for the Establishment of the Liberty of the Press in Venezuela’, 109 Wagner, Donald, 34n13 Wakefield, Edward, 106 Walzer, Michael, 21–2, 23, 25 Webb, Sydney, 144 Williams, Bernard, xiii, 27n57, 28, 135n80, 145n127 Williford, Miriam, 110–11 Winch, Donald, 33 Young, Tom, 10n25 Zierler, Matthew, xi

20-10-15 08:23